The 4th of September — A comic, not a tragic revolution — A burlesque Harold and a burlesque Boadicea — The news of Sedan only known publicly on the 3rd of September — Grief and consternation, but no rage — The latter feeling imported by the bands of Delescluze, Blanqui, and Félix Pyat — Blanqui, Pyat, & Co.versusFavre, Gambetta, & Co. — The former want their share of the spoil, and only get it some years afterwards — Ramail goes to the Palais-Bourbon — His report — Paris spends the night outdoors — Thiers a second-rate Talleyrand — His journey to the different courts of Europe — His interview with Lord Granville — The 4th of September — The Imperial eagles disappear — The joyousness of the crowd — The Place de la Concorde — The gardens of the Tuileries — The crowds in the Rue de Rivoli scarcely pay attention to the Tuileries — The soldiers fraternizing with the people, and proclaiming the republic from the barracks' windows — A serious procession — Sampierro Gavini gives his opinion — The "heroic struggles" of an Empress, and the crownless coronation of "le Roi Pétaud" — Ramail at the Tuileries — How M. Sardou saved the palace from being burned and sacked — The republic proclaimed — Illuminations as after a victory.
Only those who were at a distance from Paris on the 4th of September, 1870, can be deluded into the belief that the scenes enacted there on that day partook of a dramatic character. Carefully and scrupulously dovetailed, they constitute one vast burlesque of a revolution. It is not because the overthrow of the Second Empire was accomplished without bloodshed that I say this. Bloodshed would have only made the burlesque more gruesome, but it could have never converted it into a tragedy, the recollection of which would have made men think and shudder even after the lapse of many years. As it is, the recollection of the 4th of September can only make the independent witness smile. On the one hand, a burlesque Harold driven off to Wilhelmshöhe in a landau, surrounded by a troop of Uhlans; and a burlesque Boadicea slinking off in a hackney cab,minusthe necessary handkerchiefs for the cold in her head,—"fleeing when no one pursueth," instead of poisoning herself: on the other, "ceux qui prennent la parole pour autrui,"i. e.the lawyers, prenant le pouvoir pour eux-mêmes. Really, the only chronicler capableof dealing with the situation in the right spirit is our old and valued friend, Mr. Punch. Personally, from the Saturday afternoon until the early hours on Monday, I saw scarcely one incident worthy of being treated seriously; nor did the accounts supplied to me by others tend to modify my impressions.
Though the defeat at Sedan was virtually complete on Thursday the 1st at nine p.m., not the faintest rumour of it reached Paris before Friday evening at an advanced hour, and the real truth was not known generally until the Saturday at the hour just named. There was grief and consternation on many faces, but no expression of fury or anger. That sentiment, at any rate in its outward manifestations, had to be supplied from the heights of Belleville and Montmartre, Montrouge and Montparnasse, when, later on, a good many of the inhabitants of those delightful regions came down like an avalanche on the heart of the city. They were the lambs of Blanqui, Delescluze, Félix Pyat, and Millière. They were dispersed on reaching the Boulevard Montmartre, and we saw nothing of them from where we were seated, at the Café de la Paix. By the time they rallied in the side streets and had marched to the Palais-Bourbon, they found their competitors, Favre, Gambetta, & Co., trying to oust the ministers of the Empire. But for that unfortunate delay we might have had the Commune on the 4th of September instead of on the 18th of March following. Blanqui, Pyat, & Co. never forgave Favre, Gambetta, & Co. for having forestalled them, and, above all, for not having shared the proceeds of the spoil. This is so true that, even after many years of lording it, the successors of, and co-founders with, the firm of Favre, Gambetta, & Co. have been obliged, not only to grant an amnesty to those whom they cheated at the beginning, but to admit them to some of the benefits of the undertaking; Méline, Tirard, Ranc, Alphonse Humbert, Camille Barrère, and a hundred others more or less implicated in the Commune, are all occupying fat posts at the hour I write.
A friend of ours, whose impartiality was beyond suspicion, and who had more strength and inclination to battle with crowds than any of us, offered to go and see how the land lay at the Palais-Bourbon. He returned in about an hour, and told us that Gambetta, perched on a chair, had been addressing the crowd from behind the railings, exhortingthem to patience and moderation. "Clever trick that," said our informant; "it's the confidence-trick of housebreakers when two separate gangs have designs upon the same 'crib;' while the first arrivals 'crack' it, they send one endowed with the 'gift of the gab' to pacify the others."
One thing is certain—Gambetta and his crew did not want to pursue the war, they wanted a Constituent Assembly which would have left them to enjoy in peace the fruits of their usurpation; for theirs was as much usurpation as was the Coup d'État. Their subsequent "Not an inch of our territory, not a stone of our fortresses," was an afterthought, when they found that Bismarck would not grant them as good a peace as he would have granted Napoléon at Donchery the morning after Sedan.
At about ten on Saturday night everybody knew that there would be a night sitting, and I doubt whether one-fourth of the adult male population of Paris went to bed at all, even if they retired to their own homes.
Our friend returned to the Palais-Bourbon, but failed to get a trustworthy account of what had happened during the twenty-five minutes the deputies had been assembled. All he knew was that nominally the Empire was still standing, though virtually it had ceased to exist; a bill for its deposition having been laid on the table. On his way back to the Boulevards he saw the carriage of Thiers surrounded, and an attempt to take out the horses. He called Thiers "le recéleur des vols commis au préjudice des monarchies."[80]
Let me look for a moment at that second-rate Talleyrand, who has been grandiloquently termed the "liberator of the soil" because he happened to do what any intelligent bank manager could have done as well; let me endeavour to establish his share in the 4th of September. I am speaking on the authority of men who were behind the political scenes for many years, and whose contempt for nearly all the actors was equally great. Thiers refused his aid and counsel to the Empress, who solicited it through the intermediary of Prince Metternich and M. Prosper Mérimée, but he also refused to accept the power offered to him by Gambetta, Favre, Jules Simon, etc., in the afternoon of the 4th of September. Nevertheless, he was here, there, and everywhere; offering advice, but careful not to take any responsibility. Afterwardshe took a journey to the various courts of Europe. I only know the particulars of one interview—that with Lord Granville—but I can vouch for their truth. After having held forth for two hours without giving his lordship a chance of edging in a word sideways, he stopped; and five minutes later, while Lord Granville was enumerating the reasons why the cabinet of St. James's could not interfere, he (Thiers) was fast asleep. When the conditions of peace were being discussed, Thiers was in favour of giving up Belfort rather than pay another milliard of francs. "A city you may recover, a milliard of francs you never get back," he said. Nevertheless, historians will tell one that Thiers made superhuman efforts to save Belfort. I did not like M. Thiers, and, being conscious of my dislike, I have throughout these notes endeavoured to say as little as possible of him.
The sun rose radiantly over Paris on the 4th of September, and I was up betimes, though I had not gone to bed until 3 a.m. There was a dense crowd all along the Rue Royale and the Place de la Concorde, and several hours before the Chamber had begun to discuss the deposition of the Bonapartes (which was never formally voted), volunteer-workmen were destroying or hauling down the Imperial eagles. The mob cheered them vociferously, and when one of these workmen hurt himself severely, they carried him away in triumph. Nevertheless, there was a good deal of hooting as several well-known members of the Chamber elbowed their way through the serried masses. Though they were well known, I argued myself unknown in not knowing them. I was under the impression that they were Imperialists; they turned out to be Republicans. The marks of disapproval proceeded from compact groups of what were apparently workmen. As I knew that no workmen devoted to the Empire would have dared to gather in that way, even if their numbers had been sufficient, and as I felt reluctant to inquire, I came to the natural conclusion that the hooters were the supporters of Blanqui, Pyat, & Co. The Commune was foreshadowed on the Place de la Concorde on that day.
My experience of the 24th of February, 1848, told me that the Chamber would be invaded before long. In 1848 there was no more danger for a foreigner to mix with the rabble than for a Frenchman. I felt not quite so sure about my safety on the 4th of September. My adventure in the Avenue de Clichy, which I will relate anon, had not happenedthen, and I was not as careful as I became afterwards, still I remembered in time the advice of the prudent Frenchman—"When in doubt, abstain;" and I prepared to retrace my steps to the Boulevards, where, I knew, there would be no mistake about my identity. At the same time, I am bound to say that no such accident as I dreaded, occurred during that day, as far as I am aware. There may or may not have been at that hour half a hundred spies of Bismarck in the city, but no one was molested. The Parisians were so evidently overjoyed at getting rid of the Empire, that for four and twenty hours, at any rate, they forgot all about the hated Germans and their march upon the capital. They were shaking hands with, and congratulating one another, as if some great piece of good fortune had befallen them. Years before that, I had seen my wife behave in a similarly joyous manner after having dismissed at a moment's notice a cook who had shamefully robbed us: the wife knew very well that, on the morrow, the tradesmen, the amount of whose bills the dishonest servant had pocketed for months, would be sending in their claims upon us. "Perhaps they will take into consideration that we dismissed her," she said, "and not hold us responsible." The Latin race, and especially the French, are the females of the human race.
I noticed that the gates of the Tuileries gardens on the Place de la Concorde were still open, and that the gardens themselves were black with people. It must have been about half-past ten or eleven. I did not go back by the Rue Royale, but by the Rue de Rivoli. The people were absolutely streaming down the street. There was not a single threatening gesture on their part; they merely looked at the flag still floating over the Tuileries, and passed on. When I got back to the Boulevards, I sat down outside the Café de la Paix determined not to stir if possible. I knew that whatever happened the news of it would soon be brought thither. I was not mistaken.
The first news we had was that the National Guards had replaced the regulars inside and around the Palais-Bourbon, which was either a sign that the latter could be no longer depended upon, or that the Republicans in the Chamber had carried that measure in their own interest. I am bound to admit that I would always sooner take the word of a French officer than that of a deputy, of no matter what shade; and I heard afterwards that the troops at the Napoléon barracksand elsewhere had begun to fraternize with the people as early as eight in the morning, by shouting, from the windows of their rooms, "Vive la République!" The Chamber was invaded, nevertheless; it is as well to state that this invasion gave Jules Favre & Co. a chance of repairing in hot haste to the Hôtel de Ville, where the Government of the National Defence was proclaimed.
To return to my vantage-post at the Café de la Paix. The crowds on the Place de la Concorde, apparently stationed there since early morning, did not seem to me to have been brought thither at the instance of a leader or in obedience to a watchword. I except, of course, the groups of which I have already spoken, and which jeered at the republican deputies. The streams of people I met on my return in the Rue de Rivoli seemed impelled by their own curiosity to the Chamber of Deputies. Not so the procession which hove in sight almost the moment I had sat down at the Café. It wheeled to the left when reaching the Rue de la Paix. It was composed of National Guards with and without their muskets, each company preceded by its own officers,—the armed ones infinitely more numerous than the unarmed, but all marching in good order and in utter silence; in fact, so silently as to bode mischief. Behind and before there strode large contingents of ordinary citizens, and I noticed two things: that few of them wore blouses, and that a good many wore kepis, apparently quite new. The wearers, though equally undemonstrative, gave one the impression of being the leaders. Most of those around me shook their heads ominously as they passed; their silence did not impose upon them. I am free to confess that I did not share their opinion. To me, the whole looked like stern determined manifestors; not like turbulent revolutionaries. I had seen nothing like them in '48. Nevertheless, it was I who was mistaken, for, according to M. Sampierro Gavini, who, unlike his brother Denis, belonged to the opposition during the Empire, it was they who invaded the Chamber. I may add that M. Sampierro Gavini, though in the opposition, had little or no sympathy with those who overthrew the Empire or established the Commune. He had an almost idealistic faith in constitutional means, and a somewhat exaggerated reverence for the name of Bonaparte. He was a Corsican.
For several hours nothing occurred worthy of record. The accounts brought to us by eye-witnesses of events goingon simultaneously at the Tuileries and the Palais-Bourbon showed plainly that there was no intention on the mob's part to exalt the Empress into a Marie-Antoinette. Our friend who had given us the news of the Chamber on the previous night, and who was a relative of the celebrated Dr. Yvan, an habitué of the Café de la Paix, had made up his mind in the morning that "it would be more interesting to watch the" last heroic struggles of an Empress against iron fortune than the "crownless coronation of a half-score of 'rois Pétauds.'"[81]As such, he had taken up his station in the gardens of the Tuileries, close to the gate dividing the private from the public gardens. It was he who gave us the particulars of the scenes preceding and succeeding the Empress's flight, the exact moment of which no one seemed to know. The account of these scenes was so exceedingly graphic, that I have no difficulty whatsoever in remembering them. Moreover, I put down at the time several of his own expressions. I do not know what has become of him. He went to New-Zealand on account of some unhappy love-affair, and was never heard of any more. Though scarcely thirty then, he was a promising young doctor. His name was Ramail, but I do not know in what relation he stood to Dr. Yvan; who, however, always called him cousin.
Young Ramail had been in the Tuileries gardens since noon. The crowd was already very large at that hour, but it seemed altogether engrossed in the doings of an individual who was knocking down a gilded eagle on the top of the gate. "Mind," said Ramail, "that was at twelve o'clock, or somewhere thereabouts; and I do not think that the sitting at the Chamber began until at least an hour later. If the Republicans say, in days to come, that the Empire was virtually condemned before they voted its overthrow, they will, at any rate, have the semblance of truth on their side,because there were at least two thousand persons looking on without trying to prevent the destruction of the eagles by word or deed; and two thousand persons, if they happen to agree with them, are to the Republicans the whole of France; while two millions, if they happen to differ from them, are only a corrupt and unintelligent majority.
"But I was wondering," he went on, "at the utter ingratitude of the lower and lower-middle classes. I feel certain that among those who stood staring there, half owned their prosperous condition to the eighteen years of Imperialism; yet I heard not a single expression of regret at the brutal sweeping away of it.
"I may have stood there for about an hour, a score of steps away from the gate before the swing bridge, when, all at once, I felt myself carried forward with the crowd; and before I had time to look round, I found myself inside that other gate. There were about five hundred persons who had entered with me, but in what manner the gate gave way or was opened I have not the vaguest idea. We went no further; we stopped as suddenly as we had advanced. I turned round with difficulty, and looked over the heads of those behind me; sure enough, the gates were wide open and the crowd at the rear was much denser than it had been ten minutes before. Still they stood perfectly still, without bringing any pressure to bear upon us. Then I turned round again, and saw the cause of their reluctance to move. The Imperial Guard was being massed in front of the principal door leading from the private gardens into the palace. 'My dear Ramail,' I said to myself, 'you stand a very good chance of having a bullet through your head before you are ten minutes older; because, at the slightest move of the crowd among which you now stand, the guard will fire.' I own that I was scarcely prepared to face death for such a trivial cause as this; and I was quietly edging my way out of the crowd, which was beginning to utter low ominous growls, when a voice, ringing clear upon the air, shouted, 'Citoyens!' I stopped, turned round once more, and stood on tiptoe.
"The speaker was a tall, handsome fellow, young to all appearance, and with a voice like a bell. He looked a gentleman, but I have never seen him before to my knowledge. His companion I knew at once; it was Victorien Sardou. There is no mistaking that face. I have heard some people say that it is not a bit like that of the great Napoléon, whileothers maintain that, placing the living man and the portrait of the dead one side by side, one could not tell the difference. I'll undertake to say this, that if M. Sardou had donned a uniform, such as the lieutenant of artillery wore at Arcola, for instance, he might have taken the Empress by the hand and led her out safely among the people, who would have believed in some miraculous resurrection.
"To come back to my story. 'Citoyens,' repeated M. Sardou's companion, 'I do not wonder at your surprise that the garden should not be open to you and its ingress forbidden by soldiers. The Tuileries belong to the people, now that the Empire is gone; for gone it is by this time, in spite of the Imperial Guard massed before yonder door. Consequently, my friend and I propose to go and ask for the withdrawal of these soldiers. But, in order to do this, you must give us your promise not to budge; for the slightest attempt on your part to do so before our return may lead to bloodshed, and I am convinced that you are as anxious as we are to avoid such a calamity.'
"If that young fellow is not an actor, he ought to be. Every word he said could be heard distinctly and produced its effect. The crowd cheered him and promised unanimously to wait. Then we saw him and M. Sardou take out their handkerchiefs and tie them to the end of their sticks. Perhaps it was well they did, for as I saw them boldly walk up the central avenue, I was not at all convinced that their lives were not in danger. My sight is excellent, and I noticed a decidedly hostile movement on the part of the troops ranged in front of the principal door, and an officer of Mobiles was evidently of my opinion, for, though he followed them at a distance, he kept prudently behind the trees, sheltering himself as much as possible. I do not pretend to be wiser than most of my fellow-men, but I doubt whether many among those who watched M. Sardou and his companion suspected the true drift of their self-imposed mission. They merely wished to save the Tuileries from being pillaged and burnt down. I do not wish to libel the Imperial Guard or their officers, but I should feel much surprised if that noble idea ever entered their heads. What was the magnificent pile to them, now that one of their idols had left it, probably for ever, and the other was about to do the same? At any rate, the suspicious movement was there. I have forgotten to tell you that the inner gate was closed and I sawM. Sardou parley through its bars with one of the guardians. Then a superior officer, accompanied by a civilian, came out; but by this time, the crowd, which had kept back, was beginning to move also, I among them. All of a sudden, the general, who turned out to be General Mellinet, gets on a chair, while his companion, who turns out to be M. de Lesseps, stands by him. The Imperial Guard disappears, seeing which, the crowd, no longer apprehensive of being shot down, advances rapidly to within a few steps of the gate. Then there is a cheer, for the Imperial flag is hauled down from the roof. 'Gentlemen,' says the general, 'the Tuileries are empty, the Empress is gone. But it is my duty to guard the palace, and I count upon you to help me.' He says a great deal more, but the crowd are pressing forward all the same. I feel that the crucial moment has arrived, and that the palace will be invaded, in spite of the general's speechifying, when lo, the Gardes Mobiles issue from the front door, and range themselves in two rows. The gates are opened, the crowd rushes in, but the Mobiles are there to prevent them making any excursions, either upstairs or into the apartments, and in a few minutes we find ourselves in the Place du Carrousel. The palace has been virtually saved by M. Sardou."
Half an hour later, we receive the news that the Government of the National Defence has been proclaimed at the Hôtel de Ville, and that night Paris is illuminated as after a victory.
The siege — The Parisians convinced that the Germans will not invest Paris — Paris becomes a vast drill-ground, nevertheless — The Parisians leave off singing, but listen to itinerant performers, though the latter no longer sing the "Marseillaise" — The theatres closed — The Comédie-Française and the Opéra — Influx of the Gardes Mobiles — The Parisian no longer chaffs the provincial, but does the honours of the city to him — The stolid, gaunt Breton and the astute and cynical Normand — The gardens of the Tuileries an artillery park — The mitrailleuse still commands confidence — The papers try to be comic — Food may fail, drink will not — My visit to the wine dépôt at Bercy — An official's information — Cattle in the public squares and on the outer Boulevards — Fear with regard to them — Every man carries a rifle — The woods in the suburbs are set on fire — The statue of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde — M. Prudhomme to his sons — The men who do not spout — The French shopkeeper and bourgeois — A story of his greed — He reveals the whereabouts of the cable laid on the bed of the Seine — Obscure heroes — Would-be Ravaillacs and Balthazar Gerards — Inventors of schemes for the instant annihilation of all the Germans — A musical mitrailleuse — An exhibition and lecture at the Alcazar — The last train — Trains converted into dwellings for the suburban poor — Interior of a railway station — The spy mania — Where the Parisians ought to have looked for spies — I am arrested as a spy — A chat with the officer in charge — A terrible-looking knife.
In spite of the frequent reports from the provinces that the Germans were marching on Paris, there were thousands of people in the capital who seriously maintained that they, the Germans, would not dare to invest, let alone, shell it. But it must not be inferred, as many English writers have done, that this confidence was due to a mistaken view of the Germans' pluck, or their reluctance to beard the "lion" in his den. Not at all. The Parisians simply credited their foes with the superstitious love and reverence for "the centre of light and civilization" which they themselves felt. They did not take their cue from Victor Hugo's "highfalutin'" remonstrance to King William; on the contrary, it was the poet who translated their sentiments. It was not a case of "one fool making many;" but of many mute inglorious visionaries inspiring a still greater one, who had the gift of eloquence, which eloquence, in this instance, bordered very closely on sublimated drivel.
Nevertheless, the whole of Paris became suddenly transformed into one vast drill-ground, and the clang of arms resounded through the city day and night. For the time being, the crowds left off singing, albeit that they listened now and then devoutly and reverently to itinerant performers, male and female, who had paraphrased the patriotic airs of certain operas for the occasion. The "Pars beau mousquetaire," etc., of Halévy, became "Pars beau volontaire;" the "Guerre aux tyrans," of the same composer, "Guerre aux all'mands,"[82]and so forth.
All the theatres had closed their doors by this time, the Comédie-Française being last, I believe; though, almost immediately afterward, it threw open its portals once more for at least two performances a week, and often a third time, in aid of the victims of the siege. Meanwhile, several rooms were being got ready for the reception of the wounded; the new opera-house, still unfinished, was made into a commissariat and partly into a barracks, for the provincial Gardes Mobiles were flocking by thousands to the capital, and the camps could not hold them all. For once in a way the Parisian forgot to chaff the provincial who came to pay him a visit; and considering that, even under such circumstances, all drill and no play would make Jacques a dull boy, he not only received him very cordially, but showed him some of the lions of the capital, at which the long-haired gaunt and stolid Breton stared without moving a muscle, only muttering an unintelligible gibberish, which might be an invocation to his ancient pagan gods, or a tribute of admiration; while the more astute and cynical, though scarcely more impressionable Normand, ten thousand of which had come from the banks of the Marne, showed the thought underlying all his daily actions, in one sentence: "C'estbenbeau, mais ça a coûté beaucoup d'argent; fallait mieux le garder en poche." Even at this supreme moment, he remembered, with a kind of bitterness, that he had been made to pay for part of all this glorious architecture.
The Cirques Napoléon and de l'Impératrice—the Republic had not had time to change their names—had become a kind of left-luggage office for these human cargoes, taken thither at their arrival, which happened generally during thenight. In the morning they were transferred to their permanent encampments, and their military education was proceeded with at once. I am afraid I am not competent to judge of the merits of the method adopted, but I was by no means powerfully impressed with the knowledge displayed by the instructors.
The gardens of the Tuileries had been closed to the public, who had to be satisfied with admiring the ordnance and long rows of horses parked there from a distance. Did the latter lend enchantment to the view? Apparently, for they were never tired of gazing with ecstasy on the mitrailleuses. The gunners in charge treated the foremost of the gazers now and then to a lecture on artillery practice, through the railings of the gates. In whatsoever else they had lost faith, those murderous engines of war evidently still commanded their confidence.
The frightful din that marked the first weeks of the war had ceased, but Paris did by no means look crestfallen. The gas burned brightly still, the cafés were full of people, the restaurants had all their tables occupied; for we were not "invested" yet, and the idea of scarcity, let alone of famine, though a much-discussed contingency, was not a staring, stubborn fact. "It will never become one," said and thought many, "and all that talk about doling out rations already is so much nonsense." The papers waxed positively comic on the subject. They also waxed comic over the telegrams of the King of Prussia to his Consort; but they left off harping on that string, for very shame' sake.
One thing was certain from the beginning of the siege—whatever else might fail, there was enough wine and to spare to cheer the hearts of men who professed to do and dare more than men. Though the best part of my life had been spent in Paris, I had, curiously enough, never seen the wine and spirit dépôts at Bercy; in fact, I was profoundly ignorant of that, as well as of other matters connected with the food-supply of Paris. So I wrote to a member of the firm which had supplied me for many years with wine and spirits, and he took me thither.
I should think that the "entrepôt-général," as it is called, occupied, at that time, not less than sixty acres of ground, which meant more than treble that area as far as storage was concerned; for there was not only the cellarage, but the buildings above ground, rising, in many instances, tothree and four stories. The entrepôt consisted, and consists still, I believe, of three distinct parts: one for wines; another for what the French call "alcohols," and we "spirits;" a third, much smaller, for potable, or, rather, edible oils. The latter wing contains the cellarage of the general administration of the hospitals. The spirit-cellars were absolutely empty at the time of my visit; their contents had been removed to a bomb and shell proof cellarage hard by.
Though I had come to see, I felt very little wiser after leaving the cellars than before; for, truth to tell, I was absolutely bewildered. I had no more idea of the quantity of wine stored there than a child. My guide laughed.
"We'll soon make the matter clear to you," he said, shaking hands with a gentleman who turned out to be one of the principal employés. "This gentleman will tell you almost to a hectolitre the quantity of ordinary wine in store. You know pretty well the number of inhabitants of the capital, and though it has considerably increased during the last few days, and is not unlikely to decrease during the siege, if siege there be, the influx does not amount to a hundred thousand. Now, monsieur, will you tell this gentleman what you have in stock?"
"We have got at the present moment 1,600,000 hectolitres of ordinary wine in our cellars. Ten days ago we had nearly one hundred thousand more, but the wine-shops and others have laid in large provisions since then. The more expensive wines I need not mention, because the quantity is very considerably less, and, moreover, they are not likely to be wanted; though, if they were wanted, they would keep us going for many, many weeks. At a rough guess, the number of 'souls' within the fortifications is about 1,700,000, with the recent increase 1,800,000; consequently, with what the 'liquoristes' have recently bought, one hundred litres for every man, woman, and child. I do not reckon the contents of private cellars, nor those of the wine-merchants, apart from their recent purchases. Nor is ordinary wine much dearer than it was in years of great plenty; it is, in fact, less by twenty-five francs or thirty francs than in the middle of the fifties. I am comparing prices for quarter pipes, containing from two hundred and ten to two hundred and thirty litres. There is no fear of regrating here, nor the likelihood of our having to drink water for some time."
On our homeward journey, we noticed bullocks, pigs, andsheep littered down in some of the public squares and on the outer boulevards. The stunted grass in the former had already entirely disappeared, and it was evident that, with the utmost care, the cattle would deteriorate under the existing circumstances; for fodder would probably be the first commodity to fail; as it was, it had already risen to more than twice its former price. Moreover, the competent judges feared that, in the event of a rainy autumn, the cattle penned in such small spaces would be more subject to epidemic diseases, which would absolutely render them unfit for human food. In view of such a contingency, the learned members of the Académie des Sciences were beginning to put their heads together, but the results of their deliberations were not known as yet.
We returned on foot as we had come; private carriages had entirely disappeared, and though the omnibuses and cabs were plying as usual, their progress was seriously impeded by long lines of vans, heavily laden with neat deal boxes, evidently containing tinned provisions. Very few female passengers in the public conveyances, and scarcely a man without a rifle. They were the future defenders of the capital, who had been to Vincennes, where the distribution of arms was going on from early morn till late at night. In fact, the sight of a working-man not provided with a rifle, a mattock, a spade, or a pickaxe was becoming a rarity, for a great many had been engaged to aid the engineers in digging trenches, spiking the ground, etc.
I did not, and do not, feel competent to judge of the utility of all these means of defense; one of them, however, seemed to be conceived in the wrong spirit: I allude to the firing of the woods around Paris. With the results of Forbach and Woerth to guide them, the generals entrusted with the defence of Paris could not leave the woods to stand; but was there any necessity to destroy them in the way they did? In spite of the activity displayed, there were still thousands of idle hands anxious to be employed. Why were not the trees cut down and transported to Paris, for fuel for the coming winter? At that moment there were lots of horses available, and such a measure would have given us the double advantage of saving coals for the manufacture of gas, and of protecting from the rigours of the coming winter hundreds whose sufferings would have been mitigated by light and heat. Personally, I did not suffer much. From what I have seenduring the siege, I have come to the conclusion that shortcomings in the way of food are far less hard to bear, nay, are almost cheerfully borne, in a warm room and with a lamp brightly burning. I leave out of the question the quantities of mineral oil wasted in the attempt to set fire to the woods, because in many instances the attempt failed utterly.
Meanwhile, patriotism was kept at the boiling point, by glowing reports of the heroic defence of General Uhrich at Strasburg. The statue, representing the capital of Alsace on the Place de la Concorde, became the goal of a reverent pilgrimage on the part of the Parisians, though the effect of it was spoiled too frequently by M. Prudhomme holding forth sententiously, to his sons apparently, to the crowd in reality. These discourses reminded one too much of Heine's sneer, that "all Frenchmen are actors, and the worse are generally on the stage." In this instance, however, the amateurs ran the professional very hard. The crowds were not hypercritical, though, and they applauded the speaker, who departed, accompanied by his offspring, with the proud consciousness that he was a born orator, and that he had done his duty to his country by spouting platitudes. It is not difficult to give the general sequel to that amateur performance. Next morning there is a line in some obscure paper, and M. Prudhomme, beside himself with joy, leaves his card on the journalist who wrote it; the journalist leaves his in return, and for the next six months the latter has his knife and fork laid at M. Prudhomme's table. The acquaintance generally terminates on M. Prudhomme's discovery that Madame Prudhomme carried her friendship too far by looking after the domestic concerns of the scribe, at the scribe's bachelor quarters.
The men who did not spout were the Duruys, the Meissoniers, and a hundred others I could mention. The eminent historian and grand-master of the University, though sixty, donned the simple uniform of a National Guard, and performed his garrison duties like the humblest artisan, only distinguished from the latter by his star of grand-officer of the Légion d'Honneur; the great painter did the same. The French shopkeeping bourgeois is, as a rule, a silly, pompous creature; very frequently, he is mean and contemptible besides.
Here is a story for the truth of which I can vouch, and which shows him in his true light. In the skirmish in which Lieutenant Winslow was killed, some damage had been done to the inn at Schirlenhoff, where the Baden officers were atbreakfast when they were surprised by General de Bernis and his men. The general had his foot already in the stirrup, and was about to remove his prisoners, when Boniface made his appearance, coolly asking to whom he was to present the bill for the breakage. The general burst out laughing: "The losing party pays the damage as a rule," he said, "but France is sufficiently rich to reverse the rule. Here is double the amount of your bill."
A second story, equally authentic. A cable had been secretly laid on the bed of the Seine between Paris and Havre, shortly before the siege. Two small shopkeepers of St. Germain revealed the fact for a consideration to the Germans, who had but very vague suspicions of it, and who certainly did not know the land-bearings; one of the scoundrels was caught after the siege, the other escaped. The one who was tried pleaded poverty, and received a ridiculously small sentence. It transpired afterwards that he was exceedingly well paid for his treachery, and that he cheated his fellow-informer out of his share.
The contrast is more pleasant to dwell upon. There were hundreds of obscure heroes, by which I do not mean those prepared to shed their blood on the battle-field, but men with a sublime indifference to life, courting the fate of a Ravaillac and a Balthazar Gerard. History would have called them regicides, and perhaps ranked them with paid assassins had they accomplished their purpose, would have held them up to the scorn of posterity as bloodthirsty fanatics,—and history, for once in a way, would have been wrong. In their reprehensible folly, they were more estimable than the Jules Favres, the Gambettas who played at being the saviours of the country, and who were only the saviours of their needy, fellow political adventurers.
Apart from the former, there were the inventors of impossible schemes for the instantaneous annihilation of the three hundred thousand Germans around Paris,—inventors who supply the comic note in the otherwise terrible drama,—inventors, who day by day besiege the Ministry for War, and to whom, after all, the minister's collaborateurs are compelled to listen "on the chance of there being something in their schemes."
"I am asking myself, every now and then, whether I am a staff-officer or one of the doctors at Charenton," said Prince Bibesca, one evening.
"Since yesterday morning," he went on, "I have been interviewed by a dozen inventors, every one of whom wanted to see General Trochu or General Schmitz, and would scarcely be persuaded that I would do as well. The first one simply took the breath out of me. I had no energy left to resist the others, or to bow them out politely; if they had chosen to keep on talking for four and twenty hours, I should have been compelled to listen. He was a little man, about the height of M. Thiers. His opening speech was in proportion to his height; it consisted of one line. 'Monsieur, I annihilate the Germans with one blow,' he said. I was thrown off my guard in spite of myself, for etiquette demands that I should keep serious in spite of myself; and I replied, 'Let me fill my pipe before you do it.'
"Meanwhile, my visitor spread out a large roll of paper on the table. 'I am not an inventor,' he said; 'I merely adapt the lessons of ancient history to the present circumstances. I merely modify the trick of the horse of Troy. Here is Paris with its ninety-six bastions, its forts, etc. I draw three lines: along the first I send twenty-five thousand men pretending to attack the northern positions of the enemy; along the second line I send a similar number, apparently bent on a similar attempt to the south; my fifty thousand troops are perfectly visible to the Germans, for they commence their march an hour or so before dusk. Meanwhile darkness sets in, and that is the moment I choose to despatch a hundred and fifty thousand troops, screened and entirely concealed by a movable wall of sheet iron, blackened by smoke. My inventive powers have gone no further than this. My hundred and fifty thousand men behind their wall penetrate unhindered as far as the Prussian lines, where a hundred thousand fall on their backs, taking aim over the wall, while fifty thousand keep moving it forward slowly. Twelve shots for every man make twelve hundred thousand shots—more than sufficient to cause a panic among the Germans, who do not know whence the firing proceeds, because my wall is as dark as night itself. Supposing, however, that those who have been left in the camp defend themselves, their projectiles will glance off against the sheet iron of the wall, which, if necessary, can be thrown down finally by our own men, who will finish their business with the bayonet and the sword.'
"My second visitor had something not less formidable topropose; namely, a sledge-hammer, fifteen miles in circumference, and weighing ten millions of tons. It was to be lifted up to a certain altitude by means of balloons. A favourable wind had to be waited for, which would send the balloons in the direction of Versailles, where the ropes confining the hammer would be cut. In its fall it would crush and bury the head-quarters and the bulk of the German army.
"The third showed me the plan of a musical mitrailleuse, which would deal death and destruction while playing Wagner, Schubert, and Mendelssohn, the former by preference. 'The Germans,' he remarked, 'are too fond of music to be able to resist the temptation of listening. They are sure to draw near in thousands when my mitrailleuses are set playing. We have got them at our mercy.' I asked him to send me a small one as a sample: he promised to do so."
Another evening I was induced to go to the Alcazar. I had been there once before, to hear Thérèsa. This time it was to see an "Exhibition of Engines of War," and to listen to a practical lecture thereon. The audience was as jolly as if the Germans were a thousand miles away—jollier, perhaps, than when they listened to "Rien n'est sacré pour un sapeur;" because they were virtually taking part in the performance. The lecturer began by an exhibition of bullet-proof pads, by means of which the soldier might fearlessly advance towards the enemy; "because they render that part of the body on which they are worn invulnerable." A wag among the spectators made a remark about "retreating soldiers," which I cannot transcribe; but the exhibitor, an Italian or Spanish major, to judge by his accent, was in no way disconcerted. He placed his pad against an upright board in the shape of a target and began firing at it with a revolver at a distance of four or five paces. The material, though singed, was not pierced, but the spectators seemed by no means convinced. "You wear the pad, and let me have a shot at you," exclaimed one; at which offer the major made a long face. "Have you ever tried the experiment on a living animal?" asks another. "Perfectly," replied the major; "I tried it on my clerk," which admission was hailed with shouts of laughter. There were cries for the clerk, who did not appear. A corporal of the National Guards proposed to try an experiment on the major and the pad with the bayonet fastened to a chassepot; thereupon major and pad suddenly disappeared behind the wings.
The next inventor exhibits a fire-extinguisher; the audience require more than a verbal explanation; some of them propose to set the Alcazar on fire. A small panic, checked in time; and the various demonstrations are proceeded with amidst shouts, and laughter, and jokes. They yield no practical results, but they kill time. They are voted the next best thing to the theatre.
By this time we were shut off from the outer world. On the 17th of September, at night, the last train of the Orléans Railway Company had left Paris. The others had ceased working a day or so before, and placed their rolling stock in safety. Not the whole of it, though. A great many of the third-class carriages have had their seats taken out, the luggage and goods vans have been washed, the cattle trucks boarded in, and all these transformed into temporary dwellings for the suburban poor who have been obliged to seek shelter within the walls of the capital. The interiors of the principal railway stations present scenes that would rejoice the hearts of genre-painters on a large scale. The washing and cooking of all these squatters is done on the various platforms, the carriages have become parlor and bedroom in one, and there has even been some ingenuity displayed in their decoration. The womankind rarely stir from their improvised homes; the men are on the fortifications or roaming the streets of Paris. Part of the household gods has been stowed inside the trucks, the rest is piled up in front. The domestic pets, such as cats and dogs, have, as yet, not been killed for food, and the former have a particularly good time of it, for mice and rats abound, especially in the goods-sheds. Here and there a goat gravely stalking along, happily unconscious of its impending doom; and chanticleer surrounded by a small harem trying to make the best of things.
Of course, the sudden and enormous influx of human beings could not be housed altogether in that way, but care has been taken that none of them shall be shelterless. All the tenantless apartments, from the most palatial in the Faubourg St. Honoré and Champs-Élysées to the humblest in the popular quarters, have been utilized, and the pot-au-feu simmers in marble fireplaces, while Gallic Hodge sees his face reflected in gigantic mirrors the like of which he never saw before. The dwellings that have been merely vacated by their tenants who have flitted to Homburg and Baden-Baden,to Nice and elsewhere, are as yet not called into requisition by the authorities.
From the moment we were cut off from the outer world, the spy mania, which had been raging fiercely enough before, became positively contagious. There is not the slightest doubt that there were spies in Paris, but I feel perfectly certain that they were not prowling about the streets, and that to have caught them one would have had to look among the personnel of the ministries. For a foreigner, unless he spoke French without the slightest accent, to have accepted such a mission, would have been akin to madness; and there were and are still few foreigners, however well they may know French, who do not betray their origin now and then by imperfect pronunciation. Besides, there was nothing to spy in the streets; nevertheless, the spy mania, as I have already said, had reached an acute crisis. The majority of the National Guard seemed to have no other occupation than to look for spies. A poor Spanish priest was arrested because he had been three times in the same afternoon to the cobbler for the only serviceable pair of shoes he possessed. Woe to the man or woman who was ill-advised enough to take out his pocket-book in the streets. If you happened to be of studious habits, or merely inclined to sit up late, the lights peeping through the carelessly drawn curtains exposed you to a sudden visit from half a dozen ill-mannered, swaggering National Guards, your concierge was called out of his bed, while you were taken to the nearest commissary of police to explain; or, what was worse still, to the nearest military post, where the lieutenant in command made it a point to be altogether soldier-like—according to his ideas,i. e.brutal, rude, disgustingly familiar. You might get an apology from the police-official for having been disturbed and dragged through the streets for no earthly reason; the quasi-military man would have considered it beneath his dignity to offer one.
Of course, every now and then, one happened to meet with a gentleman who was only too anxious to atone for the imbecile "goings-on" of his men, and I was fortunate enough to do so one night. It was on the 20th of September, when the feelings of the Parisians had already been embittered by their first and not very creditable defeat under their own walls. I do not suppose there were more than a score of Englishmen in Paris, besides the Irishmen engaged in salting beef at the slaughter-house of La Villette, when,but for that gentleman, I should have been in a sore strait. Among the English, there was a groom who, at the time of the general exodus, was so dangerously ill that the doctor absolutely forbade his removal, even to a hospital. The case had been brought under my notice, and as the poor fellow was very respectable and had been hard-working, as he had a wife and a young family besides, we not only did all we could for him, but I went to see him personally two or three times to cheer him up a bit. He was on the mend, but slowly, very slowly. He lived in one of the side streets of the Avenue de Clichy, and had lived there a good while, and the concierge of the house had her mind perfectly at rest with regard to his nationality, albeit that the fact of being an Englishman was not always a sufficient guarantee against the suspicion of being a spy on the part of the lower classes. Moreover, they would not always take the fact for granted; they were unable to distinguish an English from a German or any other accent, and, with them, to be a foreigner was necessarily to be a German, and a German could not be anything but a spy. However, in this instance, I felt no anxiety for my protégé.
Unfortunately, a few days before the closing of Paris, the concierge herself fell ill, and another one took her place. The successor was a man, and not by any means a pleasant man. There was a scowl on his face, as, in answer to his summons, I told him whither I was going; and he cast a suspicious look at a box I was carrying under my arm, which happened to contain nothing more formidable than a surgical appliance. I took no notice, however, and mounted the stairs.
My visit may have lasted between twenty minutes and half an hour. When I came out, a considerable crowd had assembled on the footway and in the road, and a dozen National Guards were ranged in a semicircle in front of the door.
The first cry that greeted me was "Le voilà," and then a corporal advanced. "Your name, citizen," he said, in a hectoring tone, "and what brings you to this house?" I kept very cool, and told him that I would neither give him my name nor an explanation of my visit, but that if he would take me to his lieutenant or captain, I should be pleased to give both to the latter. But he would not be satisfied. "Where is the box you had in your hand? what did it contain?and what have you done with it?" he insisted. I knew that it would be useless to try and enlighten him, so I stuck to my text. Meanwhile the crowd had become very excited, so I simply repeated my request to be taken to the post.
The crowd would have willingly judged me there and then; that is, strung me up to the nearest lamp-post. If they had, not a single one among them would have been prosecuted for murder, and by the end of the siege the British Government would have considered it too late to move in the matter; besides, a great many of my countrymen would have opined that "it served me right" for remaining in Paris, when I might have made myself so comfortable in London or elsewhere. So I felt very thankful when the corporal, though very ungraciously, ordered his men to close around me and "to march." I have, since then, been twice to the Avenue de Clichy on pleasure bent; that is, to breakfast at the celebrated establishment of "le père Lathuille," and the sight of the lamp-posts there sent a cold shudder down my back.
The journey to the military post did not take long. It had been established in a former ball-room or music-hall, for at the far end of the room there was a stage, representing, as far as I can remember, an antique palace. The floor of it was littered with straw, on which a score or so of civic warriors were lazily stretched out; while others were sitting at the small wooden tables, that had, not long ago, borne the festive "saladier de petit bleu." Some of the ladles with which that decoction had been stirred were still hanging from the walls; for in those neighbourhoods the love of portable property on the part of the patrons is quite Wemmickian, and the proprietors made and make it a rule to throw as little temptation as possible in the way of the former. The place looked quite sombre, though the gas was alight. There was an intolerable smell of damp straw and stale tobacco smoke.
Part of the crowd succeeded in making their way inside, notwithstanding the efforts of the National Guards. My appearance caused a certain stir among the occupants of the room; but in a few moments the captain, summoned from an apartment at the back, came upon the scene, and my preliminary trial was proceeded with at once.
The indictment of the corporal who had arrested me was brief and to the point. "This man is a foreigner who paysconstant visits to another foreigner, supposed to be sick. This evening he arrived with a box under his arm which he left with his friend. The concierge has reason to suppose that there is something wrong, for he does not believe in the man's illness. He is supposed to be poor, and still he and his family are living on the fat of the land. My prisoner refused to give me his name and address, or an explanation of his visit."
"What have you to say, monsieur?" asked the captain, a man of about thirty-five, evidently belonging to the better classes. I found out afterwards that his name was Garnier or Garmier, and that he was a cashier in one of the large commercial establishments in the Rue St. Martin. He was killed in the last sortie of the Parisians.
It was the first time I had been addressed that evening as "monsieur." I simply took a card from my pocket-book and gave it to him. "If that is not sufficient, some of your men can accompany me home and ascertain for themselves that I have not given a false name or address," I said.
He looked at it for a moment. "It is quite unnecessary. I know your name very well, though I have not the honour of knowing you personally. I have seen your portrait at my relatives' establishment"—he named a celebrated picture-dealer in the Rue de la Paix,—"and I ought to have recognized you at once, for it is a very striking likeness, but it is so dark here." Then he turned to his men and to the crowd: "I will answer for this gentleman. I wish we had a thousand or so of foreign spies like him in Paris. France has no better friend than he."
I was almost as much afraid of the captain's praise as I had been of the corporal's blame, because the crowd wanted to give me an ovation; seeing which, M. Garmier invited me to stay with him a little while, until the latter should have dispersed. It was while sitting in his own room that he told me the following story.
"My principal duty, monsieur, seems to consist, not in killing Germans, but in preventing perfectly honest Frenchmen and foreigners from being killed or maimed. Not later than the night before last, three men were brought in. They were all very powerful fellows; there was no doubt about their being Frenchmen. They did not take their arrest as a matter of course at all, but to every question I put they simply sent me to the devil. It was not the behaviour of thepresumed spy, who, as a rule, is very soft spoken and conciliating until he sees that the game is up, when he becomes insulting. Still, I reflected that the violence of the three men might be a clever bit of acting also, the more that I could see for myself that they were abominably, though not speechlessly, drunk. Their offence was that they had been seen loitering in a field very close to the fortifications, with their noses almost to the ground. Do what I would, an explanation I could not get, and at last the most powerful of the trio made a movement as if to draw a knife. With great difficulty a dozen of my men succeeded in getting his coat off; and there, between his waistcoat and his shirt, was a murderously looking blade, a formidable weapon indeed.
"'He is a Prussian spy, sure enough!' exclaimed the roomful of guards.
"I examined the knife carefully, tried to find the name of the maker, and all at once put it to my nose. Then I took up a candle and looked more carefully still at the prisoners. 'They are simply drunk,' I said, 'and the best thing you can do is to take them home.'
"'But the knife?' insisted the sergeant.
"'The knife is all right,' I answered.
"'I should think it is all right,' said the owner, 'seeing that I am cutting provisions all day with it for those confounded Parisians.'
"But the guards were not satisfied with the explanation. They began to surround me. 'That was surely a sign you made to the fellow when you lifted the blade to your face, captain,' said the sergeant.
"'Not at all, friend; I was simply smelling it. And it smelt abominably of onions.' That will give you an idea, monsieur, of the life they lead me also. Still, I would ask you, as a particular favour, monsieur, not to mention your mishap to any one. As you are aware, I am not to blame; but we are in bad odour enough as it is at the Ministry of War, and we do not wish to increase our somewhat justified reputation for irresponsible rowdyism and lack of discipline."
I gave him my promise to that effect, and have not mentioned the matter until this day.
The siege — The food-supply of Paris — How and what the Parisians eat and drink — Bread, meat, and wine — Alcoholism — The waste among the London poor — The French take a lesson from the alien — The Irish at La Villette — A whisper of the horses being doomed — M. Gagne — The various attempts to introduce horseflesh — The journals deliver their opinions — The supply of horseflesh as it stood in '70 — The Académie des Sciences — Gelatine — Kitchen gardens on the balcony — M. Lockroy's experiment — M. Pierre Joigneux and the Englishman — if cabbages, why not mushrooms? — There is still a kitchen garden left — Cream cheese from the moon, to be fetched by Gambetta — His departure in a balloon — Nadar and Napoléon III. — Carrier-pigeons — An aerial telegraph — Offers to cross the Prussian lines — The theatres — A performance at the Cirque National — "Le Roi s'amuse," at the Théâtre de Montmartre — A déjeûner at Durand's — Weber and Beethoven — Long winter nights without fuel or gas — The price of provisions — The Parisian's good-humour — His wit — The greed of the shopkeeper — Culinary literature — More's "Utopia" — An ex-lieutenant of the Foreign Legion — He gives us a breakfast — He delivers a lecture on food — Joseph, his servant — Milk — The slender resources of the poor — I interview an employé of the State Pawnshop — Statistics — Hidden provisions — Bread — Prices of provisions — New Year's Day, and New Year's dinners — The bombardment — No more bread — The end of the siege.
I am not a soldier, nor in the least like one; hence, I have, almost naturally, neglected to note any of the strategic and military problems involved in the campaign and the siege. But, ignorant as I am in these matters, and notwithstanding the repeated failures of General Trochu's troops to break through the lines of investment, I feel certain, on the other hand, that the Germans would have never taken Paris by storming it. Years before, Von Moltke had expressed his opinion to that effect in his correspondence, not exactly with regard to the French capital, but with regard to any fortified centre of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. Such an agglomeration, even if severely left alone, and only shut off from the rest of the world, falls by itself. I am giving the spirit and not the substance of his words.
Consequently, there is no need to say, that, to the mere social observer, the problems raised by the food-supply were perhaps the most interesting. Even under normal conditions,the average Parisian in his method of feeding is worth studying; he is supposed to be one of the most abstemious creatures on the civilized globe. And yet, I do not think that he consumes less alcohol than the average Englishman or German. The Frenchman's alcohol is more diluted; that is all. A drunken woman is a very rare sight, either in Paris or in the provinces; nevertheless, there is, probably, not one in a thousand women among the lower classes who drinks less than her half a bottle of wine per day; while ladies of high degree generally partake of one if not two glasses of chartreuse with their coffee, after each of the two principal meals.Un grog Américainis as often ordered for the lady as for the gentleman, during the evening visits to the café. I am speaking of gentlewomen by birth and education, and of the spouses of the well-to-do men, not of the members of the demi-monde and of those below them.
So far, the question of drink, which, after my visit to the wine-dépôts at Bercy, assumed an altogether different aspect to my mind. I began to wonder whether the plethora of wine would not do as much harm as the expected scarcity of food. My fears were not groundless.
Frenchmen, especially Parisians, not only eat a great quantity of bread, but they are very particular as to its quality. I have a note showing that, during the years 1868-69, the consumption per head for every man, woman, and child amounted to a little more than an English pound per day, and that very little of this was of "second quality," though the latter was as good as that sold at many a London baker's as first. I tasted it myself, because the municipality had made a great point of introducing it to the lower classes at twopence per quartern less than the first quality. Nevertheless, the French workman would have none of it.[83]
Even in the humblest restaurants, the bread supplied to customers is of a superior quality; the ordinary household bread (pain de ménage) is only to be had by specially asking for it; the roll with the café-au-lait in the morning is an institution except with the very poor.
As for meat, I have an idea, in spite of all the doubts thrown upon the question by English writers, that the Parisianworkman in 1870 consumed as much as his London fellow. The fact of the former having two square meals a day instead of one, is not sufficiently taken into account by the casual observer. There are few English artisans whose supper, except on Sundays, consists of anything more substantial than bread and cheese. The Frenchman eats meat at twelve a.m. and at six p.m. The nourishment contained in the scraps, the bones, etc., is generally lost to the Englishman: not a particle of it is wasted in France. Be that as it may, the statistics for 1858 show a consumption of close upon eight ounces (English) of fresh meat per day for every head of the population. Be it remembered that these statistics are absolutely correct, because a town-due of over a halfpenny per English pound is paid on the meat leaving the public slaughter-houses, and killed meat is taxed similarly at the city gates. Private slaughter-houses there are virtually none.
Allowing for all this, it will be seen that Paris was not much better off than other capitals would have been if threatened with a siege, except, perhaps, for the ingenuity of even the humblest French housewife in making much out of little by means of vegetables, fruit, and cunningly prepared sauces, for which, nevertheless, butter, milk, lard, etc., were wanted, which commodities were as likely to fail as all other things. Nor must one forget to mention the ingenuity displayed in the public slaughter-houses themselves, in utilizing every possible scrap of the slaughtered animals for human food. I had occasion, not very long ago (1883), to go frequently, and for several weeks running, to one of the poorest quarters in London. I often made the journey on foot, for I am ashamed to say that, until then, the East End was far more unknown to me than many an obscure town in France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. The clever remark of a French sociologist that "the battle of life is fought below the belt," holds especially good with regard to the lower classes. Well, I may unhesitatingly say that in no country are the poor left in greater ignorance with regard to cheap and nourishing food than in England, if I am to judge by London. The French, the German, the Italian, the Spanish poor, have a dozen inexpensive and succulent dishes of which the English poor know absolutely nothing; and still those very dishes figure on the tables of the well-to-do, and of fashionable restaurants, as entrées under more or less fantastic names.Is the English working man so utterly devoid of thrift and of common sense, is his contempt for the foreigner so great as to make him refuse to take a lesson from the latter? I think not. I fancy it will depend much on the manner in which the lesson is conveyed. A little less board-school work and Sunday-school teaching, fewer Bible classes, and a good many practical cooking-classes would probably meet the case.
The French, though aware of their incontestable superiority in the way of preparing food, did not disdain to take a lesson from the alien. They clearly foresaw the fate in store for the cattle penned in the squares and public gardens, if compelled to remain there under existing conditions, and with the inclement season close at hand; consequently, the authorities enlisted the services of Mr. Wilson, an Irish gentleman who had been residing in Paris for a number of years, and whose experience in the salted-provision trade seemed to them very likely to yield most satisfactory results. Up till then, only thirty head of cattle had been submitted to his process, from that moment the number is considerably increased, and it becomes apparent that, in a short while, there will be few live oxen, sheep, or pigs left in Paris, though, as yet we are only in the beginning of October. Under Mr. Wilson's able management, half a hundred Irishmen are at work for many, many hours a day at the slaughter-house in La Villete, whither flock the Parisians, at any rate the privileged ones, to watch the preliminaries to the régime of salt-junk which is staring them in the face. The fodder thus economized will go to the horses, although there is a whisper in the air that one eminent savant has recommended their immediate slaughter and salting also. Of course, such as are wanted for military purposes will be exempted from this holocaust on the altar of patriotism. M. Gagne, who has already provided the Parisians with amusement for years, in his capacity as a perpetual candidate for parliamentary honours, does not stop at hippophagy; he seriously proposes anthropophagy. "A human being over sixty is neither useful nor ornamental," he exclaimed at a public meeting; "and to prove that I mean what I say, I am willing to give myself as food to my sublime and suffering townsmen." Poor fellow! as mad as a March hare, but a man of education and with an infinite fund of sympathy for humanity. He was but moderately provided for at the best of times; his income was derived from some property in the provinces, and, as amatter of course, the investment of Paris stopped his supplies of funds from that quarter. He was of no earthly use in the besieged city, but he refused to go. He had a small but very valuable collection of family plate, which went bit by bit to the Mint, not to feed himself but to feed others, for he was never weary of well-doing. He reminded one irresistibly of Balzac's hero, "le Père Goriot," parting with his treasures to supply his ungrateful daughters, for the Parisians were ungrateful to him. Mad as he was, no man in possession of all his mental faculties could have been more sublime.
Whatever the question of human flesh as food may have been to the Parisians, that of horseflesh was by no means new to them. Since '66, various attempts had been made to introduce it on a large scale, but, for once in a way, they were logical in their objections to it. "It is all very well," wrote a paper, devoted to the improvement of the humbler classes,—"it is all very well for a few savants to sit round a well-appointed table to feast upon the succulent parts of a young, tender, and perfectly healthy horse, especially if the steaks are 'aux truffes,' and the kidneys stewed in 'Madeira;' but that young, tender, and perfectly healthy horse would cost more than an equally tender, young, and perfectly healthy bullock or cow. So, where is the advantage? In order to obtain that advantage, horses only fit for the knacker's yard, not fit for human food, would have to be killed, and the hard-working artisan with his non-vitiated taste, who does not even care for venison or game when it happens to be 'high,' would certainly not care for a superannuated charger to be set before him. You might just as well ask an unsophisticated cannibal to feast upon an invalid. The best part of 'the warrior on the shelf' is his wooden leg or his wooden arm; the best part of the superannuated charger is his skin or his hoof, with or without the shoe; and no human being, whether cannibal or not, can be expected to make a timber-yard, a tanner's yard, or an old-iron and rag store of his stomach, even to please faddists."
As a consequence, only two millions of pounds of horseflesh were "produced" during the first three years succeeding the publication of that article (1866-69); but it is more than doubtful whether a sixteenth part of it was consumed as human food—with a knowledge on the part of the consumers. And during those three years, as if to prove thewriter's words, the public were being constantly fortified in their dislike with official reports of the seizure of diseased horses on their way to the four specially appointed slaughter-houses. I remember, that in one week, twenty-four animals were thus confiscated by the sanitary inspectors, "the flesh of which," added theMoniteur, "would have probably found its way to the tables of the better class Parisians, in the shape of Arles, Lorraine, or German sausages. These commodities," it went on, "are never offered by the manufacturer to the experienced proprietors of the ham and beef shops (charcutiers), but to fruiterers, grocers, vendors of so-called dainties, and dealers in preserved provisions." The article had the effect of arousing the suspicion of the better classes as well as of the poorer.
The number of "horse-butchers" had decreased by four during the four years that had elapsed since their first establishment with the Government's sanction, and the remaining eighteen were not very prosperous when the siege brought the question to the fore once more. The public could not afford to be positively hostile to the scheme, but the assertion of the rare advocates of the system, that they were enthusiastic, is altogether beside the truth. They had to make the best of a bad game, that was all. It is a very curious, but positive fact, nevertheless, that I have heard Parisians speak favourably afterwards of dog's and cat's flesh, even of rats baked in a pie; I have heard them say that, for once in a way, even under ordinary circumstances, they would not mind partaking of those dishes: I have never heard them express the same good will toward horseflesh. Of course, I am alluding to those who affected no partisanship, either one way or the other. One thing is very certain, though: at the end of the siege the sight of a cat or dog was a rarity in Paris, while by the official reports there were thirty thousand horses left.
Meanwhile, the Académie de Sciences is attracting notice by the reports of its sittings, in which the question of food is the only subject discussed. Professor Dorderone reads a paper on the utilization of beef and mutton fat; and he communicates a new process with regard to kidney fat, which, up till then, had withstood the attempts of the most celebrated chefs for culinary purposes. He professes to have discovered the means of doing away with the unpleasant taste and smell which have hitherto militated against itsuse, he undertakes to give it the flavour and aroma of the best butter from Brittany and Normandy. M. Richard, the maire of La Villette, attempts similar experiments with animal offal, which M. Dumas, the great savant, declares highly satisfactory. M. Riche, one of the superior officials of the Mint, transforms bullock's blood into black puddings, which are voted superior to those hitherto made with pig's blood. The nourishing properties of gelatine are demonstrated in an equally scientific manner, and the Académie des Sciences gradually becomes the rendezvous of the fair ones of Paris, who come to take lessons in the culinary art.