Werewolf of Paris (32 page)

President Gois suspended the audience for a moment and deliberated with his associate judges. They soon produced a verdict which Gois read aloud. It was a succession of Attendu que… attendu que, that is to say “inasmuch as the accused admits the charge; inasmuch as the Porte Maillot is where the enemy is now concentrated; inasmuch as the political past of the accused, no matter how glorious (Girot was an old Republican), cannot excuse him from fulfilling the military duties he has accepted to perform, etc., etc. We declare the accused guilty of having refused to march against the armed rebels of Versailles.

“Wherefore the court, after due deliberation, condemns Citizen Girot, Jean-Nicolas, to the punishment of death, which shall take place—”

In a loud voice the condemned man cut across Gois' readings with a sharp, impertinent, “Thank you, gentlemen.”

Another case was rapidly called up lest the public demonstrate. And a public once invited to demonstrate takes to that weapon all too readily.

It was past midnight before Bertrand was brought up. The room by that time had become infernally hot. The lamps smoked. The air was stifling. The spectators squirmed a little impatiently. The sight of Bertrand did not move them. There was nothing unusual about him, neither his hangdog expression nor his hands tied behind his back, the strait-jacket having been reinoved.

The case was rapidly reviewed. The single witness, his arms in bandages, his face badly slashed by tooth and nail, was invited to recount his story. Then Bertrand was asked for a statement, but refused to make any. By agreement both sides had dispensed with lawyers, so that matter was soon concluded.

After a moment's deliberation, President Gois rose to speak. Aymar's heart began to pound for the president was holding up Aymar's script as if he were about to read from it, and indeed he did read from it, but in a way that altered Aymar's intention at every point.

“Here,” he concluded after a rapid and attenuated summary of the facts given by Aymar, “is a case that would have been led to the stake in former days. The Catholic Church, ladies and gentlemen, burnt three hundred thousand of these. Think of it! Three hundred thousand people whose only crime was that they were afflicted with a disease, people, therefore, who should have been handed over to competent doctors, not to the executioner. The Commune, enlightened and guided by science, does not propose to confuse physical or mental illness with deliberate violation of social laws. Indeed, it is the aim of the Commune eventually to treat all criminals as if they were sick people and cure them by the application of medicine and hygiene. And that fortunate day will come, once the rebels of Versailles and their allies, the priests and monks, have been exterminated.

“It is that brood that for centuries has fostered the belief that only their crosses and prayers, their torture chambers and their flaming fagots and stake, could hold the devil in check. And this young man, deluded by I know not what disease into thinking himself a mad dog, would have been an example for them to exhibit as proof of the existence of the devil and of the need of priest and aristocrat to hold the Evil One in cheek.

“We deal differently. Here is no self-interest seeking to oppress a people and hold it in subjection by means of enforced and cunningly inculcated ignorance and superstition. Here is progress, freedom and intelligence. This court therefore agrees that inasmuch as the accused is suffering from an illness which leads him to go mad at times; that inasmuch as he shows by his present demeanor that his violence is only temporary; that inasmuch as this court tries only crimes and does not propose to cure disease by jail or execution, that this court therefore decrees that the accused be turned over to the infirmary at the prison of La Santé for treatment, and there be guarded until cured.

“Read in public audience of the court-martial…” etc.

“Talk! Talk! Talk!” Aymar muttered in disgust at seeing his own words quoted against him. “Talk one way and talk another. All words, words, fighting words, and none of us knowing anything.”

There was in truth a great deal of talking that day. That same evening in the Hotel de Ville the “American” Cluseret, formerly head of military affairs, was being tried for high treason. The trial seemed never to want to come to the point. The committee, formed for the purpose of judging this professional revolutionist who had brought his sword to the support of a dozen wars in as many countries of the old and new world, was in the majority for freeing the general, but even more anxious to employ this occasion to attack the minority that had framed the charge against him.

There were endless speakers, there was endless bickering. Every detail of the events of the last few weeks had to be gone over and gone over again.

It was late at night. Vermorel was speaking. The inquest, he declared, had shown the falseness of the charge against Cluseret, but “the ease with which we can arrest a military chief when he seems to be doing our cause harm, that is the important point of this trial. That, it seems to me, is one of the best symptoms of the soundness of the Commune, the best proof of its strength!”

A pale, agitated man had come into the hall. He held a telegram in his hand and waited impatiently for Vermorel to cease, but as the latter showed every sign of launching out into a long address, he cried out, annoyed:

“Make it quick!”

Everyone turned to look at the rude interrupter. It was Billioray, member of the Central Committee. In the silence that followed he ordered all unimportant officers out and all doors closed. Then he read the telegram. It was from General Dombrowski and announced that the Versailles troops had forced an entrance into the city and were pouring in.

The trial was resumed, but the speakers had their minds elsewhere. No more flowing orations. In short phrases the matter was concluded and brought to a vote. Twenty-eight to seven voted for immediate release. Cluseret was now admitted to hear the decision.

He thought it incumbent to say a few words, but no one listened. The hall emptied itself. The days of talk, talk, talk were over.

The members of the Central Committee departed into the night. Some were thinking of their families or of themselves, and these hastened to find safer quarters. But others, heroic to the end, went to superintend the throwing up of barricades, and sought in a last desperate resistance to die for their cause.

Chapter Seventeen

A
t a later period Aymar added several postscripts to his defense of Bertrand Caillet, known as Bertrand Chaillet of the 204th battalion of the National Guard. We have quoted elsewhere part of one to the effect that the uprising of the Commune was due to a kind of infectious disease. The following paragraphs, too, are of interest:

“After the trial and conviction of Bertrand, Colonel Gois returned my manuscript.

“‘Mon cher M Galliez,' he said, ‘there are ideas in this thesis of yours which you would have done better not to express, and that is why I am returning this to you. Destroy it. Such things are dangerous.'

“I replied stiffly, for his plagiarism of my work had annoyed me not a little and his present schoolmasterish reprimand struck me in a sensitive spot: ‘They seem to have been good enough for you to have used,' I said; ‘but you are right. I have noticed myself that the Commune is afraid of ideas. However, I have never allowed timidity to restrain me from exercising that freedom of thought and expression which an earlier, and more successful, Commune once procured for us.'

“To my surprise, for I knew his intransigence, he smiled and put his arm around me. ‘Come, Aymar, you really don't seriously believe all the things you wrote there, do you?,

“As a matter of fact, I didn't and yet I did, so I answered evasively: ‘And what if I do?'

“‘Hm,' he said. ‘And are you going to be a priest?'

“‘Perhaps,' I answered.

“‘You? Aymar Galliez? You in a soutane with a cross hanging over your belly? No, I can't believe it!' He laughed.

“We had a few words of rather friendly discussion. Knowing me of the party, he was unwilling to be too severe but he warned me to be careful of speaking out of turn. Indeed, he, himself, was a dangerous man, and he is one of those whom I have set down as infected by Bertrand, and he was to prove it shortly.

“I did not think then that I was to see
him
under a soutane, and with a cross hanging over his belly, sooner than I was to find myself in such attire.”

This rather curt conclusion to the fate of Gois in Aymar Galliez' script is readily expanded, for the history of the last few days of the Commune has been meticulously compiled.

The reader will recall that the delegate to the ex-Prefecture of Police had arrested many people, especially of the clergy, to keep as hostages. The avowed and widely published threat was that the Commune of Paris would kill two hostages for every one of their party shot by the government of Versaillles.

The chief purpose of the Commune, however, seems to have been to intimidate Adolphe Thiers to return Blanqui, who was being held a prisoner by the Versaillists. The captive Archbishop of Paris, threatened with death unless Blanqui was returned, himself wrote a letter to Thiers, in which he pleaded that Blanqui be exchanged for himself. Among other things he said that Blanqui, the Communist, was of no value to the Commune and not to be feared, for the Commune followed none of his ideas. “If he were associated with the Commune, far from being a help, he would only be a new element of discord in the party.”

But Thiers refused. The efforts of the American Ambassador failed, as did the efforts of many others. Some Communards claimed that Thiers wanted the archbishop killed so as to rouse the populace against the Commune. This seems really far-fetched, and if the Commune suspected as much, nothing was easier than not to slay the archbishop. But perhaps it was too late to exercise clemency. The Versailles army was marching on Paris. A gate was taken, the army poured in, barricades were thrown up. Terrific street-fighting ensued. Every window might conceal a Communist with a gun, fighting like a cornered rat. This last week was one of no mercy.

There is such a thing as a drunkenness that comes from a surfeit of bloodshed. The mob of Paris, outraged by endless murders, howled, but only for more blood, like a man drunk with liquor who, while lying wretched and puking under the table, still craves another drink and yet another.

On the 24th of May, on the third day of street-fighting, a firing squad had come to the prison of La Grande Roquette and demanded six hostages, among them the archbishop, to be executed immediately. For what? It was too late now for a dramatic warning to Versailles to release Blanqui. This was the end. The army of Versailles, circling like a python, was slowly crushing the Commune to death. The ribs of the city were cracking. The air was full of flying death. “While we are still in possession of the archbishop, let us execute him. Tomorrow may be too late.” So the Communards thought.

On the 25th, Clavier, the commissaire who had been in charge of the Piepus affair, came to take the banker, Jecker, out of his cell. The director of the prison wished to see an order before he would consent to release Jecker. Clavier had none, but being of a compliant nature, he wrote one out in the spot and signed it, too. The director accepted the paper at the point of a pistol and found the combined argument exceedingly valid. The banker, who was suspected of having made and concealed millions, had actually been ruined in his Mexican speculation by his fellow bankers, for there is no more loyalty of caste among capitalists than in any stratum of society, although more power for ill and good.

Clavier marched out with his prisoner, and after a fairly long walk, found a quiet and convenient spot, placed his captive against a wall, and while the latter pleaded softly, “Don't make me suffer,” the order was given to fire. Some gamins of the neighborhood amused themselves by kicking the dead body.

Curiously, the firing was heard by Colonel Gois, who happened to be passing along an adjoining street. He felt this to be a kind of poaching on his special province, he being the head of the court-martial. The two thereupon agreed to join forces.

Clavier and he first had lunch, then they met by appointment and proceeded once more to the Roquette prison. Revolvers were loosened in the holsters and a list of prisoners demanded. The director had learnt his business by this time and complied at once.

Gois read out the names and marked down fifty, ten being clericals (four of them monks arrested at the Piepus comedy), forty being guards and agents of Imperial days. Fifty. That was all he wanted. He did not have men enough to handle more.

In the prison there was much commotion. The inmates had seen seven go to their death and were frightened. To reassure them and obviate resistance, the guards repeated that this was to be a mere change of prison. Many believed. “We are going to take you to the mairie of Belleville, because they have no more bread here for so many prisoners.” Moreover, the number of names called out was in itself reassuring. One, even six, might be placed before a firing squad, but fifty!

The jailers, passing down the line, unlocked many cells from which no inmates were called out. This was done because several of the older jailers had run away and the men left did not know the prison. Thus was opened the cell in which Jean Robert was locked. His term had long expired but still he was in jail. So that though his name was not called, he thought it an excellent idea to step out as if he heard himself called. There might be a possibility of escape. For months now, he had had no news of his family. He saw men hastily making bundles of their effects. He quickly snatched his own overcoat, his only possession, and ran out.

No effort was made to control the prisoners. The men were simply hustled into a line and marched off to the sound of fife and drum. Some of them were bareheaded. But most had had time to dress and to tie up a few things in a kerchief. The captive guards of Paris of Imperial days took pride in marching smartly. The priests, hindered by their soutanes, dragged behind. All around were the Fédérés, the men of the National Guard, adhering to the Commune, guns held in readiness. Jean Robert, his limbs stiff from years of sitting on the box and months in prison, walked among the clerics.