The Parisians — Complete, Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton [christmas read aloud .TXT] 📗

in danger of Lynch law, when suddenly a face not unknown to him interposed between himself and the rough-looking man.

“Ha!” cried this new comer, “my young confrere, Gustave Rameau, welcome! Citizens, make way. I answer for this patriot—I, Armand Monnier. He comes to help use! Is this the way you receive him?” Then in a low voice to Rameau, “Come out. Give your coupe to the barricade. What matters such rubbish? Trust to me—I expected you. Hist!—Lebeau bids me see that you are safe.” Rameau then, seeking to drape himself in majesty,—as the aristocrats of journalism in a city wherein no other aristocracy is recognised naturally and commendably do, when ignorance combined with physical strength asserts itself to be a power, beside which the power of knowledge is what a learned poodle is to a tiger—Rameau then descended from his coupe, and said to this Titan of labour, as a French marquis might have said to his valet, and as, when the French marquis has become a ghost of the past, the man who keeps a coupe says to the man who mends its wheels, “Honest fellow, I trust you.”

Monnier led the journalist through the mob to the rear of the barricade hastily constructed. Here were assembled very motley groups.

The majority were ragged boys, the gamins of Paris, commingled with several women of no reputable appearance, some dingily, some gaudily apparelled. The crowd did not appear as if the business in hand was a very serious one. Amidst the din of voices the sounds of laughter rose predominant, jests and bon mots flew from lip to lip. The astonishing good-humour of the Parisians was not yet excited into the ferocity that grows out of it by a street contest. It was less like a popular emeute than a gathering of schoolboys, bent not less on fun than on mischief. But, still, amid this gayer crowd were sinister, lowering faces; the fiercest were not those of the very poor, but rather of artisans, who, to judge by their dress, seemed well off of men belonging to yet higher grades. Rameau distinguished amongst these the medecin des pauvres, the philosophical atheist, sundry young, long-haired artists, middle aged writers for the Republican press, in close neighbourhood with ruffians of villainous aspect, who might have been newly returned from the galleys. None were regularly armed; still revolvers and muskets and long knives were by no means unfrequently interspersed among the rioters. The whole scene was to Rameau a confused panorama, and the dissonant tumult of yells and laughter, of menace and joke, began rapidly to act on his impressionable nerves. He felt that which is the prevalent character of a Parisian riot—the intoxication of an impulsive sympathy; coming there as a reluctant spectator, if action commenced he would have been borne readily into the thick of the action—he could not have helped it; already he grew impatient of the suspense of strife. Monnier having deposited him safely with his back to a wall, at the corner of a street handy for flight, if flight became expedient, had left him for several minutes, having business elsewhere. Suddenly the whisper of the Italian stole into his ear—“These men are fools. This is not the way to do business; this does not hurt the robber of Nice—Garibaldi’s Nice: they should have left it to me.”

“What would you do?”

“I have invented a new machine,” whispered the Friend of humanity; “it would remove all at one blow—lion and lioness, whelp and jackals—and then the Revolution if you will! not this paltry tumult. The cause of the human race is being frittered away. I am disgusted with Lebeau. Thrones are not overturned by gamins.”

Before Rameau could answer, Monnier rejoined him. The artisan’s face was overcast—his lips compressed, yet quivering with indignation. “Brother,” he said to Rameau, “to-day the cause is betrayed”—(the word trahi was just then coming into vogue at Paris)—“the blouses I counted on are recreant. I have just learned that all is quiet in the other quartiers where the rising was to have been simultaneous with this. We are in a guet-apens—the soldiers will be down on us in a few minutes; hark! don’t you hear the distant tramp? Nothing for us but to die like men. Our blood will be avenged later. Here,” and he thrust a revolver into Rameau’s hand. Then with a lusty voice that rang through the crowd, he shouted “Vive le peuple!” The rioters caught and re-echoed the cry, mingled with other cries,’ “Vive la Republique!” “Vive le drapeau rouge!”

The shouts were yet at their full when a strong hand grasped Monnier’s arm, and a clear, deep, but low voice thrilled through his ear: “Obey! I warned you. No fight to-day. Time not ripe. All that is needed is done—do not undo it. Hist! the sergens de ville are force enough to disperse the swarm of those gnats. Behind the sergens come soldiers who will not fraternise. Lose not one life to-day. The morrow when we shall need every man—nay, every gamin—will dawn soon. Answer not. Obey!” The same strong hand quitting its hold on Monnier, then seized Rameau by the wrist, and the same deep voice said, “Come with me.” Rameau, turning in amaze, not unmixed with anger, saw beside him a tall man with sombrero hat pressed close over his head, and in the blouse of a labourer, but through such disguise he recognized the pale grey whiskers and green spectacles of Lebeau. He yielded passively to the grasp that led him away down the deserted street at the angle.

At the further end of that street, however, was heard the steady thud of hoofs.

“The soldiers are taking the mob at its rear,” said Lebeau, calmly; “we have not a moment to lose—this way,” and he plunged into a dismal court, then into a labyrinth of lanes, followed mechanically by Rameau. They issued at last on the Boulevards, in which the usual loungers were quietly sauntering, wholly unconscious of the riot elsewhere. “Now, take that fiacre and go home; write down your impressions of what you have seen, and take your MS. to M. de Mauleon.” Lebeau here quitted him.

Meanwhile all happened as Lebeau had predicted. The sergens de ville showed themselves in front of the barricades, a small troop of mounted soldiers appeared in the rear. The mob greeted the first with yells and a shower of stones; at the sight of the last they fled in all directions; and the sergens de ville, calmly scaling the barricades, carried off in triumph, as prisoners of war, 4 gamins, 3 women, and 1 Irishman loudly protesting innocence, and shrieking “Murther!” So ended the first inglorious rise against the plebiscite and the Empire, on the 14th of May, 1870.

From Isaura Cicogna to Madame de Grantmesnil. Saturday. May 21.

“I am still, dearest Eulalie, under the excitement of impressions wholly new to me. I have this day witnessed one of those scenes which take us out of our private life, not into the world of fiction, but of history, in which we live as in the life of a nation. You know how intimate I have become with Valerie Duplessis. She is in herself so charming in her combination of petulant wilfulness and guileless naivete, that she might sit as a model for one of your exquisite heroines. Her father, who is in great favour at Court, had tickets for the Salle des Etats of the Louvre today—when, as the journals will tell you, the results of the plebiscite were formally announced to the Emperor—and I accompanied him and Valerie. I felt, on entering the hall, as if I had been living for months in an atmosphere of false rumours, for those I chiefly meet in the circles of artists and men of letters, and the wits and flaneurs who haunt such circles, are nearly all hostile to the Emperor. They agree, at least,