_ CHAPTER XI
Jean Marot found Mlle. Fouchette interesting but incomprehensible.
Jean believed himself to be a sincere and true republican,--and he was, in fact, quite as logical in this as were many of the so-called republicans of the French Parliament, who, like their familiar political prototypes in the United States, talked one way and voted another. He had participated in the street disturbances as a protest against the Ministry and for the pure love of excitement, not against the republic.
As to the Dreyfus case, he had been satisfied, with most of his countrymen, upon the statement of five successive ministers of war.
After all, in a country where so many have always stood ready to sell their national liberty for the gold of the stranger, it came easy to believe in one Judas more.
The United States has had but one Benedict Arnold; France counts her traitors by the thousands. They spring from every rank and are incidental to every age. The word Treachery is the most important word in French domestic history.
And when honest men doubted the justice of a council of war, they were silenced by the specious reasoning of men like M. de Beauchamp. Had Jean been invited to assist in overturning the republic and to put Philippe d'Orleans on the throne, he would have revolted. His political ideals would have been outraged. Yet every act committed by him and by his blind partisans tended directly, and were secretly engineered by others, to that end.
Jean Marot in this was but a fair type of tens of thousands of his intelligent but headstrong and misguided countrymen.
"In the street!"
Once in the street the following day, Jean forgot his serious reflections of the previous night. It was Sunday, the chosen day of battle by sea and land,--a day consecrated to violence and bloodshed by the Paris mob. The students gathered at the divided rendezvous of the Place Pantheon and the Place de l'Odeon. Many of them wore the white boutonniere of the Jeunesse Royalistes, the tricolor, the red rose of communism, or other badge of particular political belief, and all carried canes, some of which were loaded and some of the sword variety. Their leaders excitedly harangued them while the heavy squads of police agents distributed in the vicinity watched the proceedings without interference.
Indeed, the royalists and their allies had abundant reason to believe the police force of Paris, officers and men, civil and military, in sympathy with their movement against the republic. Not one of the many street disturbances of the year past had been the spontaneous outburst of popular anger that is the forerunner of revolution. On every occasion they had been, as they were in this instance, the publicly prearranged breaches of the peace in which the worst elements of the Paris world were invited or hired to join. This was well known to the government. It would have been easy and perfectly legal and wise to have anticipated them by governmental authority. Acting under that authority, a score or two of police agents could have dispersed all preliminary gatherings. Under the eye of such a police force as we have in New York any one of the numerous riots which disgraced the streets of Paris during the pendency of the "Affaire" would have been impossible.
The police of Paris, however, are French,--which is to say that they are incapable of seeing their duty from a strictly impersonal point of view, but are lax to the utmost indifference and partiality or brutal to the extreme of cruelty and fiendishness.
But perhaps the severest censure of the Paris police agent lies in the fact that no just magistrate accepts his unsupported testimony, and that at least two-thirds of his riot arrests are nullified at once by setting the victims at liberty. As the police agent is the creature of the general government and is not responsible to the municipality, he can only be brought to book when he makes the mistake of offending some high personage. To the complaint of an ordinary citizen he would probably reply by drawing his cloak around him and expectorating viciously.
"Qu'est-ce que ca me fiche?"
The students assembled at the Place du Pantheon easily avoided the shadowy blue barrier drawn up across the Rue Soufflot. They howled a good deal in unison, then suddenly disappeared down Rue Cujas, and, pouring into Boulevard St. Michel, joined forces at the foot of Rue Racine with their comrades from the Place de l'Odeon. Like all student manifestations of any sort, the procession made a great noise, sticks were brandished, and the air rent with cries of "Vive l'armee! A bas les traitres!"
The peaceful shopkeepers came to their doors and regarded the young men indulgently. "Ah! la jeunesse n'a q'un temps!"
Some four hundred young men from the great schools were joined at the Place St. Michel by numerous hoodlums and roughs from the purlieus of Rue St. Severin, Place Maubert, and the equally delectable region of Rue de la Hutchette. These patriot soldiers of fortune "emeuted" for the low rate of forty sous per day, and were mostly armed with bludgeons, wherewith to earn their meagre salary. It mattered little whom they served, though it was just now the noble Duc d'Orleans.
The police saw this addition with a knowing eye. They barred the entrance to the Pont St. Michel. It was a half-hearted effort, and with cries of "Vive la liberte!" "En avant!" the mob of young men swept the thin files out of the way and gained the bridge. Not, however, without some kicks and blows, broken canes, and bleeding faces. A lusty gold-laced brigadier rolled in the dust, desperately clinging to two coat-collars, and won the coveted cross by allowing himself to be kicked and stamped almost out of human resemblance by the infuriated mob of rescuers.
By this time the head of the mob had reached the other end of the bridge, where a double barrier of agents was drawn up across the street. A gray-haired commissaire of long and distinguished police service walked calmly forward alone to meet them. His resolute step, his pose, bespoke his dignity and courage. He raised his left hand with the air of authority accustomed to being obeyed.
His keen eyes at once sought and found and held the eyes of the leaders.
"You must go back,--you cannot cross here,--you must disperse----"
"Sacre!" growled the crowd, moving forward threateningly. "We have a right to cross anywhere! We are citizens of Paris and have the rights of any other citizen,--the same as you, Monsieur le Commissaire!"
A dozen such protests on the instant. But the wily veteran was ready. He knew that when a mob stops to parley the battle is half won.
"Oh, yes, messieurs,--singly, or as other good citizens, you are right; but not as----"
A young man reached over his comrades' shoulders and struck the old commissaire in the face with his cane.
"For shame!" cried Jean Marot, indignantly. "What foolishness!" And he broke the cane across his knee and threw the fragments to the ground.
In the same moment the old commissaire dashed into the crowd and single-handed dragged his youthful assailant to the front and clear of his companions.
"The guard! the guard! Look out, comrades! here comes the guard!"
The cry ran along the line and through the ranks hushed by the wanton blow delivered unnecessarily upon a respected official. A company of the Garde Republicaine a pied had filed out across the Boulevard du Palais from behind the Prefecture; another company a cheval debouched into the quai from the other corner, and now rode slowly down towards the bridge.
"Bayonets in front and sabres on the flank!" said Jean to those around him. "It were wise to get out of this."
"Good advice, young man,--get out! It won't do, you see. You must cross singly, or as other citizens. Never mind your hot-headed young friend," added the old man, kindly, as he wiped the blood from his face. "We won't be hard on him. Only, you must go back at once!"
He talked to them as if they were little children. But they needed no further urging. The rear-guard had already turned tail at the sight of the troops and were in full retreat. Before the last man had cleared the bridge the only one who had been arrested was set at liberty, though he had richly earned six months in jail.
And thus terminated the harebrained attempt to march five hundred riotous men through the city directly in front of the Prefecture, where lay unlimited reserves, civil and military, under arms. The royalists had somewhat overstrained the complaisance of the authorities.
Acting at once on the hint of the police official, the crowd broke up into small groups. "A la Concorde! A la Concorde! Concorde!" they cried.
This revolutionary rendezvous was prearranged to mean Place du Carrousel, conditional on police interference. It was to deceive the authorities, the main object being to form a junction with the anticipated hordes from Montmartre and La Villette.
But a mob broken into scattered groups is no longer a mob, and being no longer a mob, there is no longer courage or cohesion of purpose. Instead of some four hundred students and about a hundred roughs, not more than fifty of the former responded at the foot of the Gambetta monument, while the latter class had gathered strength by the way.
This discrepancy, though painfully apparent to Jean Marot and his friends, in no wise dampened their ardor. Their chosen speakers lashed them into fresh furors of patriotism while they waited. The eloquent young man who quoted the words of Gambetta engraved on his monument wrung tears from his sympathetic auditors. These words of wisdom and patriotism had no pertinence whatever to the work in hand,--which was to break up a meeting organized by some distinguished philanthropists, scholars, and their friends in the interests of civil liberty and the perpetuity of human rights,--but everything serves as fuel to a flame well started.
Carried away by the spirit of exaltation, Jean Marot clambered upon the monument itself, and ascending the heroic figure of Gambetta amid the wild plaudits of the mob, kissed the mute stone lips. His hat had fallen to the ground, and now the hysterical crowd tore it into bits and scrambled for the pieces, which they pinned on their breasts as precious souvenirs of the occasion.
When Jean reached the earth it was to be frantically embraced on every side. A great, broad-shouldered, big-bearded man in a cap and the blouse of the artisan crowned this exciting ceremony by kissing the young student full on the mouth.
A score of hats were tendered, but Jean accepted the cap of the stalwart workman, who immediately brandished his club and shouted "En avant!" He unwound his soiled red sash as he started, and, making it deftly into a sort of turban, constituted himself Jean's special body-guard for the day.
The strong force of police posted in the neighborhood of the Louvre had regarded this street drama with stoical indifference. When the noisy crowd surged into the Rue de Rivoli it passed between the mounted videttes of the Garde Republicaine. Farther on, in the Rue St. Honore, a squad of dismounted cuirassiers stood listlessly holding the bridles of their horses. The afternoon sun flashed electric rays from the plates of burnished steel.
"Vive l'armee!" burst from the mob.
A subaltern on the curb touched his glittering casque in military salute without stirring a muscle of his armored body.
Now recognized leader, Jean directed the march up the narrow Rue de Richelieu, observing to his bearded aide that it was more direct and safe, though shouts of "Avenue de l'Opera! l'Opera!" rose from his followers. Jean paid no attention to these cries.
"You are right, my boy!" said the man in the blouse, patting Jean on the shoulder approvingly. "The broad streets are to the agents and military. The cuirassiers can there trample men like flies! Ah! with a regiment of cavalry and a battery of three quick-firers one could hold Paris at the Place de l'Opera against the world!"
"Yes, my friend," answered Jean, with a smile, "always provided the world agreed not to drop thousand-pound melinite shells on one from Mont Valerien or Montmartre, or from some other place."
"Yes, yes, yes,--you are right, my boy," admitted the other. "En avant!"
This man had the voice of a Stentor. He was also a Hercules of strength. Here and there the narrow street seemed blocked with vehicles; but when he did not terrorize the drivers into immediate flight at the sound of his voice and the sight of his club he would calmly lift the encumbrance and set it to one side.
"En avant!" he would then roar.
Where possible, however, all vehicles promptly fled the street save the omnibuses. From the imperiale of one of these came the cry,--
"Vive la republique!"
"Vive l'armee!" yelled the mob.
"Vive la republique!" came the response.
A dash was made for the omnibus. While four or five men held the horses a dozen or more clambered over the wheels and up the narrow steps behind. There were sixteen persons on top, seven of whom were women. The latter shrieked. Two fainted away. The assailants sprang upon the men and demanded the one who had dared to consider the health of the republic without the army. No one could or would point him out. On the apparently well established French principle that it is better that ten innocent should suffer punishment rather than that one guilty person should escape the patriotic young men assaulted everybody. A white-haired old man who protested was slapped in the face, another man was quieted by a brutal kick in the abdomen that doubled him up, a couple of foreigners who could neither understand the language nor comprehend what it was all about were roughly handled, a half-grown boy was cuffed,--everybody but the driver came in for blows and insults; and this driver of the omnibus was in all probability the real villain.
"En avant!"
This lesson was administered en route, and without stopping the main body of manifestants pressed on into the grand boulevard, to be swallowed up in the resistless human current that now flowed down upon the Place de l'Opera. _