My Double Life: The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt Part 27

Baron Larrey, who was the best of men, turned slightly pale at this sight. He saw plenty such, certainly, but this poor little fellow was a quite useless holocaust. Ah, the injustice, the infamy of war! Will the much dreamed of time never come when wars are no longer possible; when the monarch who wants war will be dethroned and imprisoned as a malefactor? Will the time never come when there will be a cosmopolitan council, where a wise man of every country will represent his nation, and where the rights of humanity will be discussed and respected? So many men think as I do, so many women talk as I do, and yet nothing is done. The pusillanimity of an Oriental, the ill-humour of a sovereign, may still bring thousands of men face to face. And there will still be men who are so learned, chemists who spend their time in dreaming about, and inventing a powder to blow everything up, bombs that will wound twenty or thirty men, guns repeating their deadly task until the bullets fall, spent themselves, after having torn open ten or twelve human b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

A man whom I liked very much was busy experimenting how to steer balloons. To achieve that means a realisation of my dream, namely, to fly in the air, to approach the sky, and have under one's feet the moist, down-like clouds. Ah, how interested I was in my friend's researches! One day, though, he came to me very much excited with a new discovery.

"I have discovered something about which I am wild with delight!" he said. He then began to explain to me that his balloon would be able to carry inflammable matter without the least danger, thanks to this and thanks to that.

"But what for?" I asked, bewildered by his explanations and half crazy with so many technical words.

"What for?" he repeated; "why, for war!" he replied. "We shall be able to fire and to throw terrible bombs to a distance of a thousand, twelve hundred, and even fifteen hundred yards, and it would be impossible for us to be harmed at such a distance. My balloons, thanks to a substance which is my invention, with which the covering would be coated, would have nothing to fear from fire nor yet from gas."

"I do not want to know anything more about you or your invention," I said, interrupting him brusquely. "I thought you were a humane savant, and you are a wild beast. Your researches were in connection with the most beautiful manifestation of human genius, with those evolutions in the sky which I loved so dearly. You want now to transform these into cowardly attacks turned against the earth. You horrify me! Do go!"

With this I left my friend to himself and his cruel invention, ashamed for a moment. His efforts have not succeeded, though, according to his wishes.

The remains of the poor lad were put into a small coffin, and Madame Guerard and I followed the pauper's hea.r.s.e to the grave. The morning was so cold that the driver had to stop and take a gla.s.s of hot wine, as otherwise he might have died of congestion. We were alone in the carriage, for the boy had been brought up by his grandmother, who could not walk at all, and who knitted vests and stockings. It was through going to order some vests and socks for my men that I had made the acquaintance of Mere Tricottin, as she was called. At her request I had engaged her grandson, Victor Durieux, as an errand boy, and the poor old woman had been so grateful that I dared not go now to tell her of his death.

Madame Guerard went for me to the Rue de Vaugirard, where the old woman lived. As soon as she arrived the poor grandmother could see by her sad face that something had happened.

"_Bon Dieu_, my dear Madame, is the poor little thin lady dead?" This referred to me. Madame Guerard then told her, as gently as possible, the sad news. The old woman took off her spectacles, looked at her visitor, wiped them, and put them on her nose again. She then began to grumble violently about her son, the father of the dead boy. He had taken up with some low girl, by whom he had had this child, and she had always foreseen that misfortune would come upon them through it.

She continued in this strain, not sorrowing for the poor boy, but abusing her son, who was a soldier in the Army of the Loire.

Although the grandmother seemed to feel so little grief, I went to see her after the funeral.

"It is all over, Madame Durieux," I said. "But I have secured the grave for a period of five years for the poor boy."

She turned towards me, quite comic in her vexation.

"What madness!" she exclaimed. "Now that he's with the _bon Dieu_ he won't want for anything. It would have been better to have taken a bit of land that would have brought something in. Dead folks don't make vegetables grow."

This outburst was so terribly logical that, in spite of the odious brutality of it, I yielded to Mere Tricottin's desire, and gave her the same present I had given to the boy. They should each have their bit of land. The child, who had had a right to a longer life, should sleep his eternal sleep in his, whilst the old woman could wrest from hers the remainder of her life, for which death was lying in wait.

I returned to the ambulance, sad and unnerved. A joyful surprise was awaiting me. A friend of mine was there, holding in his hand a very small piece of tissue paper, on which were the following two lines in my mother's handwriting: "We are all very well, and at Homburg." I was furious on reading this. At Homburg? All my family at Homburg, settling down tranquilly in the enemy's country. I racked my brains to think by what extraordinary combination my mother had gone to Homburg. I knew that my pretty Aunt Rosine had a lady friend there, with whom she stayed every year, for she always spent two months at Homburg, two at Baden-Baden, and one month at Spa, as she was the greatest gambler that the _bon Dieu_ ever created. Anyhow, those who were so dear to me were all well, and that was the important point. But I was nevertheless annoyed with my mother for going to Homburg.

I heartily thanked the friend who had brought me the little slip of paper. It was sent to me by the American Minister, who had put himself to no end of trouble in order to give help and consolation to the Parisians. I then gave him a few lines for my mother, in case he might be able to send them to her.

The bombardment of Paris continued. One night the brothers from the Ecole Chretienne came to ask us for conveyances and help, in order to collect the dead on the Chatillon Plateau. I let them have my two conveyances, and I went with them to the battle-field. Ah, what a terrible memory! It was like a scene from Dante! It was an icy-cold night, and we could scarcely move along. Finally, by the light of torches and lanterns, we saw that we had arrived. I got out of the vehicle with the infirmary attendant and his a.s.sistant. We had to move slowly, as at every step we trod upon the dying or the dead. We pa.s.sed along murmuring, "Ambulance! Ambulance!" When we heard a groan we turned our steps in the direction whence it came. Ah, the first man that I found in this way! He was half lying down, his body supported by a heap of dead. I raised my lantern to look at his face, and found that his ear and part of his jaw had been blown off. Great clots of blood, coagulated by the cold, hung from his lower jaw. There was a wild look in his eyes.

I took a wisp of straw, dipped it in my flask, drew up a few drops of brandy, and blew them into the poor fellow's mouth between his teeth. I repeated this three or four times. A little life then came back to him, and we took him away in one of the vehicles. The same thing was done for the others. Some of them could drink from the flask, which made our work shorter. One of these unfortunate men was frightful to look at. A sh.e.l.l had taken all the clothes from the upper part of his body, with the exception of two ragged sleeves, which hung from the arms at the shoulders. There was no trace of a wound, but his poor body was marked all over with great black patches, and the blood was oozing slowly from the corners of his mouth. I went nearer to him, for it seemed to me that he was breathing. I had a few drops of the vivifying cordial given to him, and he then half opened his eyes and said, "Thank you." He was lifted into the conveyance, but the poor fellow died from an attack of haemorrhage, covering all the other wounded men with a stream of dark blood.

Daylight gradually began to appear, a misty, dull dawn. The lanterns had burnt out, but we could now distinguish each other. There were about a hundred persons there: sisters of charity, military and civil male hospital attendants, the brothers from the Ecole Chretienne, other priests, and a few ladies who, like myself, had given themselves up heart and soul to the service of the wounded.

The sight was still more dismal by daylight, for all that the night had hidden in the shadows appeared then in the tardy, wan light of that January morning.

There were so many wounded that it was impossible to transport them all, and I sobbed at the thought of my helplessness. Other vehicles kept arriving, but there were so many wounded, so very many. A number of those who had only slight wounds had died of cold.

On returning to the ambulance I met one of my friends at the door. He was a naval officer, and he had brought me a sailor who had been wounded at the fort of Ivry. He had been shot below the right eye. He was entered as Desire Bloas, boatswain's mate, age 27. He was a magnificent fellow, very frank looking, and a man of few words. As soon as he was in bed, Dr. d.u.c.h.esne sent for a barber to shave him, as his bushy whiskers had been ravaged by a bullet that had lodged itself in the salivary gland, carrying with it hair and flesh into the wound. The surgeon took up his pincers to extract the pieces of flesh which had stopped up the opening of the wound. He then had to take some very fine pincers to extract the hairs which had been forced in. When the barber laid his razor very gently near the wound, the unfortunate man turned livid and an oath escaped his lips. He immediately glanced at me and muttered, "Pardon, Mademoiselle." I was very young, but I appeared much younger than my age; I looked like a very young girl, in fact. I was holding the poor fellow's hand in mine and trying to comfort him with the hundreds of consoling words that spring from a woman's heart to her lips when she has to soothe moral or physical suffering.

"Ah, Mademoiselle," said poor Bloas, when the wound was finally dressed, "you gave me courage."

When he was more at his ease I asked him if he would like something to eat.

"Yes," he replied.

"Well, my boy, would you like cheese, soup, or sweets?" asked Madame Lambquin.

"Sweets," replied the powerful-looking fellow, smiling.

Desire Bloas often talked to me about his mother, who lived near Brest.

He had a veritable adoration for this mother, but he seemed to have a terrible grudge against his father, for one day, when I asked him whether his father was still living, he looked up with his fearless eyes and appeared to fix them on a being only visible to himself, as though challenging him, with an expression of the most pitiful contempt. Alas!

the brave fellow was destined to a cruel end, but I will return to that later.

The sufferings endured through the siege began to have their effect on the _morale_ of the Parisians. Bread had just been rationed out: there were to be 300 grammes for adults and 150 grammes for children. A silent fury took possession of the people at this news. Women were the most courageous, the men were excited. Quarrels grew bitter, for some wanted war to the very death, and others wanted peace.

One day when I entered Frantz Mayer's room to take him his meal, he went into the most ridiculous rage. He threw his piece of chicken down on the ground, and declared that he would not eat anything, nothing more at all, for they had deceived him by telling him that the Parisians had not enough food to last two days before surrendering, and he had been in the ambulance seventeen days now, and was having chicken. What the poor fellow did not know was that I had bought about forty chickens and six geese at the beginning of the siege, and I was feeding them up in my dressing-room in the Rue de Rome. Oh, my dressing-room was very pretty just then; but I let Frantz believe that all Paris was full of chickens, ducks, geese, and other domestic bipeds.

The bombardment continued, and one night I had to have all my patients transported to the Odeon cellars, for when Madame Guerard was helping one of the sick men to get back into bed, a sh.e.l.l fell on the bed itself, between her and the officer. It makes me shudder even now to think that three minutes sooner the unfortunate man would have been killed as he lay in bed, although the sh.e.l.l did not burst.

We could not stay long in the cellars. The water was getting deeper in them, and rats tormented us. I therefore decided that the ambulance must be moved, and I had the worst of the patients conveyed to the Val-de-Grace Hospital. I kept about twenty men who were on the road to convalescence. I rented an immense empty flat for them at 58 Rue Taitbout, and it was there that we awaited the armistice.

I was half dead with anxiety, as I had had no news from my own family for a long time. I could not sleep, and had become the very shadow of my former self.

Jules Favre was entrusted with the negotiations with Bismarck. Oh, those two days of preliminaries! They were the most unnerving days of any for the besieged. False reports were spread. We were told of the maddest and most exorbitant demands on the part of the Germans, who certainly were not tender to the vanquished.

There was a moment of stupor when we heard that we had to pay two hundred million francs in cash immediately, for our finances were in such a pitiful state that we shuddered at the idea that we might not be able to make up the sum of two hundred millions.

Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, who was shut up in Paris with his wife and brothers, gave his signature for the two hundred millions. This fine deed was soon forgotten, and there are even people who gainsay it.

Ah, the ingrat.i.tude of the ma.s.ses is a disgrace to civilised humanity!

"Ingrat.i.tude is the evil peculiar to the white races," said a Red-skin, and he was right.

When we heard in Paris that the armistice was signed for twenty days, a frightful sadness took possession of us all, even of those who most ardently wished for peace.

Every Parisian felt on his cheek the hand of the conqueror. It was the brand of shame, the blow given by the abominable treaty of peace.

Oh, that 31st of January 1871! I remember so well that I was anaemic from privation, undermined by grief, tortured with anxiety about my family, and I went out with Madame Guerard and two friends towards the Parc Monceau. Suddenly one of my friends, M. de Plancy, turned as pale as death. I looked to see what was the matter, and noticed a soldier pa.s.sing by. He had no weapons. Two others pa.s.sed, and they also had no weapons. And they were so pale too, these poor disarmed soldiers, these humble heroes; there was such evident grief and hopelessness in their very gait; and their eyes, as they looked at us women, seemed to say, "It is not our fault!" It was all so pitiful, so touching. I burst out sobbing, and went back home at once, for I did not want to meet any more disarmed French soldiers.

I decided to set off now as quickly as possible in search of my family.

I asked Paul de Remusat to get me an audience with M. Thiers, in order to obtain from him a pa.s.sport for leaving Paris. But I could not go alone. I felt that the journey I was about to undertake was a very dangerous one. M. Thiers and Paul de Remusat had warned me of this. I could see, therefore, that I should be constantly in the society of my travelling companion, and on this account I decided not to take a servant with me, but a friend. I very naturally went at once to Madame Guerard. Her husband, gentle though he was, refused absolutely to let her go with me, as he considered this expedition mad and dangerous. Mad it certainly was, and dangerous too.

I did not insist, but I sent for my son's governess, Mlle. Soubise. I asked her whether she would go with me, and did not attempt to conceal from her any of the dangers of the journey. She jumped with joy, and said she would be ready within twelve hours. This girl is at present the wife of Commandant Monfils Chesneau. And how strange life is, for she is now teaching the two daughters of my son, her former pupil.

Mlle. Soubise was then very young, and in appearance like a Creole. She had very beautiful dark eyes, with a gentle, timid expression, and the voice of a child. Her head, however, was full of adventure, romance, and day-dreams. In appearance we might both have been taken for quite young girls, for, although I was older than she was, my slenderness and my face made me look younger. It would have been absurd to try to take a trunk with us, so I took a bag for us both. We only had a change of linen and some stockings. I had my revolver, and I offered one to Mlle.

Soubise, but she refused it with horror, and showed me an enormous pair of scissors in an enormous case.

"But what are you going to do with them?" I asked.

"I shall kill myself if we are attacked," she replied.

I was surprised at the difference in our characters. I was taking a revolver, determined to protect myself by killing others; she was determined to protect herself by killing herself.