_ CHAPTER XII
A formidable proportion of the grand concourse which filled the fashionable boulevards from curb to curb this beautiful Sunday afternoon was composed of the so-called "boulevardiers," "flaneurs," and "badauds," who invariably appear on occasion offering excitement. For the Parisian world loves to be amused, and to have the pulse quickened by riot and bloodshed is to very many the highest form of amusement. It is better than a bull-fight.
To most of this very large class of Parisians it is immaterial what form of government they live under, provided that in some way or another it furnish plenty of excitement. No other country in the civilized world, unless Spain is to be included under this head, produces this peculiar class, the unseen influence of which seems to have escaped the brilliant French writers who have recorded the turbulent history of France.
The cardinal characteristic of the French individually and as a people is love of and admiration for theatrical display. This finds such ample illustration in all of their known domestic as well as international affairs that even the mere statement seems unnecessary. It permeates every social rank, and it enters into the performance of the simplest private as well as public duties. In higher governmental affairs it was accurately represented by the late President of the republic, Felix Faure, who went among his countrymen in a coach and four preceded by trumpeters and accompanied by a regiment of cuirassiers, and who required of his entourage all of the formalities of royalty. The hundreds of thousands who enjoyed his kingly funeral would have been equally entertained by a public execution.
In the French nature, as has been said, is implanted a keen zest for excitement. The Frenchman is ravenous for the theatrical situation,--a perfect gormandizer of the dramatic event. Whatever or whoever lacks this gilded framework is neither remembered nor noted. The supply invariably follows the demand; without spectators there would be no spectacle,--just as there is no sound where there are no ears.
Any Frenchman, therefore, who has any theatrical novelty to offer, whether as a political mountebank, or a bogus hero, or a peculiarly atrocious crime, is sure of a large audience. For there is a wide range of appreciation in that mercurial nature which, according to Voltaire, is half monkey and half tiger.
The evident pleasure with which vast Parisian crowds view riots and revolution and the various phases of alternate anarchy and absolutism may be easily and naturally accepted by the actors in these living dramas as tacit if not positive approval. The professional patriot does not perform to empty seats, and the few hundred hired assassins of the public peace and private liberty would be out of a job but for the hundred thousand passive and more or less amused spectators who scramble for the best places to witness and make merry over the show.
That this curious crowd is greatly swelled by what in other lands is recognized as the gentler or softer sex increases its responsibility. The civilization which has produced so many women of the heroic type, so many of the nobler masculine brain and hand, has also generated a vast brood which poisons the germs of human life and hands down bigotry, intolerance, revengefulness, cruelty, and love of turbulence and bloodshed from generation to generation.
Of the performers before this audience Jean Marot and his stalwart companion found themselves particularly observed from their debut. The red turban was conspicuous enough, and gave a theatrical aspect to the man who wore it. There was that in his ensemble which recalled the great Revolution and the scarcely less sanguinary conflicts of '71. By his side and contrasting strangely with the coarse brute features of this muscular humanity was the finely chiselled face of the student under the rough cap of the workman. A picturesque pair, they were greeted on all sides with all sorts of cries and comments:
"That red cap is very appropriate."
"It is the head-dress of the barricades."
"Sure!"
"Of la Villette, hein?"
"The man is mad!"
"Ah! look at that!"
"There goes a good rascal."
"A young man and his father perhaps."
"No!"
"Long live the students!"
"En avant!" roared the man in the red turban.
"Vive l'anarchie!" shouted an individual on the curb whose eyes were glazed from absinthe.
The crowd laughed. Some applauded,--not so much the sentiment as the drunken wit. The people were being entertained.
"We certainly have the street this day," observed Jean to his companion.
"Right you are, my boy!"
Both noted the squadron of cuirassiers drawn up in front of the Opera, the police agents massed on either side, and the regiment of the line under arms in the Rue 4 Septembre close at hand. In the middle distance a squadron of the Garde de Paris came leisurely up the Avenue de l'Opera.
"You see, my friend," said Jean, smiling, "the government is looking sharply after its strategic position."
"Vive l'armee!"
The man in the red turban swung his baton, and his resounding cry was caught up by the manifestants. It was the voice of flattery and conciliation extended to the army, through which the royalist party hoped to win a throne.
But they were not alone there. From several quarters came sharp rejoinders of "Vive la justice!" "Vive la republique!" "Vive la France!"
While these cries seemed harmless if not proper, they were judged seditious by the police, who made a dash for those who uttered them. In another instant the man with the red turban would have saved the agents the trouble of arresting the nearest person had not Jean grasped the baton. The brute face had taken on a flush of red ferocity. His blow restrained, the man spat in the face of his intended victim and strode on.
"Not yet, my friend!" exclaimed the student leader. "What! precipitate a fight here! Madness! We should be ridden down within three minutes! The government will be sure to protect the Opera."
"Yes; you are always right, mon enfant," growled the man.
Meanwhile, the unfortunate Parisian who wanted "justice" got it; being dragged off by two police agents, who took turns in kicking and cuffing their prisoner on the way to the depot. There he was charged with uttering seditious cries calculated to lead to a breach of the peace.
Gathering confidence from immunity, however, the manifestants soon ceased to observe this respect for public opinion. In Boulevard Haussmann they got out from the eye of the military. They began to hustle those who happened to get in their way. Those who were not sufficiently explicit in their views were compelled to cry "Vive l'armee;" whoever refused was promptly knocked on the head.
"Monsieur Front de Boeuf," said Jean Marot to his companion, who had narrowly missed spattering the young leader with the brains of a misguided Dreyfusarde, "if you will strike less heavily you will longer remain with us, and possibly for a time escape the guillotine. Let us do no murder, mon ami. Your stick is heavy."
"That's so; but it is a lovely stick all the same," replied the man, with a satisfied air, as he wiped the blood from his hands upon his blouse.
Then for the first time Jean noticed that this blouse bore many old stains of the same sanguinary color. Undoubtedly it was blood. Human? Faugh!
Jean saw around him other men of the same type, red-faced and strong-limbed, mentally as well as physically saturated with the brutality of their calling. He thought of Mlle. Fouchette. It was true, then, that these human brutes from the abattoirs were here. That other type, the "camelot,"--he of the callous, cadaverous face, thinly clad body, cunning eyes, husky lungs,--was more familiar.
But these butchers of La Villette, why were they royalists? What special interest had the killers of cattle in the restoration of the monarchy? They had emphasized their devotion to the Duc d'Orleans by re-electing his parliamentary leader, the Comte de Sabran, by an overwhelming vote. From the rich and influential wholesaler to the low hind whose twelve hours a day were passed in knocking bullocks on the head or in slitting throats with precision the butchers stood three to one for the royal regime. Men may be hired for certain services, but in such a case as this there must exist some natural sentiment at bottom. This sentiment was perhaps only the common French intolerance of existing things.
Jean Marot's train of thought had not reached that far, owing to fresh differences of opinion between some of his followers and the spectators, in which it became necessary for a dozen men to kick one helpless fellow-man into insensibility.
They were now nearing the proposed place of meeting, and the hitherto scattered cries of "Vive la justice!" "Vive la liberte!" "Vive la France!" and "Vive la republique!" had developed into well-defined opposition. Personal collisions, blows, objurgations, came thicker and faster.
Finally, from the "terrasse" of a fashionable cafe in the Boulevard Malesherbes came very decided expressions of dissent. They were followed by a general assault on the place. Not less than thirty of the usual respectable Sunday afternoon "consommateurs" occupied the chairs, and, though not more than half a dozen of these could have offended, the mob came down upon them like a living avalanche, throwing the entire Sunday party of both sexes promiscuously among the debris of tables, chairs, glasses, and drinks.
The women shrieked, the men cursed loudly, and everybody struggled in the general wreck. While the male portion were kicked and stamped where they lay, the feminine part of the cafe crowd fought tooth and nail to escape in any direction.
There were three dissatisfied beings, however, who objected to this summary treatment, and who, having regained a footing, courageously defended themselves with the nearest weapons at hand. These were empty beer-glasses, which, being fraudulently double thick at the bottom, were admirably designed for that particular use. But when three beer-glasses conflict with twenty loaded canes the former, however valiantly wielded, must succumb to the rule of the majority. Among the latter, too, was the particularly heavy stick of the patriot from the abattoirs of La Villette. He had received a blow from a glass that laid his cheek open and had jumped upon his assailant.
"Death!" he roared.
The man sank without a groan amid the broken glass, beer, and blood. The savage aimed a terrific blow of the boot at the upturned face, but was jostled out of his aim. Again, and with the snarl of a wild beast; but a woman had thrown herself across the prostrate figure and encircled the still form with her protecting arm. The butcher would have planted his iron-shod heel upon her, but at this critical juncture another woman--a slender, pale, weak-looking thing whose blonde hair fell loosely over her rouged cheeks--flew at him with a scream half human, half feline,--such as chills the blood in the midnight of the forest. With one hand she tore out great bunches of beard by the roots, with the other she left red furrows on his face like the paths of a garden-rake. Quick as lightning-flashes, again and again, and with each successive stroke of her claws came the low, hysterical whine of the wild beast.
It was Mlle. Fouchette.
Her catlike jaws were distended and quivering,--the white teeth glistened,--the eyes of steel seemed to emit sparks of fire,--the small, lithe body swayed and undulated like that of an angry puma.
"Yes!--so!--death!--yes!--death!--you!--beast!--you devil!"
With each energetic word went a wild sweep of the claws or came a wisp of beard.
The man bellowed with pain. The unexpected fury of her onslaught, the general melee of close quarters, the instinct of protection, contributed to prevent the man from simply braining her with his "casse-tete." He was a lion against a hornet, powerless to punish his puny assailant. As he finally broke away, she suddenly whirled and delivered beneath the arm that shielded his eyes a kick that half choked him with his own teeth.
Blinded with blood and howling with pain, the wretch plunged headlong through the cafe front amid a crash of falling glass.
In the mean time, while this little curtain-raiser had been getting under way, there was still another and more important drama in active preparation.
The police, as if to lend such material aid to the royalist cause as lay in their power, and to assist in the punishment of those misguided Frenchmen who took the words "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," inscribed over the doors of the public hall, in a too literal sense, had violently closed those doors against the latter and by cunningly arranged barriers driven the unsuspecting Dreyfusardes down upon their armed enemies. It was a most admirably arranged plot to destroy the public peace, and reflected credit upon the clerico-royalist-military council that had planned it.
Before the indignant republicans had begun to realize the character of the trap set for them they found themselves hemmed in on three sides by the police and attacked by the combination of hostile forces on the other side.
The latter had been quietly assembled in the vicinity in anticipation of this denouement. They were led by Senators and Deputies wearing the official scarf of their high legislative function. This at once afforded the latter reasonable immunity from arrest, and served to encourage and assure those accustomed to look for some shadow of authority to conceal or excuse the evil of their deeds.
The French Senator or Deputy who leads street rioters against a peaceable assemblage of his fellow-citizens one day and serenely sits in national legislative deliberation the next day is the faithful representative of a constituency as far removed from the American type of citizenship as the French legislator is from our national legislator.
With shouts of "Vive l'armee!" "A bas les vendus!" "Vive France aux Francais!" "A bas les Juifs!" the waiting combination, or "nationalistes," fell upon their victims with fist, heel, and club. This was not as a body, the assailants being cleverly scattered everywhere through the crowd, and assaulting individually and supporting each other where resistance was encountered. As many were mere spectators, they were compelled to declare themselves or come in for a share of the drubbing, though this opportunity for escape was not always offered or accepted.
The pure love of fighting is strong in the French as in the Irish breast, and once roused the Frenchman is not too particular whose head comes beneath his baton.
It naturally happened, therefore, that on this occasion the innocent curious of all opinions received impartial treatment, often without knowing to which side they were indebted for their thumping. Every man thus assaulted at once became a rioter and began the work on his own particular account. Within a brief period not less than a hundred personal combats were going on at the same moment. As far as the eye could reach the broad boulevard was a surging sea of scuffling humanity, above which rose a cloud of dust and a continuous roar of angry voices. To the distant ear this was as one voice,--that of terrible imprecation.
Having thus ingeniously united the conflicting currents in one tempest, the police precipitated themselves on the whole.
Had any additional element been required to bring things to the highest stage of combativeness this would have answered quite well. As interference in family affairs almost invariably brings the wrath of both parties down on the peacemaker, so now the police began to receive their share of the public attention.
The Parisian population have not that docile disposition and submissive respect for authority characteristic of our Americans. The absence of the night-stick and ready revolver must be supplied by overwhelming physical force. Even escaping criminals cannot be shot down in France with impunity.
Though deprived of both clubs and sabres and not trusted with revolvers, these police agents make good use of hands and feet. Not being bound by the rules of the ring, their favorite blow is the blow below the belt. It is viciously administered by both foot and knee. Next to that is the kick on the shins, which, delivered by a heavy, iron-shod cowhide boot, is pretty apt to render the recipient hors de combat. Supplemented by a quick fist and directed by a quicker temper, the French police agent is no mean antagonist in a general row. In brutality and impulsive cruelty he is but the flesh and blood of those with whom he has mostly to deal.
The battle now raged with increasing violence, the combatants being slowly driven down upon the approaching manifestants from the Quartier Latin, Montmartre, and La Villette. It had become everybody's fight, the original Dreyfusardes having been largely eliminated by nationaliste clubs and police arrests. The ambulances and cellular vans, playfully termed "salad-baskets," thoughtfully stationed in the side streets, were being rapidly filled, and as fast as filled were driven to hospital and prison respectively.
The reverberating roar of human voices beat against the tall buildings, rising and falling in frightful diapason, as if it were the echo from a thousand savage creatures of the jungle clashing their fangs in deadly combat.
Jean Marot and his immediate followers had scarcely turned from the scene at the cafe before they were swallowed up in the vortex that now met them. Indeed, Jean had not witnessed either the horrible brutality of the butcher or his punishment. The cries of "Les agents! a bas les agents!" had suddenly carried him elsewhere on the field of battle. He found himself, fired by the fever of conflict, in the middle of the broad street so closely surrounded by friends and foes that sticks were encumbrances. A short arm blow only was now and then effective. A dozen police agents were underfoot somewhere, being pitilessly stamped and trampled by the frantic mob. The platoon that had charged was wiped out as a platoon. Those who were hemmed in fought like demons. Men throttled each other and swayed back and forth and yelled imprecations and fell in struggling masses and got upon their feet again and twisted and squirmed and panted, like so many monsters, half serpent and half beast, seeking to bury their fangs in some vital part or tear each other limb from limb.
Suddenly Jean saw rise before him a face that drove everything else from his mind. It was that of one who saw him at the same instant. And when these bloodshot eyes of passion met a fierce yell of wrath burst from the two men.
It was Henri Lerouge.
He was hatless and his clothes were in shreds and covered with the grime of the street. His hair was matted with coagulated blood,--his lips were swollen hideously. A police agent in about the same condition held him by the throat.
When Henri Lerouge saw Jean Marot he seemed imbued with the strength of a giant and the agility of a cat. He shook off the grip of the agent as if it were that of a child and at a bound cleared the struggling group that separated him from his former friend.
They grappled without a word and without a blow, and, linked in the embrace of mortal hatred, rolled together in the dust.
The cruel human waves broke over them and rolled on and receded, and went and came again, and eddied and seethed and roared above them.
These two rose no more. _