Mlle. Fouchette Part 45

A dozen such protests on the instant. But the wily veteran was ready.

He knew that when a mob stops to parley the battle is half won.

"Oh, yes, messieurs,--singly, or as other good citizens, you are right; but not as----"

A young man reached over his comrades' shoulders and struck the old commissaire in the face with his cane.

"For shame!" cried Jean Marot, indignantly. "What foolishness!" And he broke the cane across his knee and threw the fragments to the ground.

In the same moment the old commissaire dashed into the crowd and single-handed dragged his youthful a.s.sailant to the front and clear of his companions.

"The guard! the guard! Look out, comrades! here comes the guard!"

The cry ran along the line and through the ranks hushed by the wanton blow delivered unnecessarily upon a respected official. A company of the Garde Republicaine a pied had filed out across the Boulevard du Palais from behind the Prefecture; another company a cheval debouched into the quai from the other corner, and now rode slowly down towards the bridge.

"Bayonets in front and sabres on the flank!" said Jean to those around him. "It were wise to get out of this."

"Good advice, young man,--get out! It won't do, you see. You must cross singly, or as other citizens. Never mind your hot-headed young friend," added the old man, kindly, as he wiped the blood from his face. "We won't be hard on him. Only, you must go back at once!"

He talked to them as if they were little children. But they needed no further urging. The rear-guard had already turned tail at the sight of the troops and were in full retreat. Before the last man had cleared the bridge the only one who had been arrested was set at liberty, though he had richly earned six months in jail.

And thus terminated the harebrained attempt to march five hundred riotous men through the city directly in front of the Prefecture, where lay unlimited reserves, civil and military, under arms. The royalists had somewhat overstrained the complaisance of the authorities.

Acting at once on the hint of the police official, the crowd broke up into small groups. "a la Concorde! a la Concorde! Concorde!" they cried.

This revolutionary rendezvous was prearranged to mean Place du Carrousel, conditional on police interference. It was to deceive the authorities, the main object being to form a junction with the antic.i.p.ated hordes from Montmartre and La Villette.

But a mob broken into scattered groups is no longer a mob, and being no longer a mob, there is no longer courage or cohesion of purpose.

Instead of some four hundred students and about a hundred roughs, not more than fifty of the former responded at the foot of the Gambetta monument, while the latter cla.s.s had gathered strength by the way.

This discrepancy, though painfully apparent to Jean Marot and his friends, in no wise dampened their ardor. Their chosen speakers lashed them into fresh furors of patriotism while they waited. The eloquent young man who quoted the words of Gambetta engraved on his monument wrung tears from his sympathetic auditors. These words of wisdom and patriotism had no pertinence whatever to the work in hand,--which was to break up a meeting organized by some distinguished philanthropists, scholars, and their friends in the interests of civil liberty and the perpetuity of human rights,--but everything serves as fuel to a flame well started.

Carried away by the spirit of exaltation, Jean Marot clambered upon the monument itself, and ascending the heroic figure of Gambetta amid the wild plaudits of the mob, kissed the mute stone lips. His hat had fallen to the ground, and now the hysterical crowd tore it into bits and scrambled for the pieces, which they pinned on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s as precious souvenirs of the occasion.

When Jean reached the earth it was to be frantically embraced on every side. A great, broad-shouldered, big-bearded man in a cap and the blouse of the artisan crowned this exciting ceremony by kissing the young student full on the mouth.

A score of hats were tendered, but Jean accepted the cap of the stalwart workman, who immediately brandished his club and shouted "En avant!" He unwound his soiled red sash as he started, and, making it deftly into a sort of turban, const.i.tuted himself Jean's special body-guard for the day.

The strong force of police posted in the neighborhood of the Louvre had regarded this street drama with stoical indifference. When the noisy crowd surged into the Rue de Rivoli it pa.s.sed between the mounted videttes of the Garde Republicaine. Farther on, in the Rue St.

Honore, a squad of dismounted cuira.s.siers stood listlessly holding the bridles of their horses. The afternoon sun flashed electric rays from the plates of burnished steel.

"Vive l'armee!" burst from the mob.

A subaltern on the curb touched his glittering casque in military salute without stirring a muscle of his armored body.

Now recognized leader, Jean directed the march up the narrow Rue de Richelieu, observing to his bearded aide that it was more direct and safe, though shouts of "Avenue de l'Opera! l'Opera!" rose from his followers. Jean paid no attention to these cries.

"You are right, my boy!" said the man in the blouse, patting Jean on the shoulder approvingly. "The broad streets are to the agents and military. The cuira.s.siers can there trample men like flies! Ah! with a regiment of cavalry and a battery of three quick-firers one could hold Paris at the Place de l'Opera against the world!"

"Yes, my friend," answered Jean, with a smile, "always provided the world agreed not to drop thousand-pound melinite sh.e.l.ls on one from Mont Valerien or Montmartre, or from some other place."

"Yes, yes, yes,--you are right, my boy," admitted the other. "En avant!"

This man had the voice of a Stentor. He was also a Hercules of strength. Here and there the narrow street seemed blocked with vehicles; but when he did not terrorize the drivers into immediate flight at the sound of his voice and the sight of his club he would calmly lift the enc.u.mbrance and set it to one side.

"En avant!" he would then roar.

Where possible, however, all vehicles promptly fled the street save the omnibuses. From the imperiale of one of these came the cry,--

"Vive la republique!"

"Vive l'armee!" yelled the mob.

"Vive la republique!" came the response.

A dash was made for the omnibus. While four or five men held the horses a dozen or more clambered over the wheels and up the narrow steps behind. There were sixteen persons on top, seven of whom were women. The latter shrieked. Two fainted away. The a.s.sailants sprang upon the men and demanded the one who had dared to consider the health of the republic without the army. No one could or would point him out.

On the apparently well established French principle that it is better that ten innocent should suffer punishment rather than that one guilty person should escape the patriotic young men a.s.saulted everybody. A white-haired old man who protested was slapped in the face, another man was quieted by a brutal kick in the abdomen that doubled him up, a couple of foreigners who could neither understand the language nor comprehend what it was all about were roughly handled, a half-grown boy was cuffed,--everybody but the driver came in for blows and insults; and this driver of the omnibus was in all probability the real villain.

"En avant!"

This lesson was administered en route, and without stopping the main body of manifestants pressed on into the grand boulevard, to be swallowed up in the resistless human current that now flowed down upon the Place de l'Opera.

CHAPTER XII

A formidable proportion of the grand concourse which filled the fashionable boulevards from curb to curb this beautiful Sunday afternoon was composed of the so-called "boulevardiers," "flaneurs,"

and "badauds," who invariably appear on occasion offering excitement.

For the Parisian world loves to be amused, and to have the pulse quickened by riot and bloodshed is to very many the highest form of amus.e.m.e.nt. It is better than a bull-fight.

To most of this very large cla.s.s of Parisians it is immaterial what form of government they live under, provided that in some way or another it furnish plenty of excitement. No other country in the civilized world, unless Spain is to be included under this head, produces this peculiar cla.s.s, the unseen influence of which seems to have escaped the brilliant French writers who have recorded the turbulent history of France.

The cardinal characteristic of the French individually and as a people is love of and admiration for theatrical display. This finds such ample ill.u.s.tration in all of their known domestic as well as international affairs that even the mere statement seems unnecessary.

It permeates every social rank, and it enters into the performance of the simplest private as well as public duties. In higher governmental affairs it was accurately represented by the late President of the republic, Felix Faure, who went among his countrymen in a coach and four preceded by trumpeters and accompanied by a regiment of cuira.s.siers, and who required of his entourage all of the formalities of royalty. The hundreds of thousands who enjoyed his kingly funeral would have been equally entertained by a public execution.

In the French nature, as has been said, is implanted a keen zest for excitement. The Frenchman is ravenous for the theatrical situation,--a perfect gormandizer of the dramatic event. Whatever or whoever lacks this gilded framework is neither remembered nor noted. The supply invariably follows the demand; without spectators there would be no spectacle,--just as there is no sound where there are no ears.

Any Frenchman, therefore, who has any theatrical novelty to offer, whether as a political mountebank, or a bogus hero, or a peculiarly atrocious crime, is sure of a large audience. For there is a wide range of appreciation in that mercurial nature which, according to Voltaire, is half monkey and half tiger.

The evident pleasure with which vast Parisian crowds view riots and revolution and the various phases of alternate anarchy and absolutism may be easily and naturally accepted by the actors in these living dramas as tacit if not positive approval. The professional patriot does not perform to empty seats, and the few hundred hired a.s.sa.s.sins of the public peace and private liberty would be out of a job but for the hundred thousand pa.s.sive and more or less amused spectators who scramble for the best places to witness and make merry over the show.

That this curious crowd is greatly swelled by what in other lands is recognized as the gentler or softer s.e.x increases its responsibility.

The civilization which has produced so many women of the heroic type, so many of the n.o.bler masculine brain and hand, has also generated a vast brood which poisons the germs of human life and hands down bigotry, intolerance, revengefulness, cruelty, and love of turbulence and bloodshed from generation to generation.

Of the performers before this audience Jean Marot and his stalwart companion found themselves particularly observed from their debut. The red turban was conspicuous enough, and gave a theatrical aspect to the man who wore it. There was that in his ensemble which recalled the great Revolution and the scarcely less sanguinary conflicts of '71. By his side and contrasting strangely with the coa.r.s.e brute features of this muscular humanity was the finely chiselled face of the student under the rough cap of the workman. A picturesque pair, they were greeted on all sides with all sorts of cries and comments:

"That red cap is very appropriate."