Complete Works of Emile Zola (1233 page)

He delayed his departure, seemingly unable to make up his mind to leave that room, whose atmosphere was pervaded by the evil he had unintentionally done. The window, which had been closed for a moment, had been opened again, and from it the wounded man, lying on his bed, his head propped up by pillows, was looking out over the city, while the others, also, in the oppressive silence that had settled on the chamber, were gazing out into vacancy.

From that elevated point of the Butte des Moulins a good half of Paris lay stretched beneath their eyes in a vast panorama: first the central districts, from the Faubourg Saint-Honore to the Bastille, then the Seine in its entire course through the city, with the thickly-built, densely-populated regions of the left bank, an ocean of roofs, treetops, steeples, domes, and towers. The light was growing stronger, the abominable night, than which there have been few more terrible in history, was ended; but beneath the rosy sky, in the pure, clear light of the rising sun, the fires were blazing still. Before them lay the burning Tuileries, the d’Orsay barracks, the Palaces of the Council of State and the Legion of Honor, the flames from which were paled by the superior refulgence of the day-star. Even beyond the houses in the Rue de Lille and the Rue du Bac there must have been other structures burning, for clouds of smoke were visible rising from the carrefour of la Croix-Rouge, and, more distant still, from the Rue Vavin and the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Nearer at hand and to their right the fires in the Rue Saint-Honore were dying out, while to the left, at the Palais-Royal and the new Louvre, to which the torch had not been applied until near morning, the work of the incendiaries was apparently a failure. But what they were unable to account for at first was the dense volume of black smoke which, impelled by the west wind, came driving past their window. Fire had been set to the Ministry of Finance at three o’clock in the morning and ever since that time it had been smoldering, emitting no blaze, among the stacks and piles of documents that were contained in the low-ceiled, fire-proof vaults and chambers. And if the terrific impressions of the night were not there to preside at the awakening of the great city — the fear of total destruction, the Seine pouring its fiery waves past their doors, Paris kindling into flame from end to end — a feeling of gloom and despair, hung heavy over the quartiers that had been spared, with that dense, on-pouring smoke, whose dusky cloud was ever spreading. Presently the sun, which had risen bright and clear, was hid by it, and the golden sky was filled with the great funeral pall.

Maurice, who appeared to be delirious again, made a slow, sweeping gesture that embraced the entire horizon, murmuring:

“Is it all burning? Ah, how long it takes!”

Tears rose to Henriette’s eyes, as if her burden of misery was made heavier for her by the share her brother had had in those deeds of horror. And Jean, who dared neither take her hand nor embrace his friend, left the room with the air of one crazed by grief.

“I will return soon.
Au revoir
!”

It was dark, however, nearly eight o’clock, before he was able to redeem his promise. Notwithstanding his great distress he was happy; his regiment had been transferred from the first to the second line and assigned the task of protecting the quartier, so that, bivouacking with his company in the Place du Carrousel, he hoped to get a chance to run in each evening to see how the wounded man was getting on. And he did not return alone; as luck would have it he had fallen in with the former surgeon of the 106th and had brought him along with him, having been unable to find another doctor, consoling himself with the reflection that the terrible, big man with the lion’s mane was not such a bad sort of fellow after all.

When Bouroche, who knew nothing of the patient he was summoned with such insistence to attend and grumbled at having to climb so many stairs, learned that it was a Communist he had on his hands he commenced to storm.

“God’s thunder, what do you take me for? Do you suppose I’m going to waste my time on those thieving, murdering, house-burning scoundrels? As for this particular bandit, his case is clear, and I’ll take it upon me to see he is cured; yes, with a bullet in his head!”

But his anger subsided suddenly at sight of Henriette’s pale face and her golden hair streaming in disorder over her black dress.

“He is my brother, doctor, and he was with you at Sedan.”

He made no reply, but uncovered the injuries and examined them in silence; then, taking some phials from his pocket, he made a fresh dressing, explaining to the young woman how it was done. When he had finished he turned suddenly to the patient and asked in his loud, rough voice:

“Why did you take sides with those ruffians? What could cause you to be guilty of such an abomination?”

Maurice, with a feverish luster in his eyes, had been watching him since he entered the room, but no word had escaped his lips. He answered in a voice that was almost fierce, so eager was it:

“Because there is too much suffering in the world, too much wickedness, too much infamy!”

Bouroche’s shrug of the shoulders seemed to indicate that he thought a young man was likely to make his mark who carried such ideas about in his head. He appeared to be about to say something further, but changed his mind and bowed himself out, simply adding:

“I will come in again.”

To Henriette, on the landing, he said he would not venture to make any promises. The injury to the lung was serious; hemorrhage might set in and carry off the patient without a moment’s warning. And when she re-entered the room she forced a smile to her lips, notwithstanding the sharp stab with which the doctor’s words had pierced her heart, for had she not promised herself to save him? and could she permit him to be snatched from them now that they three were again united, with a prospect of a lifetime of affection and happiness before them? She had not left the room since morning, an old woman who lived on the landing having kindly offered to act as her messenger for the purchase of such things as she required. And she returned and resumed her place upon a chair at her brother’s bedside.

But Maurice, in his febrile excitation, questioned Jean, insisting on knowing what had happened since the morning. The latter did not tell him everything, maintaining a discreet silence upon the furious rage which Paris, now it was delivered from its tyrants, was manifesting toward the dying Commune. It was now Wednesday. For two interminable days succeeding the Sunday evening when the conflict first broke out the citizens had lived in their cellars, quaking with fear, and when they ventured out at last on Wednesday morning, the spectacle of bloodshed and devastation that met their eyes on every side, and more particularly the frightful ruin entailed by the conflagrations, aroused in their breasts feelings the bitterest and most vindictive. It was felt in every quarter that the punishment must be worthy of the crime. The houses in the suspected quarters were subjected to a rigorous search and men and women who were at all tainted with suspicion were led away in droves and shot without formality. At six o’clock of the evening of that day the army of the Versaillese was master of the half of Paris, following the line of the principal avenues from the park of Montsouris to the station of the Northern Railway, and the remainder of the braver members of the Commune, a mere handful, some twenty or so, had taken refuge in the
mairie
of the eleventh arrondissement, in the Boulevard Voltaire.

They were silent when he concluded his narration, and Maurice, his glance vaguely wandering over the city through the open window that let in the soft, warm air of evening, murmured:

“Well, the work goes on; Paris continues to burn!”

It was true: the flames were becoming visible again in the increasing darkness and the heavens were reddened once more with the ill-omened light. That afternoon the powder magazine at the Luxembourg had exploded with a frightful detonation, which gave rise to a report that the Pantheon had collapsed and sunk into the catacombs. All that day, moreover, the conflagrations of the night pursued their course unchecked; the Palace of the Council of State and the Tuileries were burning still, the Ministry of Finance continued to belch forth its billowing clouds of smoke. A dozen times Henriette was obliged to close the window against the shower of blackened, burning paper that the hot breath of the fire whirled upward into the sky, whence it descended to earth again in a fine rain of fragments; the streets of Paris were covered with them, and some were found in the fields of Normandy, thirty leagues away. And now it was not the western and southern districts alone which seemed devoted to destruction, the houses in the Rue Royale and those of the Croix-Rouge and the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs: the entire eastern portion of the city appeared to be in flames, the Hotel de Ville glowed on the horizon like a mighty furnace. And in that direction also, blazing like gigantic beacon-fires upon the mountain tops, were the Theatre-Lyrique, the
mairie
of the fourth arrondissement, and more than thirty houses in the adjacent streets, to say nothing of the theater of the Porte-Saint-Martin, further to the north, which illuminated the darkness of its locality as a stack of grain lights up the deserted, dusky fields at night. There is no doubt that in many cases the incendiaries were actuated by motives of personal revenge; perhaps, too, there were criminal records which the parties implicated had an object in destroying. It was no longer a question of self-defense with the Commune, of checking the advance of the victorious troops by fire; a delirium of destruction raged among its adherents: the Palace of Justice, the Hotel-Dieu and the cathedral of Notre-Dame escaped by the merest chance. They would destroy solely for the sake of destroying, would bury the effete, rotten humanity beneath the ruins of a world, in the hope that from the ashes might spring a new and innocent race that should realize the primitive legends of an earthly paradise. And all that night again did the sea of flame roll its waves over Paris.

“Ah; war, war, what a hateful thing it is!” said Henriette to herself, looking out on the sore-smitten city.

Was it not indeed the last act, the inevitable conclusion of the tragedy, the blood-madness for which the lost fields of Sedan and Metz were responsible, the epidemic of destruction born from the siege of Paris, the supreme struggle of a nation in peril of dissolution, in the midst of slaughter and universal ruin?

But Maurice, without taking his eyes from the fires that were raging in the distance, feebly, and with an effort, murmured:

“No, no; do not be unjust toward war. It is good; it has its appointed work to do—”

There were mingled hatred and remorse in the cry with which Jean interrupted him.

“Good God! When I see you lying there, and know it is through my fault — Do not say a word in defense of it; it is an accursed thing, is war!”

The wounded man smiled faintly.

“Oh, as for me, what matters it? There is many another in my condition. It may be that this blood-letting was necessary for us. War is life, which cannot exist without its sister, death.”

And Maurice closed his eyes, exhausted by the effort it had cost him to utter those few words. Henriette signaled Jean not to continue the discussion. It angered her; all her being rose in protest against such suffering and waste of human life, notwithstanding the calm bravery of her frail woman’s nature, with her clear, limpid eyes, in which lived again all the heroic spirit of the grandfather, the veteran of the Napoleonic wars.

Two days more, Thursday and Friday, passed, like their predecessors, amid scenes of slaughter and conflagration. The thunder of the artillery was incessant; the batteries of the army of Versailles on the heights of Montmartre roared against those that the federates had established at Belleville and Pare-Lachaise without a moment’s respite, while the latter maintained a desultory fire on Paris. Shells had fallen in the Rue Richelieu and the Place Vendome. At evening on the 25th the entire left bank was in possession of the regular troops, but on the right bank the barricades in the Place Chateau d’Eau and the Place de la Bastille continued to hold out; they were veritable fortresses, from which proceeded an uninterrupted and most destructive fire. At twilight, while the last remaining members of the Commune were stealing off to make provision for their safety, Delescluze took his cane and walked leisurely away to the barricade that was thrown across the Boulevard Voltaire, where he died a hero’s death. At daybreak on the following morning, the 26th, the Chateau d’Eau and Bastille positions were carried, and the Communists, now reduced to a handful of brave men who were resolved to sell their lives dearly, had only la Villette, Belleville, and Charonne left to them, And for two more days they remained and fought there with the fury of despair.

On Friday evening, as Jean was on his way from the Place du Carrousel to the Rue des Orties, he witnessed a summary execution in the Rue Richelieu that filled him with horror. For the last forty-eight hours two courts-martial had been sitting, one at the Luxembourg, the other at the Theatre du Chatelet; the prisoners convicted by the former were taken into the garden and shot, while those found guilty by the latter were dragged away to the Lobau barracks, where a platoon of soldiers that was kept there in constant attendance for the purpose mowed them down, almost at point-blank range. The scenes of slaughter there were most horrible: there were men and women who had been condemned to death on the flimsiest evidence: because they had a stain of powder on their hands, because their feet were shod with army shoes; there were innocent persons, the victims of private malice, who had been wrongfully denounced, shrieking forth their entreaties and explanations and finding no one to lend an ear to them; and all were driven pell-mell against a wall, facing the muzzles of the muskets, often so many poor wretches in the band at once that the bullets did not suffice for all and it became necessary to finish the wounded with the bayonet. From morning until night the place was streaming with blood; the tumbrils were kept busy bearing away the bodies of the dead. And throughout the length and breadth of the city, keeping pace with the revengeful clamors of the people, other executions were continually taking place, in front of barricades, against the walls in the deserted streets, on the steps of the public buildings. It was under such circumstances that Jean saw a woman and two men dragged by the residents of the quartier before the officer commanding the detachment that was guarding the Theatre Francais. The citizens showed themselves more bloodthirsty than the soldiery, and those among the newspapers that had resumed publication were howling for measures of extermination. A threatening crowd surrounded the prisoners and was particularly violent against the woman, in whom the excited bourgeois beheld one of those
petroleuses
who were the constant bugbear of terror-haunted imaginations, whom they accused of prowling by night, slinking along the darkened streets past the dwellings of the wealthy, to throw cans of lighted petroleum into unprotected cellars. This woman, was the cry, had been found bending over a coal-hole in the Rue Sainte-Anne. And notwithstanding her denials, accompanied by tears and supplications, she was hurled, together with the two men, to the bottom of the ditch in front of an abandoned barricade, and there, lying in the mud and slime, they were shot with as little pity as wolves caught in a trap. Some by-passers stopped and looked indifferently on the scene, among them a lady hanging on her husband’s arm, while a baker’s boy, who was carrying home a tart to someone in the neighborhood, whistled the refrain of a popular air.