XXVII
Dunoisse never had sought, never would seek, news or speech or sight of the faithless friend; but now at last, without seeking, within a few days of his return to Paris, came the vision of de Moulny....
It rose before him in a flare of artificial light that made a yellow patch upon the foggy gloaming of that fateful day when the White Flag of Orleans that drooped—or dripped in rainy weather—above the stately central Pavilion of the Palace of the Tuileries began to show unmistakable signs of coming down.
Such signs as the unceasing, resistless rolling of huge, dense, continually-augmenting crowds of the people along the boulevards; through the wider of the ordinary Paris thoroughfares, murmuring as they went, with a sound like the great sea. With other crowds streaming in upon these from the suburbs. With thirty-seven battalions of Infantry, one of Chasseurs d’Orléans, three companies of Engineers, twenty squadrons of Cavalry, five thousand veterans of the Municipal Guard, and five batteries of Artillery, garrisoning the capital. With students of the Schools of Technical Military Instruction, students of Law and Medicine, students of Art, students of Music, starting theMarseillaisein the Place de la Madeleine. With the chant taken up by the Titanic voice of the people. With the breaking of a tidal wave of humanity over the palisades of the Chamber of Deputies; a rolling-back of this before the trampling horses of an advancing squadron of Dragoons; a similar advance upon the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, repelled by Municipal Guards; a shutting of shops, a mushroom-like springing up of Barricades, radiating fromthe Cloisters of Ste. Marie in the very heart of ancient Paris, extending from the mouths of tortuous streets to the gullets of narrow, crooked alleys, so as to form a citadel where Revolutionists concentrated, waiting instructions from headquarters of secret societies,—pending results of sittings of Committees of Insurrection, held by day and by night in the offices of the Republican Journals,—ready to act without these if they were not forthcoming. While by rail and by road, in answer to the urgent summons of muddy dispatch-bearers on wearied horses, or at the imperative tap-tapping of the electric needle; amidst the roaring and grinding of iron wheels and the trampling of iron-shod hoofs; a never-ending flood of armed men rolled down on Paris.
Now, upon a deputation from the Fourth Legion of the National Guard, calling upon a certain Crémieux, Deputy of the Opposition, with a petition to the Chamber, demanding dismissal of Ministers and Electoral Reform, came by the dawning of the twenty-fourth of February the rumor that this demanded change was actually To Be—a rumor meaning little to some, welcomed by others as the first indication of the scepter ofSt.Louis falling from a weak, relaxing Royal hand. Huge bonfires, made by students, of the heaped-up wooden benches belonging to the Champs-Élysées, had showed officers of the Staff galloping hither and thither with orders and counter-orders all through the raw, bleak night; had illuminated the crowds assembled to stare at the spectacle of Royal troops bivouacking on boulevards and public squares; and had been reflected in the shining bronze and polished steel of cannon, posted on the Places du Carrousel and de la Concorde.
But as yet, though Paris had seen the pulling-down, by detachments of the military, of the barricades choking those narrow labyrinthine streets that were the veins of the heart of her, and had winked at the building-up of these by the Revolutionists as fast as they were demolished; but, though a volley or two had made matchwood of the tables and chairs, the market-carts and omnibuses of the Barricades; though some minor conflicts between the People and the Police had ended with the tearing of tricolors and the capture of a red flannel petticoat mounted on a barber’s pole, and the dispatch of a few laden stretchers to the Hospitals; though a bayonet-point or so had been reddened;though the edge of a saber may have been used here and there, instead of the flat; though a guerilla-warfare between scattered groups of Socialists with revolvers and bludgeons and small parties of Dragoons and Cuirassiers made public streets and squares perilous for peaceable citizens; though Republicans had disarmed the National Guards of the Batignolles and burned the station at the barrier, and though therappelhad been beaten and Legion by Legion these tax-paying citizen-soldiers were answering to the call to arms,—as yet the anticipated insurrection had not begun.
The sails of the Red Windmills that grind out Civil War hung slack, though thepiquetsof Dragoons and Chasseurs, posted at the openings of the streets and thoroughfares, had been on duty for thirty-six hours; were swaying with weariness and hunger in the saddles of their exhausted, tottering horses, their haggard faces half-hidden as they dozed behind the high collars of their long gray cloaks....
How did the spark reach the powder? Processions had been formed in token of popular delight at the announced change in the Government. Bloused workmen armed with pikes and sabers and pistols that had done duty in 1793, half-fledged boys with bludgeons or cheap revolvers, women of the Faubourgs with babies or choppers or broomsticks, the swarming life of the poorest quarters formed into column under the Tricolor or the Red Flag. Such a column came muddily rolling towards the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, filled the Rue de Choiseul with no sound beyond the trampling of feet, many of them in wooden shoes, many more naked, while the head of the column advanced upon the front of the Hotel, that, like its assailable sides and rear, was protected by a steel hedge, the bayonets of a half-battalion of the Line, hastily summoned from their barracks in the Rue de l’Assyrie, some twenty-four hours previously.
The Colonel and one or two officers who were personally acquainted with the Minister in popular disfavor had been summoned to a conference—involving dinner—in his private apartments looking on the garden—from which he was a little later to escape, disguised in a footman’s livery. An Assistant-Adjutant commanded the companies of infantry that stemmed the onward rolling of those muddy waves of humanity that threatened to swamp the frontcourtyard—a slender, black-eyed, soldierly young Staff-officer of perhaps twenty-seven, with a reddish skin tanned to swarthiness by desert sunshine and dust-winds.
It was Hector Dunoisse. He sat upon an iron-gray half-breed Arab mare at the upper outer end of the bristling double line of bayonets and redképisthat were flanked at either end by a squadron of Municipal Guards. The shako of a subaltern officer showed at the rear of the files, behind the Lieutenant rose the white-painted, gilt-headed railings topping the wall that enclosed the courtyard of the Hotel, carriages and cabriolets waiting there in charge of their owners’ servants, the broad steps under the high sculptured portico dotted with curious groups of uniformed officials or liveried lackeys, or neutral-tinted strangers who had taken refuge there before the advancing column with its flaring naphtha torches and its Red Flag, and its raucous roar of voices....
There were even ladies amongst the groups in the courtyard. One, who wore a costly mantle of ermines, revealing between its parting folds a brilliant evening-toilette, upon whose bare white bosom diamonds and rubies glowed and sparkled; who had a coronet of the same jewels crowning the rich luxuriance of her curled and braided hair, stood apart, isolated from the rest, under the tall wrought-iron standard of a gas-lamp not yet lighted, talking to a tall, heavily-built young man wearing the chocolate, gold-buttoned, semi-military frock-coat that, in conjunction with trousers striped with narrow gold braid, formed the uniforms of secretaries and attachés of the Foreign Office. And that the young man was very much more absorbed by the conversation of his companion than the lady was in her listener was evident. For while his light brown head with its carefully massed locks and accurate side-parting was bent down towards her so that you saw his profile, the accurate tuft of reddish whisker above the black satin stock, the large handsome ear, the heavy clumsy nose, the jutting underlip and long, obstinate chin,herfull face was constantly turned towards the packed and seething thoroughfare before the tall iron gates, and the living barrier of human flesh and horsemeat and steel that guarded them. And that face was very fair to see. Even in the uncertain gloaming, the loveliness of it went to the heart like a sword....
Now as the foggy dusk of the gray February day closedcoldly in, and the muddy sea of humanity surged up against the wall of steel and discipline that Authority had built before the lofty gilt-topped railings of the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, the oil-cressets on the gate-pillars and above the central arch that spanned the entrance were lighted by the porters, the great gas-lamp in the courtyard and under the portico roared and hooted into an illumination that dimmed the smoky, flaring torches of the men who marched with the Red Flag. As the Adjutant on the iron-gray charger rode along the gleaming gray line of leveled bayonets, bidding the men close up;—as he called over the heads of the rank-and-file, giving some order to the Lieutenant, the young attaché who was conversing with the lady in the ermine mantle started and looked round. There was something in the clear, frosty ring of the voice that recalled ... a voice he had once known. His hard blue eyes met the eyes of the black-haired swarthy officer on the half-breed Arab the next instant. And—with a cold, thrilling shock of recognition, dying out in a crisping shudder of the nerves, Redskin and de Moulny knew each other again.
The fiery, sensitive Arab felt her rider’s violent start, a sudden contraction of the muscles of the sinewy thighs that gripped her satiny sides drove both spurs home to the quick, behind the girths. As the Red Flag showed through the thick rank smoke of naphtha-torches held high in grimy hands, Djelma bounded forwards, snorting fiercely at the unexpected sting; reared at the checking bit, backed, still rearing, upon the goading steel points behind; lashed madly out, wounding herself yet more, and, knocking down two linesmen; then plunged forwards, kicking, screaming, and biting, into the thick of the crowd.
Those who marched with the Red Flag took the rebellion of Djelma as obedience, and resented being trampled, after the manner of mankind. Dunoisse was struck on the bridle-arm by a bludgeon wielded by a red-capped, bloused, bearded artisan. A frowsy, bare-bosomed woman aimed a savage blow at him with that deadly weapon of the lower classes, a baby. The man who carried the drum went down at a blow from the Arab’s fore-foot. The empty-sounding crack of the splintered instrument, the oaths and yells and curses of the crowd were mingled in the ears of Dunoisse with the snorting of Djelma, the cries and exclamationsfrom the thronged courtyard behind the wall of soldiers. A single shot cracked out behind him: the finger that pressed the trigger upset the Cabinet, changed the Government, toppled the rocking House of Orleans over with one touch. For instantly following the detonation of the shot a sharp, loud, bold, imperious voice cried:
“Fire!”
And, the next instant, jagged tongues of flame ran along the front line of leveled bayonets, the deafening clatter of a volley of musketry reverberated from the many-windowed façade of the Hotel, mingled with the splintering and shattering of glass; ran rattling up and down adjacent streets and neighboring thoroughfares, mingled with the echoes of shrieks and curses and groans.... Tumult prevailed, the Municipal Guard charged, striking with the flat of the saber ... the Red Flag wavered and staggered, the column broke up, its units fled in disorder to the Rue Lafitte. Pandemonium reigned there, a hundred voices telling a hundred stories of massacre deliberately planned....