My Double Life: The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt Part 26

"No, oh no, my dear girl," she said; "in these times it will not do to throw meat away, even though it may be rotten. Let us put it in the gla.s.s bottle again and send it back to the _Mairie_."

I followed her wise advice, and it was a very good thing I did, for another ambulance, installed at Boulevard Medicis, on opening these bottles of meat had been as horrified as we were, and had thrown the contents into the street. A few minutes after the crowd had gathered round in a mob, and, refusing to listen to anything, had yelled out insults addressed to "the aristocrats," "the clericals," and "the traitors," who were throwing good meat, intended for the sick, into the street, so that the dogs were enjoying it, while the people were starving with hunger, &c. &c.

It was with the greatest difficulty that the wretched, mad people had been prevented from invading the ambulance, and when one of the unfortunate nurses had gone out, later on, she had been mobbed and beaten until she was left half dead from fright and blows. She did not want to be carried back to her own ambulance, and the druggist begged me to take her in. I kept her for a few days, in one of the upper tier boxes of the theatre, and when she was better she asked if she might stay with me as a nurse. I granted her wish, and kept her with me afterwards as a maid.

She was a fair-haired girl, gentle and timid, and was pre-destined for misfortune. She was found dead in the Pere Lachaise cemetery after the skirmish between the Communists and the Versailles troop. A stray bullet struck her in the back of the neck as she was praying at the grave of her little sister, who had died two days before from small-pox. I had taken her with me to St. Germain, where I had gone to stay during the horrors of the Commune. Poor girl! I had allowed her to go to Paris very much against my own will.

As we could not count on this preserved meat for our food, I made a contract with a knacker, who agreed to supply me, at rather a high price, with horse flesh, and until the end this was the only meat we had to eat. Well prepared and well seasoned, it was very good.

Hope had now fled from all hearts, and we were living in the expectation of we knew not what. An atmosphere of misfortune seemed to hang like lead over us, and it was a sort of relief when the bombardment commenced on December 27. At last we felt that something new was happening! It was an era of fresh suffering. There was some stir, at any rate. For the last fortnight the fact of not knowing anything had been killing us.

On January 1, 1871, we lifted our gla.s.ses to the health of the absent ones, to the repose of the dead, and the toast choked us with such a lump in our throats.

Every night we used to hear the dismal cry of "Ambulance! Ambulance!"

underneath the windows of the Odeon. We went down to meet the pitiful procession, and one, two, or sometimes three conveyances would be there, full of our poor, wounded soldiers. There would be ten or twelve rows of them, lying or sitting up on the straw. I said that I had room for one or two, and, lifting the lantern, I looked into the conveyance, and the faces would then turn slowly towards the lamp. Some of the men would close their eyes, as they were too weak to bear even that feeble light.

With the help of the sergeant who accompanied the conveyance and our attendant, one of the unfortunates would with difficulty be lifted into the narrow litter on which he was to be carried up to the ambulance.

Oh, what sorrowful anguish it was for me when, on lifting the patient's head, I discovered that it was getting heavy, oh, so heavy! And when bending over that inert face I felt that there was no longer any breath!

The sergeant would then give the order to take him back, and the poor dead man was put in his place and another wounded man was lifted out.

The other dying men would then move back a little, in order not to profane the dead.

Ah, what grief it was when the sergeant said: "Do try to take one or two more in! It is a pity to drag these poor chaps about from one ambulance to another. The Val-de-Grace is full."

"Very well, I will take two more," I would say, and then I wondered where we should put them. We had to give up our own beds, and in this way the poor fellows were saved. Ever since January 1 we had all three been sleeping every night at the ambulance. We had some loose dressing-gowns of thick grey flannel, not unlike the soldiers' cloaks.

The first of us who heard a cry or a groan sprang out of bed, and if necessary called the other two.

On January 10, Madame Guerard and I were sitting up at night, on one of the lounges in the green-room, awaiting the dismal cry of "Ambulance!"

There had been a fierce affray at Clamart, and we knew there would be many wounded. I was telling her of my fear that the bombs which had already reached the Museum, the Sorbonne, the Salpetriere, the Val-de-Grace, &c., would fall on the Odeon.

"Oh, but, my dear Sarah," said the sweet woman, "the ambulance flag is waving so high above it that there could be no mistake. If it were struck it would be purposely, and that would be abominable."

"But, Guerard," I replied, "why should you expect these execrable enemies of ours to be better than we are ourselves? Did we not behave like savages at Berlin in 1806?"

"But at Paris there are such admirable public monuments," she urged.

"Well, and was not Moscow full of masterpieces? The Kremlin is one of the finest buildings in the world. That did not prevent us giving that admirable city up to pillage. Oh no, my poor _pet.i.t Dame_, do not deceive yourself. Armies may be Russian, German, French, or Spanish, but they _are_ armies--that is, they are beings which form an impersonal 'whole,' a 'whole' that is ferocious and irresponsible. The Germans will bombard the whole of Paris if the possibility of doing so should be offered them. You must make up your mind to that, my dear Guerard----"

I had not finished my sentence when a terrible detonation roused the whole neighbourhood from its slumbers. Madame Guerard and I had been seated opposite each other. We found ourselves standing up close together in the middle of the room, terrified. My poor cook, her face quite white, came to me for safety. The detonations continued rather frequently. The bombarding had commenced from our side that night. I went round to the wounded men, but they did not seem to be much disturbed. Only one, a boy of fifteen, whom we had surnamed "pink baby,"

was sitting up in bed. When I went to him to soothe him he showed me his little medal of the Holy Virgin.

"It is thanks to her that I was not killed," he said. "If they would put the Holy Virgin on the ramparts of Paris the bombs would not come."

He lay down again then, holding his little medal in his hand, and the bombarding continued until six in the morning. "Ambulance! Ambulance!"

we then heard, and Madame Guerard and I went down. "Here," said the sergeant, "take this man. He is losing all his blood, and if I take him any farther he will not arrive living." The wounded man was put on the litter, but as he was German, I asked the sub-officer to take all his papers and hand them in at the Ministry. We gave the man the place of one of the convalescents, whom I installed elsewhere. I asked him his name, and he told me that it was Frantz Mayer, and that he was a soldier of the Silesian Landwehr. He then fainted from weakness caused by loss of blood. But he soon came to himself again with our care, and I then asked him whether he wanted anything, but he did not answer a word. I supposed that he did not speak French, and, as there was no one at the ambulance who spoke German, I waited until the next day to send for some one who knew his language. I must own that the poor man was not welcomed by his dormitory companions. A soldier named Fortin, who was twenty-three years of age and a veritable child of Paris, a comical fellow, mischievous, droll, and good-natured, never ceased railing against the young German, who on his side never flinched. I went several times to Fortin and begged him to be quiet, but it was all in vain.

Every fresh outbreak of his was greeted with wild laughter, and his success put him into the gayest of humours, so that he continued, getting more and more excited. The others were prevented from sleeping, and he moved about wildly in his bed, bursting out into abusive language when too abrupt a movement intensified his suffering. The unfortunate fellow had had his sciatic nerve torn by a bullet, and he had to endure the most atrocious pain.

After my third fruitless appeal for silence I ordered the two men attendants to carry him into a room where he would be alone. He sent for me, and when I went to him promised to behave well all night long. I therefore countermanded the order I had given, and he kept his word. The following day I had Frantz Mayer carried into a room where there was a young Breton who had had his skull fractured by the bursting of a sh.e.l.l, and therefore needed the utmost tranquillity.

One of my friends, who spoke German very well, came to see whether the Silesian wanted anything. The wounded man's face lighted up on hearing his own language, and then, turning to me, he said:

"I understand French quite well, Madame, and if I listened calmly to the horrors poured forth by your French soldier it was because I know that you cannot hold out two days longer, and I can understand his exasperation."

"And why do you think that we cannot hold out?"

"Because I know that you are reduced to eating rats."

Dr. d.u.c.h.esne had just arrived, and he was dressing the horrible wound which the patient had in his thigh.

"Well," he said, "my friend, as soon as your fever has decreased you shall eat an excellent wing of chicken." The German shrugged his shoulders, and the doctor continued, "Meanwhile drink this, and tell me what you think of it."

Dr. d.u.c.h.esne gave him a gla.s.s of water, with a little of the excellent cognac which the Prefect had sent me. That was the only _tisane_ that my soldiers took. The Silesian said no more, but he put on the reserved, circ.u.mspect manner of people who know and will not speak.

The bombardment continued, and the ambulance flag certainly served as a target for our enemies, for they fired with surprising exact.i.tude, and altered their firing directly a bomb fell any distance from the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg. Thanks to this, we had more than twelve bombs one night. These dismal sh.e.l.ls, when they burst in the air, were like the fireworks at a _fete_. The shining splinters then fell down, black and deadly. Georges Boyer, who at that time was a young journalist, came to call on me at the ambulance, and I told him about the terrifying splendours of the night.

"Oh, how much I should like to see all that!" he said.

"Come this evening, towards nine or ten o'clock, and you will see," I replied.

We spent several hours at the little round window of my dressing--room, which looked out towards Chatillon. It was from there that the Germans fired the most.

We listened, in the silence of the night, to the m.u.f.fled sounds coming from yonder; there would be a light, a formidable noise in the distance, and the bomb arrived, falling in front of us or behind, bursting either in the air or on reaching its goal. Once we had only just time to draw back quickly, and even then the disturbance in the atmosphere affected us so violently that for a second we were under the impression that we had been struck.

The sh.e.l.l had fallen just underneath my dressing-room, grazing the cornice, which it dragged down in its fall to the ground, where it burst feebly. But what was our amazement to see a little crowd of children swoop down on the burning pieces, just like a lot of sparrows on fresh manure when the carriage has pa.s.sed! The little vagabonds were quarrelling over the _debris_ of these engines of warfare. I wondered what they could possibly do with them.

"Oh, there is not much mystery about it," said Boyer; "these little starving urchins will sell them."

This proved to be true. One of the men attendants, whom I sent to find out, brought back with him a child of about ten years old.

"What are you going to do with that, my little man?" I asked him, picking up the piece of sh.e.l.l, which was warm and still dangerous, on the edge where it had burst.

"I am going to sell it," he replied.

"What for?"

"To buy my turn in the _queue_ when the meat is being distributed."

"But you risk your life, my poor child. Sometimes the sh.e.l.ls come quickly, one after the other. Where were you when this one fell?"

"Lying down on the stone of the wall that supports the iron railings."

He pointed across to the Luxembourg Gardens, opposite the stage entrance to the Odeon.

We bought up all the _debris_ that the child had, without attempting to give him advice which might have sounded wise. What was the use of preaching wisdom to this poor little creature, who heard of nothing but ma.s.sacres, fire, revenge, retaliation, and all the rest of it, for the sake of honour, for the sake of religion, for the sake of right?

Besides, how was it possible to keep out of the way? All the people living in the Faubourg St. Germain were liable to be blown to pieces, as the enemy very luckily could only bombard Paris on that side, and not at every point. No; we were certainly in the most dangerous neighbourhood.

One day Baron Larrey came to see Frantz Mayer, who was very ill. He wrote a prescription which a young errand boy was told to wait for and bring back very, very quickly. As the boy was rather given to loitering, I went to the window. His name was Victor, but we called him "Toto." The druggist lived at the corner of the Place Medicis. It was then six o'clock in the evening. Toto looked up, and on seeing me he began to laugh and jump as he hurried to the druggist's. He had only five or six more yards to go, and as he turned round to look up at my window I clapped my hands and called out, "Good! Be quick back!" Alas! Before the poor boy could open his mouth to reply he was cut in two by a sh.e.l.l which had just fallen. It did not burst, but bounced a yard high, and then struck poor Toto right in the middle of the chest. I uttered such a shriek that every one came rushing to me. I could not speak, but pushed every one aside and rushed downstairs, beckoning for some one to come with me. "A litter"--"the boy"--"the druggist"--I managed to articulate.

Ah, what a horror, what an awful horror! When we reached the poor child his intestines were all over the ground, his chest and his poor little red chubby face had the flesh entirely taken off. He had neither eyes, nose, nor mouth; nothing, nothing but some hair at the end of a shapeless, bleeding ma.s.s, a yard away from his head. It was as though a tiger had torn open the body with its claws and emptied it with fury and a refinement of cruelty, leaving nothing but the poor little skeleton.