The History of a Crime, Victor Hugo [white hot kiss .TXT] 📗

Upon Hell.

Dante, had he leaned over the summit of the shadow, would have been able to see the eighth circle of his poem; the funereal Boulevard Montmartre.

Paris, a prey to Bonaparte; a monstrous spectacle. The gloomy armed men massed together on this boulevard felt an appalling spirit enter into them; they ceased to be themselves, and became demons.

There was no longer a single French soldier, but a host of indefinable phantoms, carrying out a horrible task, as though in the glimmering light of a vision.

There was no longer a flag, there was no longer law, there was no longer humanity, there was no longer a country, there was no longer France; they began to assassinate.

The Schinderhannes division, the brigades of Mandrin, Cartouche, Poulailler, Trestaillon, and Tropmann appeared in the gloom, shooting down and massacring.

No; we do not attribute to the French army what took place during this mournful eclipse of honor.

There have been massacres in history, abominable ones assuredly, but they have possessed some show of reason; Saint Bartholomew and the Dragonnades are explained by religion, the Sicilian Vespers and the butcheries of September are explained by patriotism; they crush the enemy or annihilate the foreigner; these are crimes for a good cause; but the carnage of the Boulevard Montmartre is a crime without an ostensible reason.

The reason exists, however. It is hideous.

Let us give it.

Two things stand erect in a State, the Law and the People.

A man murders the Law. He feels the punishment approaching, there only remains one thing for him to do, to murder the People. He murders the People.

The Second of December was the Risk, the Fourth was the Certainty.

Against the indignation which arose they opposed the Terror.

The Fury, Justice, halted petrified before the Fury, Extermination. Against Erinnyes they set up Medusa.

To put Nemesis to flight, what a terrifying triumph!

To Louis Napoleon pertains this glory, which is the summit of his shame.

Let us narrate it.

Let us narrate what History had never seen before.

The assassination of a people by a man.

Suddenly, at a given signal, a musket shot being fired, no matter where, no matter by whom, the shower of bullets poured upon the crowd. A shower of bullets is also a crowd; it is death scattered broadcast. It does not know whither it goes, nor what it does; it kills and passes on.

But at the same time it has a species of soul; it is premeditated, it executes a will. This was an unprecedented moment. It seemed as though a handful of lightnings was falling upon the people. Nothing simpler. It formed a clear solution to the difficulty; the rain of lead overwhelmed the multitude. What are you doing there? Die! It is a crime to be passing by. Why are you in the street? Why do you cross the path of the Government? The Government is a cut-throat. They have announced a thing, they must certainly carry it out; what is begun must assuredly be achieved; as Society is being saved, the People must assuredly be exterminated.

Are there not social necessities? Is it not essential that Béville should have 87,000 francs a year and Fleury 95,000 francs? Is it not essential that the High Chaplain, Menjaud, Bishop of Nancy, should have 342 francs a day, and that Bassano and Cambacérès should each have 383 francs a day, and Vaillant 468 francs, and Saint-Arnaud 822 francs? Is it not necessary that Louis Bonaparte should have 76,712 francs a day? Could one be Emperor for less?

In the twinkling of an eye there was a butchery on the boulevard a quarter of a league long. Eleven pieces of cannon wrecked the Sallandrouze carpet warehouse. The shot tore completely through twenty-eight houses. The baths of Jouvence were riddled. There was a massacre at Tortoni's. A whole quarter of Paris was filled with an immense flying mass, and with a terrible cry. Everywhere sudden death. A man is expecting nothing. He falls. From whence does this come? From above, say the Bishops' Te Deum; from below, says Truth.

From a lower place than the galleys, from a lower place than Hell.

It is the conception of a Caligula, carried out by a Papavoine.

Xavier Durrieu comes upon the boulevard. He states,—

"I have taken sixty steps, I have seen sixty corpses."

And he draws back. To be in the street is a Crime, to be at home is a Crime. The butchers enter the houses and slaughter. In slaughter-house slang the soldiers cry, "Let us pole-axe the lot of them."

Adde, a bookseller, of 17, Boulevard Poissonnière, is standing before his door; they kill him. At the same moment, for the field of murder is vast, at a considerable distance from there, at 5, Rue de Lancry, M. Thirion de Montauban, owner of the house, is at his door; they kill him. In the Rue Tiquetonne a child of seven years, named Boursier, is passing by; they kill him. Mdlle. Soulac, 196, Rue du Temple, opens her window; they kill her. At No. 97, in the same street, two women, Mesdames Vidal and Raboisson, sempstresses, are in their room; they kill them. Belval, a cabinet-maker, 10, Rue de la Lune, is at home; they kill him. Debaëcque, a merchant, 45, Rue du Sentier, is in his own house; Couvercelle, florist, 257, Rue Saint Denis, is in his own house; Labitte, a jeweller, 55, Boulevard Saint Martin, is in his own house; Monpelas, perfumer, 181, Rue Saint Martin, is in his own house; they kill Monpelas, Labitte, Couvercelle, and Debaëcque. They sabre at her own home, 240, Rue Saint Martin, a poor embroideress, Mdlle. Seguin, who not having sufficient money to pay for a doctor, died at the Beaujon hospital, on the 1st of January, 1852, on the same day that the Sibour Te Deum was chanted at Notre Dame. Another, a waistcoat-maker, Françoise Noël, was shot down at 20, Rue du Faubourg Montmartre, and died in the Charité. Another, Madame Ledaust, a working housekeeper, living at 76, Passage du Caire, was shot down before the Archbishop's palace, and died at the Morgue. Passers-by, Mdlle. Gressier, living at 209, Faubourg Saint Martin; Madame Guilard, living at 77, Boulevard Saint Denis; Madame Gamier, living at 6, Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle, who had fallen, the first named beneath the volleys on the Boulevard Montmartre, the two others on the Boulevard Saint Denis, and who were still alive, attempted to rise, and became targets for the soldiers, bursting with laughter, and this time fell back again dead. Deeds of gallantry ware performed. Colonel Rochefort, who was probably created General for this, charged in the Rue do la Paix at the head of his Lancers a flock of nurses, who were put to flight.

Such was this indescribable enterprise. All the men who took part in it were instigated by hidden influences; all had something which urged them forward; Herbillon had Zaatcha behind him; Saint-Arnaud had Kabylia; Renault had the affair of the Saint-André and Saint Hippolyte villages; Espinasse, Rome and the storming of the 30th of June; Magnan, his debts.

Must we continue? We hesitate. Dr. Piquet, a man of seventy, was killed in his drawing-room by a ball in his stomach; the painter Jollivart, by a ball in the forehead, before his easel, his brains bespattered his painting. The English captain, William Jesse, narrowly escaped a ball which pierced the ceiling above his head; in the library adjoining the Magasins du Prophète, a father, mother, and two daughters were sabred. Lefilleul, another bookseller, was shot in his shop on the Boulevard Poissonnière; in the Rue Lepelletier, Boyer, a chemist, seated at his counter, was "spitted" by the Lancers. A captain, killing all before him, took by storm the house of the Grand Balcon. A servant was killed in the shop of Brandus. Reybell through the volleys said to Sax, "And I also am discoursing sweet music." The Café Leblond was given over to pillage. Billecoq's establishment was bombarded to such a degree that it had to be pulled down the next day. Before Jouvain's house lay a heap of corpses, amongst them an old man with his umbrella, and a young man with his eye-glass. The Hôtel de Castille, the Maison Dorée, the Petite Jeannette, the Café de Paris, the Café Anglais became for three hours the targets of the cannonade. Raquenault's house crumbled beneath the shells; the bullets demolished the Montmartre Bazaar.

None escaped. The guns and pistols were fired at close quarters.

New Year's-day was not far off, some shops were full of New Year's gifts. In the passage du Saumon, a child of thirteen, flying before