The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror (22 page)

The bomb thrown on February 12, 1894, by a young man wearing shabby black pants, vest, boots, and a white shirt with a black tie, struck a chandelier in the grand hall of the Café Terminus. It fell to the ground between two tables, not far from the orchestra, exploding with a terrifying boom and producing thick, acrid smoke. Bullets and pieces of lead flew in every direction. Marble tables, metal chairs, and mirrors shattered. The explosion left a sizable hole in the wooden floor and punctured the ceiling. Amid general panic, the screams and shouts of the wounded joined the smoke. Those not seriously wounded ran toward any door they could find, flooding the adjoining streets and the courtyard of the Gare Saint-Lazare.

The waiter who had served Émile his beer and cigar had seen him return to throw the bomb. Madame Leblanc, sitting with her sister and brother-in-law, an employee of the Bank of France, also saw a young man move toward the door and then turn back to throw something. She remembered thinking, at first, that he did not want to pay for his drink. Her sister, Madame Emmanuel, had had exactly the same reaction—"Hey, look, he is running away without paying the waiter." The three of them were hurt. Charles Villevaleix, a former diplomat representing Haiti in Paris, had been sitting near the door; he heard a noise like a loud shout and saw glass falling on the table. Standing up instinctively, he realized that he was bleeding profusely from his left thigh. Charles Beuquet, a bank employee, was sitting near the orchestra when he saw an electric lamp crash to the ground and heard the explosion. He ran outside and then felt a sharp pain in his leg. Eugène Garnier, a self-described man of letters, heard a dull thud as the bomb exploded and immediately shouted that it was a bomb, and then felt a shooting sensation through his left foot, heel, and calf. The widow Pauline Kinsbourg, who was sitting with her daughter between the two doors, saw the bomb explode, flames leaping forward, followed by acrid smoke. Both her legs were bleeding. Ernest Borde, a forty-two-year-old draftsman, was sitting with his good friend Louis-Napoléon Van Herreweghen, his back to the front door. As the small orchestra played the third piece of the first set, he noticed a young man who appeared to be from the provinces; he was carrying a package wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. It occurred to him that the package might contain a large Camembert. The two men saw him get up and leave, and then the bulbs of the electric chandelier crashed onto the table where they were sitting. An object exploded at their feet. Borde collapsed, gravely wounded. Van Herreweghen pulled a piece of lead out of his right leg. Amid understandable panic, a man yelled, "I am wounded! Let me through!" and then fell into the arms of another victim. Some of the waiters and a few cool-headed souls began to assist the wounded, carrying them to the adjoining restaurants or up into the hotel itself. Others were led to nearby pharmacies for help.

In the meantime, the man who had thrown the bomb had fled before it actually detonated. A waiter who saw him running shouted, "Stop him, stop him!" After almost colliding with another waiter, Émile shouted "There he is!" to distract attention from himself. He ran down rue du Havre, narrowly missing a kiosk before turning back onto the nearly deserted rue de l'Isly. His goal was to reach the Gare Saint-Lazare back around the corner, lose himself among the passengers, and purchase a ticket for the suburbs.

Émile-Joseph Martinguet, who worked in an office near Pigalle and had been walking outside the Café Terminus, gave chase. A waiter, Tissier, also pursued the man, joined by a railway employee who happened to be standing across the street. Émile pulled a pistol from his coat and fired at the waiter. François Poisson, a policeman who had fought with the army in Indochina, was standing nearby on duty—ironically, talking with a Republican Guard about Vaillants execution—when he heard someone yell, "Stop him!" When Poisson asked what had happened, someone shouted that the man who had run past them had thrown a bomb. Although wearing heavy boots, Poisson ran after Émile, followed by the waiter, who had been grazed by a bullet. An apprentice barber, Léon Maurice, heard someone shout, "Stop, thief, murderer, stop him!" and ran out into the street, still carrying a shaving brush and bowl, before joining the chase. Policeman Poisson gained ground when Émile turned to fire more shots, as policemen Jules Toutet and Émile Gigot took off after the bomber. A bullet hit the barber. Two ticket inspectors of the Tramway Company had heard a shot, first thinking that it was a firecracker tossed by a child. Then they saw policeman Poisson chasing a man, and they too pursued Émile. At the corner of rue de l'Isly and rue de Rome, Poisson grabbed Émile, who fired at him point-blank. The first bullet struck the policeman's black leather wallet in an inside pocket of his overcoat, shredding some papers. The wallet saved his life, though it also helped that Émile's bullets had been flattened in order to do greater damage, which slightly reduced their initial speed. A second bullet grazed the policeman's arm. When Poisson raised his sword over his head, Émile fired again, the third shot barely missing the policeman's face. Then one of the ticket inspectors, Guillemin, hit the suspect with the metal puncher he used to validate tramway tickets. A fishing-tackle merchant, Gustave Petit, had entered the melee when an unknown man apparently hit him over the head with a cane, which led some to suspect, briefly, that Émile had an accomplice. Poisson threw himself on Émile, and the two rolled into the gutter. Holding Émile down, Poisson placed the point of his sword against the bomber's throat, shouting, "If you move, scoundrel, I'll cut you up!" Émile was formally arrested at 9:15 by the agents Toutet and Gigot.

Poisson and the policemen who had joined him now had to protect the suspect from a small but angry crowd. In his attempt to escape, Émile had received several bruises and bled from his nose. His clothes had been torn. The bomber continued to struggle, lashing out with fists and feet, until he was finally subdued. A witness later remembered that because he said very little, Émile seemed more like an ordinary thief than an anarchist. One of the men who helped capture him recounted that the bomber's eyes seemed to be popping out of his head and that he was drenched in sweat. There seemed nothing human about him, especially when he shouted with a husky voice, "Bunch of pigs! I would kill you all." The police contingent now numbered almost twenty. The nearby cafés emptied. A woman fainted.

When asked his name, Émile replied, "Find out for yourself." At first he denied having thrown the bomb, but he was clearly out to get society: "the more bourgeois who get killed, the better..." A quick search of the bomber turned up six flattened bullets, a knife with several blades, a stiletto knife, and brass knuckles. He had put poison on a knife blade. When asked why he was carrying such an arsenal, the arrested man replied that he was always armed so as to defend his freedom. He admitted having fired shots at those running after him and regretted that only one policeman had been hit; if he had not fallen after firing his last shot, he would have switched to using his knife.

The captured man carried no identity papers but was wearing around his neck a small locket containing a lock of hair. When one of the policemen, Aragon, asked his name, age, and profession, he replied that his name was Léon Breton. He added that if the policemen did not like that one, then Le Breton would do, or any other they preferred. As for his age, he was as old as he was, and as for his address, the police would not have that, either, nor his profession. He would only say that he was an anarchist and responded to further questions with a political tirade.

"Breton" was taken to the police station on rue de Moscou. Martinguet, one of those who had chased him, was brought along to identify the man in custody as the person who had thrown the bomb. Martinguet reported that he had seen two young men "looking quite suspicious," one wearing a blue smock and wearing a hat, and the other blond and noticeably thin, with a small mustache, standing on the sidewalk outside the café and looking in. Suddenly he saw the second man throw something about the size of a cannonball into the Terminus; then he took off, running. When Martinguet heard the powerful explosion inside the café, he immediately began to run after the man, who turned and fired a pistol, first once, and then three more times, in the direction of those who were following him, before being taken at the corner of rue de l'Isly and rue de Rome. Martinguet's account, however, left the identity of the second man, whom he took to be the bomber's lookout, a mystery. He confirmed that "Breton" was one of the two men he had seen outside the café, and without question the one who had thrown the bomb, for his face had been fully exposed by the streetlights.

A doctor was summoned to treat the suspect's minor injuries, incurred in the scuffle. The bomber seemed to be about twenty years old, if that. The doctor asked his patient why he had committed such a monstrous act and was told that what the doctor considered a "monstrous act" was very natural for anarchists. In order "to arrive at an era of justice and true freedom which will bring happiness to everyone," the bourgeoisie had to disappear from the planet. When the doctor asked if he would kill someone caring for his wounds, he replied that he would certainly do so.

At 9:35
P.M.,
the policeman in charge at the Gare Saint-Lazare notified the prefect of police and the prosecutor's office that a bomb had been thrown into the Café Terminus and that several people had been gravely wounded. The secretary-general of the prefecture of police happened to be dining in the vicinity, and was alerted. At 11:30, a magistrate arrived to ask "Breton" some questions. And so did Lépine, the prefect of police himself, who had first gone to the Café Terminus to see what had happened. After trying to interrogate the bomb thrower, who refused to say much more than that he had acted alone, Lépine went to see the minister of the interior. "Breton" suddenly stated that he had arrived in Paris from the provinces. From where? No one's business. He had been chased and demanded to know why. He had only been walking by the Café Terminus. Madame Emmanuel, who lived nearby on rue d'Amsterdam, was also brought to the police station to identify "Breton" as the person who threw the bomb. A woman from the neighborhood turned up at the police station hoping to catch a glimpse of the bomber; she had not been in the Café Terminus but had never seen a murderer and was eager to lay her eyes on one. When a magistrate again asked his occupation, "Breton" spat out, "Write down cabinetmaker or chimney sweep, if you want. Add that I come from Marseille, or Peking, or anywhere else. Go and try to find out ... it will help pass the time." At 1:15 in the morning, a small crowd of onlookers began to insult him as he climbed into the police wagon. Émile turned and called them cowards.

In the meantime, the Café Terminus had been blocked off by barriers and the metal storefront lowered. Bloodied pieces of clothing, hats, napkins, copies of the evening's program, and a bloodstained newspaper lay among the rubble of wood and metal, broken chairs, chunks of marble, and shattered porcelain and glassware. These were sealed as evidence, along with what was left of an ironworker's lunchbox. The first conclusion was obvious: the bomb was intended not simply to call attention to the plight of the poor—the goal of Vaillant—but to kill. When Lépine arrived at the Café Terminus several hours after the attack, two extremely pale cashiers still sat in their chairs, frozen in fear, obliged to guard the evening's take. A waiter who was exhausted, confused, tired, and hungry asked only to be left alone. In the hotel itself, guests anxiously asked the staff what had happened; some wanted to move out of their rooms immediately. The Café Terminus opened for business the next day at 2:30
P.M.,
while people stopped by simply to gawk.

Those arrested in Paris and the
département
of the Seine passed through the holding cells at the Palais de Justice on the île de la Cité. On an average day, about 150 people were brought there. Many arrived in a police wagon pulled by two horses (and now known—without the horses—as "salad shakers" because their small windows make them resemble this kitchen tool). "Breton" was taken into the receiving room, and his assumed name entered on a register, along with the reason for his arrest: attempted murder. He was then led across a small courtyard—really just an open space, with ruins on one side and the wall of the Court of the Girondins on the other—then through a set of doors leading into the holding cells. He was there ordered to take off his shoes, and was searched. He again said that he was Léon Breton and that he had been born in 1874, adding that he would not reveal where he had been born, nor the names of his mother and father. He declared himself to be a cabinetmaker, unmarried, and without a residence in Paris. He refused to sign the copy of the initial interrogation. The process of gathering information and thus preparing the case against "Breton" began immediately, under the authority of the investigating magistrate, Judge Meyer.

The bomber was taken to cell number 8 in the men's block on the right side of the building at 2:45
A.M.
The cell could be seen from above by guards patrolling a maze of staircases and iron footbridges. The two-story gallery of jail cells, standing between the halls of the Correctional Courts and Assize Courts, formed a tall, narrow nave, with small cells, each with a small glass window, on both sides. At the far end was a common area, where prisoners often inscribed their signatures and the dates of their visit. Émile climbed onto the bed and quickly fell asleep. Two police inspectors remained with him in the cell until 5:00
A.M.,
having been told to extract every possible bit of information from him. Two inspectors would occupy the cell with "Breton" at virtually all times, in shifts of twelve hours.

Émile slept until 11:30
A.M.
He then asked a procedural question about the judicial investigation and wondered if he would have to remain in the temporary holding cell for long. When told that this would depend on his cooperation, he replied that he would be of no help. Curiously enough, he seemed preoccupied with how investigators would learn his true identity, adding, almost helpfully, that he saw only one way, by publishing his photograph: "as I am somewhat known, someone would recognize me." He readily admitted that he attended anarchist meetings, referring to several notable gatherings, including the one in the Salle du Commerce, after which his brother—and he too—had been arrested for brandishing what appeared to be a cartridge of dynamite. He spoke about a meeting organized by the followers of Boulanger, a gathering in which "the anarchists were very badly treated." However, he had concluded that such sessions were ineffective unless they were immediately followed by "an act of propaganda by the deed."