Part 7
My Pegasus is not always inclined to take long flights. Sometimes when a lazy fit is upon him he will venture no more than a trip across the Channel, carrying me to Germany, Italy, Switzerland—perhaps landing me no further off than some place in France. But of that beloved country I have so many recollections, some gay, some sad, that I crave to go no further. One such trip is very short but very tragic. Forty-six years have passed since the episode of which I write, but the scenes of those few days are graven so deeply in my mind that no lapse of time can ever efface them. They haunt me like the pathetic thoughts which are aroused by the solitary little pink slipper of the Princesse de Lamballe in the Musée Cluny. Thoughts are such obstinate vagabonds that they must needs choose their own road, and not even the Buddha, in his Veluvana, can drive them eastward unless such be their will.
The final tragedy of 1871 (from a repetition of the horror of which, may Heaven preserve France and ourselves!) is no doubt in these days eclipsed by the brutal outrages upon which _Kultur_ is ever improving. What will forty-five more years do? That mechanical invention and chemical discoveries should come into play is, I suppose, inevitable. The strange thing is that the whole coarse-fibred soul of the German seems to be infected by the very potentialities of all these ghastly new discoveries, which seem to urge him on to new cruelties and new crimes. In 1870 he knew how to spare. Witness Paris. Now it is otherwise. Still, to us who lived in those days what will always be known as the Franco-German war remains as a poignantly painful memory; though the ravages of war and the carnage were terrible, it was the parricidal fury of anarchy and its monads which made men’s blood run cold.
The Commune, that hideous catastrophe which reversed the unnatural, crime of Saturn—the children murdering and devouring their own parent—ended tragically with the month of May, 1871. One morning I got a note from the Duke of Sutherland, saying that he had received information that the first train would be allowed into Paris the next day, and suggesting that we should go over and see whether we could be of any use. We started the following morning—the Duke, George Crawley, Wright, the Duke’s secretary, and myself; but the train was stopped at Creil that afternoon, and we had to stay there rather miserably for the night. The place was swarming with Prussian soldiery, scowling and truculent-looking, clanking their spurs defiantly all about the station and town. The people returned their evil looks with interest, but it was of no use—they were the masters. _Væ victis!_ It is a terrible sight to see a great people trampled on and tortured by the savagery of a victorious army; but when that army is a Prussian army—ask the Belgians.
There was no difficulty the next day; the train started early, and we were in Paris betimes. There were not many cabs at the station, but there was no great competition, so we were soon suited. I got on the box by the driver, as I was curious to hear what he had to say of the siege and the Commune. Strange to say, he, like every Parisian with whom I talked, was far more bitter against the Commune than against the Prussians. After all, men said, the Prussians spared our monuments; the Commune destroyed them. When we arrived arrests were taking place all over the town, and there was still some shooting of men in the streets, though we did not see it. Full of pathetic suggestion were the little heaps of clothes piled up in the squares and at the corners of streets.
There were some uniforms, but mostly they were made up of humble blouses and the civilian caps of what we should call street arabs—the _titis_ of old Paris. The owners, as the cabman said, were all rotting in the Fosse Commune; he himself was full of belated valour. “If there had only been ten men like me,” he protested, “ten determined stalwarts, a horror like the Commune would have been impossible.” I asked him what he did. “Mon Dieu! Monsieur! Que pouvais-je faire contre tous ces brigands? J’étais tout seul. Je me suis refugié dans la cave.”
The next day a worthy shopkeeper held just the same language. Ten men such as himself could have held the Rue de la Paix and kept the Communards at bay. He tried to persuade his neighbours, but they would not join with him, so, regretfully, he, too, hid in the cellar. It was strange to listen to these bourgeois who had shown such courage and determination and endurance during the siege, when the Prussians were battering them out of existence. They could face the Prussians gallantly; before the Commune they quailed.
The Rue de Rivoli was a piteous sight. The Ministère des Finances was burnt and gutted; the roof had fallen in, the windows were all gaping, and out of one of them there was a bit of charred blind fluttering dismally in the light summer air like the ghost of a flag. The Tuileries were nothing but a pile of charred stones, hardly the skeleton of a palace left; but the Louvre was luckily to all intents and purposes unharmed. It was enough to make a man weep to see the havoc, the ruins, and everywhere the signs of murder and violence. The Communards and pétroleuses had done their work thoroughly.
We dropped the luggage at the hotel, dismissed the cabman, still fully convinced of the potentiality of his own valour, and started forth for a morning stroll on foot.
When we came to the Place Vendôme, the great column, the bronze record of the past glories of the French army, was lying prone on a bed of straw, torn down by the sacrilege of Gustave Courbet, the Ministre des Beaux-Arts under the Commune. It had been badly smashed, and some small fragments had been carried away as souvenirs, but many of these were, I was told, recovered. As we drew near to look at the cruel misdeed, a _peloton_ of soldiers came along with a civilian in their midst, whom they were carrying off to a guard-room hard by. It was Courbet himself, whom I knew well by sight. I was not the only man to recognize him. An elderly gentleman with a little boy of about fourteen years was passing by. When he saw the prisoner he dashed forward, and before the guards could stop him, knocked off Courbet’s hat, shouting out: “Au moins, scélérat, tu te découvriras devant la colonne que tu as fait tomber.” Courbet, dazed by this fury of explosive patriotism, picked up his hat and said nothing, while the gentleman, well pleased with himself, walked on with his little son, and the guard grinned satisfaction, but took no further notice.
[Illustration: GUSTAVE COURBET.
_From a painting by himself in the Louvre._
[_To face p. 82._]
I had often seen Courbet in former days at the Café Royal, where he used to go for his midday meal. As he was something of a _sommité_, a celebrity in art as elsewhere for all his rebellious proclivities, the maître d’hôtel used to receive him with the greatest ceremony, bowing to the ground and rubbing his hands: “Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet. Que pourrai-je offrir à Monsieur ce matin. J’ai un Chateaubriand qui est de toute confiance,” etc., etc., etc. Courbet would sit down with majestic condescension, like a true anarchist, deigning to be waited upon with all the adulation which was due to him.
Well, it so happened that after the little scene which I have described in the Place Vendôme, we went on to the Café Royal, where we were received with effusive welcome by the maître d’hôtel. Like everybody else, he began talking about the recent tragedies and inveighing against the Commune. I told him of the arrest of Courbet, his old patron, and he at once launched out into the most violent abuse of him. “Oh! Monsieur, ne me parlez pas de ce sale communeux! Si jamais il ose remettre les pieds ici c’est à moi qu’il aura affaire!” I asked him why he used the word “communeux,” I thought the word was communard. “Oui, Monsieur,” he replied sententiously, “mais on dit _crapule_, _crapuleux_, _commune_, _communeux_, c’est plus méritant.” Courbet was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, and was condemned, moreover, to pay a very heavy fine for the fall of the column—none too severe a punishment in all the circumstances of the case.
Some time after the expiration of the six months I was again in Paris, and went to the Café Royal for luncheon. Who should come in a few minutes later but the great Courbet. Up rushed the maître d’hôtel to meet him, and I anticipated a first-rate row. Not a bit of it! To my amazement I heard the old welcome: “Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet! Qu’est-ce-qu’on peut vous offrir ce matin?” etc. The old story, the old refrain, the obsequious bows, the festive rubbing of hands. I could not resist reminding my friend of what he had said a few months before. Ah! he said, that was all so long ago! “D’ailleurs,” he added, “il ne faut pas oublier qu’il a été ministre, et on ne sais jamais ce qui peut arriver!”
Old Lady Edward Thynne used to tell a capital story of Courbet, whom she met a few years before 1870 at some artistic gathering in Paris. He had been airing his political views for some minutes, when to draw him out she said: “But then it seems that all this while I have been talking with a real red republican.” “Rouge, Madame,” was the answer, “dites, plutôt, violet,” and then he went off again at score. “But why,” she asked, “do you say that you want to pull down the Tuileries?” “Madame, parce que tant que cette sacrée maison durera il y aura toujours des coquins qui voudront venir y demeurer.”
Another notable arrest was that of Paschal Grousset, the so-called Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was caught disguised as a woman in the Rue Condorcet, which created a great sensation. Sir Edward Malet, who as second secretary of the British Embassy, had been obliged to have some dealings with him, told me that he was really a very pleasant little man, who was always civil and obliging to foreigners. “Not a bad little fellow,” Malet used to say. I saw him some years later in London, when he was correspondent of I forget which of the French newspapers, and he came to me at the Office of Works to ask for an admission to a volunteer review which the Queen was to hold in Hyde Park. He was so agreeable that I quite understood Malet’s verdict on him.
In the evening we went to dine at Voisin’s, where I had heard that the members of the Government of the Commune had been dining and breakfasting every day during their short lease of power. Good old Bellanger, the famous _sommelier_, was delighted to see us. I asked after a certain old chambertin—had he any left? “Pour Monsieur il y en aura toujours,” was the answer. But I said, “I wonder that your late patrons did not drink it all up!” “Ah! Monsieur, si vous croyez que j’allais donner de ce vin là à ces charapans! Monsieur, lorsque j’ai su qu’ils allaient venir ici je suis descendu dans la cave et j’ai changé toutes les étiquettes. Ils croyaient boire les meilleurs crus—s’ils avaient su ce que je leur servais! Mais j’étais sûr de mon affaire! Est-ce qu’ils s’y connaissaient ces animaux-là?” And then he went on grumbling: “Ah! mais non, non! Du chambertin—jamais de la vie!” Truly there is a comic element in every tragedy, and a grave-digger in every Hamlet.
* * * * *
Of all the crimes and cruelties which disgraced the Commune, none excited greater horror than the murder of Monseigneur Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, and the priests who with him and many others were seized as hostages. The flames of the Tuileries and other monuments, the hell-fire orgies of the mob and the pétroleuses drunken with the lust of blood and incendiarism—when the very firemen pumped petrol instead of water on to the burning buildings—were almost forgotten in the execration of that sacrilege. Upwards of sixty hostages, all innocent peaceable men, against no one of whom could any misdeed be alleged, were put to death. They were imprisoned in La Roquette, and on the 24th of May the Archbishop and the Abbé de Guerry, the Curé of the Madeleine, with Monsieur Bonjean, the president of the Cour de Cassation, and three Jesuit priests (Fathers Ducondray, Allard and Clair), after a sham trial, were led into the courtyard of the prison and shot. The Archbishop, who was the second of the victims to suffer, met his death like the hero and Christian martyr that he was. He stepped to the front, and praying to God for the forgiveness of his murderers, gave them his pastoral blessing. Two of the firing party, less hardened than the others, knelt down and asked his pardon. When the butchery was over the ruffians stripped the Archbishop’s honoured body, and that no degradation might be wanting, carted it off to be thrown like the carrion of a malefactor into the Fosse Commune. Even decent burial was to be denied to him.
After the last desperate fight at the cemetery of Père la Chaise, in which men and women fought like tigers and tigresses, neither giving nor asking for quarter, all mad to kill, and kill, and kill, the body was recovered and carried to the archiepiscopal palace, where it lay in state, with those of the other priests. All Paris flocked to do homage to one of God’s saints, and take a last look at the beloved old man. Those who could afford it were in deep mourning, but all were weeping from the richest down to the poorest and humblest, as I saw them march past the body. The Archbishop, lying mitred and robed, looked like a waxen image. There was no sign of pain in his face, no trace of the cruel sorrow and long suspense by which his last days must have been racked; on it was written only that divine peace which passeth all understanding.
The hour-glass had been turned and the sands of the Commune had run out. The prison of La Roquette, the scene of so many horrors, was now in the hands of the Versaillais, and the cells of the hostages were more fitly tenanted by the murderers who but a few days before, when to be respectable was a deadly crime, had ruled Paris with a rod of terror. Passing by the prison, after leaving the Archbishop’s palace, we saw that the great gates were open, and a crowd was gathered outside eagerly watching and craning necks to see what was going on within. I asked what the people were waiting for? A batch of prisoners was to be led out to the fortifications to be shot. Next to me was standing a rather pretty young girl of about fifteen or sixteen years, nicely but very simply dressed, evidently the daughter of well-to-do bourgeois parents. In charge of her was a bonne, an elderly woman wearing a linen cap, and the typical tartan fichu pinned across her breast.
Presently the excitement began. First came three omnibuses, their usual function, as their placards showed, being to take pleasure-seekers to the Jardin des Plantes; they were driven by soldiers, other soldiers or gendarmes sitting on the top and acting as conductors. Inside an evil-looking crew of scowling ruffians, some of them wounded, all dirty, unshaven and truculent-looking—villains who knew that for them even hope was dead. The omnibuses were followed by litters, in which other soldiers were carrying men who had been seriously wounded, some of them terribly mangled.
In one of the litters lay a dark, fierce-looking man, with a shock mass of black hair. His head and face, pale and haggard, with a beard of three or four days’ growth, were tied up with blood-stained linen bandages. His eyes were closed, and he seemed hardly conscious, too feeble to move, too tired to care. He was respectably, even well dressed in a frock coat. Evidently a man in a superior position to that of those who had gone before. As he came, and owing to some obstruction, his bearers paused for a minute, the girl near me gave a piercing shriek, and crying out: “Papa! Ah, Papa, c’est Papa!” fell sobbing into the arms of her nurse. She had come on the chance of one last look, and had, as the bystanders said, been waiting for hours.
The wounded man, hearing the cry and recognizing the dear young voice, opened his eyes, and pulling himself together for a supreme effort, tried limply to wave his hand. His lips moved, and during the short halt tried to utter a few words, but voice would not come to his bidding; he uttered no sound, his eyes closed again, and quickly his bearers turned the corner and he was out of sight. That dumb farewell was the last of him. The final act can have been but a small matter to him, for he was, indeed, little more than a corpse already. The poor child stood there shaking from head to foot and weeping on the bosom of her bonne, and the crowd dispersed. It was a harrowing scene, it was a pathetic scene, the pathos of which could hardly be forgotten by any who witnessed it. After nearly half a century I can still see that grim procession of death, and the young girl’s shriek of agony rings in my ears.
Those were days of horror. Retribution had come with no halting foot; shrifts were short, and justice wasted no time over inquiries; it was even said that a good many innocents perished with the guilty. Whether that is true or not is hard to say, but it was an accusation which in the circumstances was sure to be made. An outcry was raised against the four generals of the Republican armies, Vinoy, Ladmisault, Cissey and Donay, to whom the guardianship of Paris, divided into four parts, was entrusted.
But far more virulent than any of the attacks upon them were the charges that were brought—most unfairly, since they only obeyed orders—against the Marquis de Gallifet and his dragoons. Those charges came from the white-livered party, set on by such Communists as had managed by hook or by crook to escape observation and save their skins. These did not hesitate to accuse Gallifet of wholesale murders of innocent men and women when the executions took place outside the Arc de l’Etoile. From inquiries which I made on the spot and at the time, I believe that he did no more than his duty.
Gallifet was a most determined man, to whom duty was something sacred, bound to be carried out to the letter at any cost. He was, moreover, a born soldier, loving his men as they loved him, and cut to the quick by the deaths of so many comrades. As a cavalry leader, all men recognized his great worth. Brave as the steel of his own sword, utterly reckless of his life, as he had shown in the disastrous Mexican campaign and in the Great War, his courage was so infectious that his troopers would have followed him had he ordered the charge to be sounded against all the hosts of Satan. War was for him something very real, not to be treated with half measures or milksop compromises. He was a fighter, and he fought in deadly earnest.
We hear much in these days from peacefully-minded lawyers of the iniquity of reprisals. It would be a good thing if some of these learned gentlemen would remember the old adage, “Inter arma silent leges;” adding to it the words, “et juris consulti.” It is good to see on this 3rd of February, 1916, that there is at least one great leader of thought left in this country who takes a saner and more masculine view of reprisals than that which is held by some bishops and semi-parsonic lawyers. Lord Rosebery’s letter to the _Times_ of this day is inexorable in its logic and in its justice.
We must protect our women and children. This is an age of cruel inventions, and if our enemies take advantage of them, so must we, unless we would wish to be as the archers of Edward the Third and the Black Prince would be if we sent them into the trenches to-day, forbidden for chivalrous reasons to use aught but their bows against modern artillery and high explosives. If Germany uses poison gas and liquid fire, so must we. If she drops bombs from airships upon innocent civilians, women, and children, we must follow suit. God forbid that it should be in the spirit of revenge; but what other deterrent is possible? “Vous l’avez voulu, Georges Dandin.” It is much that Lord Rosebery has lifted his voice in this sense.
Gallifet did not hesitate to adopt reprisals, and nobody can say that his methods failed. He knew that the crimes with which he had to deal could not be prevented in the future by the sprinklings of rose-water and soft-sawder. Reprisals in the sense of cruelty to prisoners and murders such as that of Nurse Cavell and Captain Fryatt, are, of course, quite another matter.
I could not help taking a great interest in Gallifet’s proceedings, because, although I had only had the very slightest acquaintance with him some ten years before, he was the intimate friend of many friends of my own, both English and French. The Prince of Wales, as he then was, had great regard for him, and never failed to send for him when he went to Paris.
It must have been about the year 1859 or 1860 that he, with Madame de Gallifet, the Sagans and the Pourtalès’s, came over to London for a week or ten days in the height of the summer season, and I was asked by Madame de Persigny, the French ambassadress, to do what I could to make their stay pleasant. The three ladies, with Madame de Metternich as a fourth, were at that time the recognized queens of Paris society, or, at any rate, of that part of it which bowed the knee at the Imperial Court. Madame de Gallifet was very good-looking, and the Princesse de Sagan handsome and distinguished, but neither of them could compare with the Comtesse de Pourtalès, who had all the subtle charm and teasing beauty of which the eighteenth century portrait painters are the celebrants.
Madame de Metternich, who did not come to London with them, was not a pretty woman; indeed, she spoke of herself as “le singe à la mode;” but she was witty and very attractive, and so became the high priestess of that religion of which Worth, the famous man-milliner, a former apprentice of Swan and Edgar’s, who had raised his temple in the Rue de la Paix, was the Pope, on the hierarchy of fashion. She was perhaps one degree greater than the other three ladies, but above them all was enthroned the Empress Eugénie, a divinity at whose altar all men and women were fain to fall down and worship.