The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siecle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror (5 page)

At J.-B. Say, Émile was a member of the "moles," students preparing for possible admission to one of the
grandes écoles,
highly competitive institutions of higher education. The moles paid a small membership fee and occasional fines (sometimes given in jest), and at the end of the year the money was pooled for a banquet honoring those admitted to the prestigious École polytechnique, a school for future engineers. On some Sundays, he invited his friends from Paris to go with him to Brévannes for a day in the country.

Émile was eligible, by virtue of his good schoolwork, to apply to the École polytechnique, which had been founded by Napoleon. Graduating from that
grande école
could earn him a place in the army, as an officer or an engineer. However, after passing the written exam, Émile failed the oral one. During this part of the test, another student threw some sort of stink bomb into the hall. Émile later claimed that the professor had taken revenge on him for the incident by giving him an extraordinarily difficult question or an unjustifiably low grade. The comte Ogier d'lvry, son-in-law of the marquise de Chamborant, an
homme de lettres
and an army officer who considered Émile "a charming boy, something of a dreamer," urged his distant relative to try again for the École polytechnique. His own excellent situation in the army might later assist Émile. But the young man refused any help.

At seventeen, Émile needed a job, since the auberge in Brévannes brought in barely enough money to keep the Henry family afloat. In 1889, Émile's uncle Jean Bordenave, a civil engineer, employed Émile, who worked hard and took on difficult tasks, sometimes even stepping in for his uncle. Bordenave soon gave him a raise, then proposed that Émile accompany him to Venice. With several new patents, the engineer had signed a contract to provide a new water system for the city. Émile accepted the offer.

On December 28,1889, Émile wrote his chemistry professor at J.-B. Say, Monsieur Philippe, from Venice, to apologize for having left school so abruptly in November without saying goodbye. All was going well for him in Italy. He was doing a bit of everything, sketching proposed projects, penning correspondence, and calculating the resistance of building materials. He was extremely happy working for his uncle, confidently adding, "I hope to build a good future, if not a brilliant one at least something sure, working on such new, wonderful projects, which will surely be part of great developments in the future." His uncle had received offers of contracts in Cayenne in French Guiana as well as Algeria, Belgium, Switzerland, and Russia to build canals or reservoirs for petroleum. Émile hoped that soon he would be in one of "these diverse countries" and that he would be most happy to see himself ultimately working in a branch of the civil engineering corps (Ponts-et-Chaussées), which looked after the national road system.

The possibility of reapplying to the École polytechnique remained, but Émile confessed to Monsieur Philippe that he was worried about what kind of future this could offer him, even if he was admitted. Now he added, "My tastes and my too limited financial situation keep me from any kind of military career. I found myself after leaving school without a position, with considerable general knowledge, but without really having a profession." He thanked Philippe for all his "good lessons" and frank conversations and asked him to promise his friends at the school that he would never forget them and would visit them upon his return.

In September 1890 the postman brought three letters from Émile to Brévannes. They had been penned on August 24 and September 1 at the Albergo della Luna in Mestre, outside Venice. He was happy to have received letters from both of his brothers four days earlier, bringing welcome news of good health, his older brother Fortuné's new job, and the "dazzling successes of our
picciolo
Jules" in school. After so long without word from his family, Émile was relieved. Émile had written a letter of birthday greetings to Fortuné in care of his "political friends" (Fortuné had adopted the left-wing politics of their father), but he suspected that it had never arrived. He hoped to return to France very soon and surprise his family. In September they would see what "passes for my head" on the train, or on the road near his mother's auberge.

In his letter to Jules, after trying to imagine the surprise of the mailman delivering a letter from so far away, he congratulated his younger brother on having passed the general exam following primary school. If he won any more prizes, would not the auberge risk collapsing under the enthusiastic bravos of the people saluting his success? He hoped that his younger brother would soon write him back "without making too many spelling errors and in a style that would surpass those of all the Madames de Sevigne of the past, present, and future." He described the canals of Venice, the Piazza of Saint Mark with the famous winged lion to its side, and the palace of the Doge, "really as old as time itself, all in marble with its first steps bathing in the sea." These had been well worth seeing, but he worked most of the time and had very little leisure. He asked Jules to tell their mother that he would send some money soon, though it was difficult to find a way to do so. In the meantime, he should give her a kiss for him, tell her that he thought of her often, and give his greetings to their older brother and all their friends. After asking him to send news of the family to "Signor Emmilio Henry" in Mestre, he signed the letter "Your brother who loves you and will watch over you."

On September 1 Émile was still in Italy, writing to his mother as a good son to wish her a happy feast day, that of Saint Rose. He promised that he and his brothers would do all that they could to make her happier and try to repay her for some of what she had done for them. He implored her not to worry about his health, although his face, neck, and hands had been so much in the sun that they now appeared the color of baked bricks. He also sent along one hundred francs.

And then, Émile suddenly left Venice. The precipating event may have been Bordenave's asking him to undertake secret surveillance of the workers. The two had argued about the assignment on the way to Venice. Bordenave later explained that a misunderstanding had occurred. His nephew was naive, "absolutely new to life and believed the word of a man to have the same exactitude as the sciences." The engineer had drawn an analogy to help Émile understand the rationale behind the assignment: if he was a finance inspector, would he consider it unacceptable to monitor the money under his responsibility? But from Émile's perspective, supervising—and perhaps spying on—the workers would have put him in the unpopular role of foreman, something he was unwilling to do. He departed for Paris, leaving his disappointed uncle behind.

Back in Paris, Émile lived briefly with an aunt before moving in with his brother near the quai Valmy on the canal Saint-Martin, close to place de la République. He briefly considered taking more preparatory courses for the entrance exam to the École polytechnique. He went to see the former director of J.-B. Say, who knew him and thought well of him. But that was the end of it, perhaps because he lacked funds to continue his studies. After several months without work, late in September 1890 Émile found a position with a store selling special fabrics from the town of Roubaix, at a salary of eight hundred francs a year. He came recommended by the father of a former classmate, and the manager, Monsieur Veillon, created a position for him as a clerk. As expected, Émile did very well.

Now nineteen years of age, Émile was short, about five feet, four inches in height. He was thin and invariably pale, and had dark chestnut-colored hair; he sported the beginnings of a reddish blond beard. Rather elegant in appearance, he liked being well dressed. Without appearing haughty, he nonetheless gave the impression of being a rather cold and somewhat aloof intellectual.

It was during this time that Émile began to wrestle with the great questions, "the most perplexing philosophic speculations. What is matter? What is mind? Are psychic phenomena regulated by universal laws in the same way as physical phenomena? Is death the annihilation of the Ego?" He had begun to dabble in Spiritism (the French name for the movement known in America as spiritualism), trying to contact the soul of his father. Indeed, his friend Charles Malato later claimed that Émile "lost his footing and fell into the abyss of Spiritism, even became [a medium] and wasted his health unhesitatingly in exhausting experiments, because he longed for knowledge."

Given Émile's strong attachment to the memory of his deceased father, one can understand his desire to communicate with dead souls. Émile's flirtation with Spiritism was perfectly in tune with the fin-de-siecle bohemian idealism of many young intellectuals in Paris. The increased number of private and formally organized Spiritist groups reflected contemporary critiques of modernity in an age when scientific materialism seemed to triumph. Their quest drew upon tensions between faith and reason—and attempts to reconcile the two. New ideas about psychology, for example, emphasized hyponotic trances. Spiritists believed that they could provide proof of metaphysical concepts in the realm of philosophical speculation.

Yet, rebelling against "the frauds," as he discovered them to be, Émile soon abandoned the quest, which lacked the certainty and precision of the science he had studied. Later he dismissed this period, suggesting that it had been extremely brief: "Me, a Spiritist! Well, it is true that ... a friend who was absorbed by occult science invited me to take part in a certain number of experiments. I saw right away that this was just another form of charlatanism and I did not continue with it. Mathematics gave me the taste for things both positive and precise."

Émile's life became something of a mystery to Rose Henry. He had changed. Whenever he did appear in Brévannes, he was eager to return to the capital. Once his mother chastised him for how he looked, and he replied, "You know, Mother, that I love you dearly, but I can't escape my destiny, which is stronger than even my feelings for you. Let me do as I see fit." Books, which he had always loved, no longer interested him. No amusements could distract him. He appeared sad, pensive. And he had been overtaken, in her words, by "an unfortunate passion."

In 1891, Émile fell in love with a woman named Élisa Gauthey. She was the wife of an anarchist who lived in eastern Paris on boulevard Voltaire. Émile's brother Fortuné, who had become an anarchist, was often present at the Gautheys' attic apartment. He introduced his younger brother to the couple. Élisa remembered "a quiet and shy boy, a dreamer who did not seem to see or hear anything that was going on around him."

Élisa was a tall, striking woman with long curly hair, a "strong Byzantine nose," large black eyes, and a rounded mouth with "sensual lips" resting above a solid chin. Overall, her face offered "more strength than grace" but, at the same time, appeared both "reticent and teasing." This, along with the "amplitude of her bosom," gave the appearance, at least to Émile, of "a reposing creature of love."

One day when the brothers were visiting, Élisa, on a "woman's whim," asked Fortuné, who had a reputation in anarchist circles for writing poetry, if he would write a couple of verses for her. Émile overheard this, and when they got up to leave later in the evening, asked if she also wanted
him
to write a poem for her. Surprised, she looked at him. He looked back, staring intently into her eyes. Élisa, stifling a burst of laughter, told him, "Well, why not? Go ahead, write me some verses!"

And he did, for he was in love. One long, rambling poem reflected his Spiritist phase, suggesting cosmological vision. The concluding verse, with its idea of a "reign of attraction" and a spirit able to purify itself, reflects the influence of Allan Kardec (the pen name of the educator and philosopher H. Léon Rivail), who had created the Spiritist Society in Paris in 1869 and dominated the movement for many years.

Another was more directly addressed to Élisa:

I see around me the angels
And goddesses of love
All running up and, each in turn,
Coming to sing me their praises.

But they all murmur: "Hope"
And I, who know they are liars
Feel my sorrows revive
Because they laugh at my misery.

I cannot have hope
After these verses I will be quiet;
But always I will love you
And I will consecrate my suffering.

I will suffer silently
And you will always be my lady
The beautiful ideal of my soul
Dreaming of love under the high heavens.

Émile's poems "amused" Élisa, but she did not attach any significance to them. Shortly thereafter, she and her husband spent several weeks in the country at Brévannes. Fortuné and Élisa's husband shared a commitment to anarchism, and such a visit seemed perfectly normal. During their stay, the smitten Émile stayed at Élisa's side, constantly looking for opportunities to talk to her, and more. A friend remembered "how many afternoons he spent in the garden, lying on the grass at the foot of the coquette he loved, gazing at her in silence, like a true believer on his idol." On one occasion, he tried to kiss her neck when her husband was not around. Among the "thousand" incidents she would later recall, one day in the garden Élisa kissed her husband, who offered her his arm. Émile became quite pale and left suddenly. Shortly thereafter, he went to bed with a fever. His mother did not know what to think. Élisa went to see him, asking him what was wrong. Émile expressed astonishment that she did not understand. She had kissed her husband right in front of him. This hurt him very deeply, and he confessed that he loved her "desperately." The object of his thoroughly unrequited passion now began to laugh. Émile reproached her for treating him like a child, telling her, "You will learn later how much I love you."

In September 1891, Émile sent filisa several letters. In clear, elegant script he asked her to excuse the incoherence of his words. So many ideas were swirling about in his head. Sadly, he wrote, she did not understand "the extent of my love ... I have so much need for affection, consolation, and loving caresses that I see myself alone and isolated, lost in this vast morass of human egotism." Sometimes life itself filled him with horror. At such times, "I would like simply to disappear, to annihilate myself, in order to escape the perpetual anguish that strangles and breaks heart and soul. To love someone so much and not to be loved!"