THE PLACE VENDOME AND LA ROQUETTE.
THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE COMMUNE.
FROM LE CORRESPONDANT.
Concluded.
When we arrived at La Roquette, as there were no steps by which to descend from the cart, the national guardsmen, who had not insulted us, aided the laymen in getting out, but when it came to the turn of the priests they refused their assistance. They shut us up for more than an hour and a half in a narrow room which could scarcely hold us. It was nearly five hours since we left our cells at Mazas. Some aged priests—pardon these common details concerning the sufferings of all kinds we underwent—asked to be shown to a retired place. After making them wait a long time, they placed a repulsive bucket in the middle of the room. During our whole stay at La Roquette, a hundred soldiers, ten ecclesiastics, and some national guardsmen had no other—what the English and Germans call by a modest euphemism “a closet or privy”—than an article of the same kind, placed in the middle of an infectious apartment in the third story, and I was suffering from an inflammation of the bowels, brought on by want of exercise, of nourishment, and of sleep.
The time passed in this anteroom was not lost. We became acquainted and we encouraged one another. In the school of misfortune, people learn to be communicative, and to overlook differences of age and social rank. Those who did not anticipate any imminent danger were undeceived. We will add, to show how profoundly
hope is graven in the heart of man, that the strongest pessimists easily yielded to the influence of the optimists. Not one was wanting in firmness and patience.
At last the door of the anteroom opened, and a citoyen with red pantaloons, a red girdle, and red cravat called over the prisoners. It was Citoyen François, the Director of La Roquette. Those familiar with the history of Paris know that, at the end of the Empire, the post of the sapeurs-pompiers of La Villette was taken by assault by a handful of demagogues, who killed several sapeurs-pompiers. The leaders of the insurrection were no other than General Eudes, a member of the Commune, and Citizen François, the warden of La Roquette. The citizen-director of Mazas had still greater claims on the confidence of the Commune. It will be seen that the hostages were well guarded.
La Grande-Roquette, so called to distinguish it from La Petite-Roquette, which is opposite, and where young prisoners are confined, is the prison of those condemned to death and to the travaux forcés. It is divided into two distinct parts: the eastern and western buildings. Separated by a spacious interior court, they are united on the street by a third building, in the lower part of which is the jailer’s office; and, on the opposite side, by a sufficiently large chapel, which was, of course,
closed and stript of all the exterior emblems they could destroy.
Some of us were confined in the first story of the western building where the hostages were who came the night before. The second and third stories were occupied by those sentenced by the court of assize of the Seine.
The remainder, and I was of the number, were sent to the third story of the eastern building. The first story was occupied by about forty Parisian guardsmen, prisoners of the Commune; the second story by a somewhat larger number of sergents de ville, who were found at Montmartre in the affair of the eighteenth of March. In consequence of the defection of a part of the line, they fell into the power of the insurgents. There were also on the same story a dozen artillerymen, likewise prisoners. The third story, where I was conducted with seven ecclesiastics and three laymen, was already occupied by a hundred soldiers, some of whom, on their way through Paris at the time of the proclamation of the Commune, refused to serve it, and others had been taken prisoners in the engagements between the insurgents and the regular army. The following night, three vicars from Belleville and St. Ambroise were imprisoned with us.
The cells of La Roquette are extremely plain. They are about one mètre and a few centimètres wide and two and a half metrès long. No chair, no table: the only article of furniture is an iron bedstead. Neatness is the least thing to be remarked concerning them. It was very evident that several generations of criminals had occupied them without rendering them any more agreeable. This was not all. The first night I found myself among two kinds of insects whose names are unmentionable.
When in the warm climes of the East, and in the villages of Southern Spain, I found myself aux prises with these nocturnal enemies, I had at least the consolation of lighting my taper, of complaining the next day to the hostess, and of changing my room or the inn. But at La Roquette none of these things was possible. Having no chair to sit on, I remained seated on my bed.
I must, however, mention one advantage at La Roquette of which we were deprived at Mazas: the cellular discipline was not as rigorous. The prisoners could at certain moments of the day see each other in the court, or in the passage of the story they occupied. Each window lights two cells separated by a strong partition, but between the partition and the grating of the window, common to both cells, is a space through which the occupants can talk, and even pass a book. I could thus exchange some pious thoughts and fortifying resolutions with my neighbor, the Abbé Amodru. During the day we spoke of God, of death, eternity, of the assistance we could render our companions: during the night, we regarded with horror the lugubrious fires that seemed to be devouring the whole city.
The very night of our arrival, a battery of seven large marine pieces set up at Père-la-Chaise began to discharge shells and petroleum-bombs on different parts of Paris. As it was only a few mètres from our prison, it shook our cells and stunned us with the frightful detonation, and the whir of the projectiles passing above our heads. This battery did not cease its incendiary work till the following Saturday, the twenty-seventh of May, at half-past three, the moment when the regular army gained possession of the cemetery. Some days before my arrest, Citizen
Delescluze declared in a proclamation, little noticed, that the miserable advocates of the government of the fourth of September, ready in words to defend us against the Prussians behind the forts, ramparts, and barricades, had given everything up to them; but the Communists would show themselves faithful to their plan of defence against the royalists—“after the ramparts, the barricades; after the barricades, the houses; after the houses, fire and the mine.” This great criminal should have kept his word.
We were permitted on Wednesday morning to hold communication with one another. But the director gave the strictest orders that there should be none whatever between us and the soldiers. When the soldiers were not in one of the courts of the prison, we were shut up in our cells.
I observed M. l’Abbé Beyle, one of Mgr. Darboy’s vicar-generals, in one of the windows of the first story of the western building. He immediately recognized me, and informed me by some intelligible signs that the hostages would have recreation together in one of the courts, and that M. Deguerry would be very glad to see me and obtain news of the parish of the Madeleine.
At noon the wardens ordered us to descend. I was affected at the thought that I was about to see our archbishop and vicar-generals, my curé, and some of my friends belonging to the clergy and religious orders of Paris. I stationed myself before the door through which they would come out of the western building. The archbishop was the first to appear. He was hardly recognizable, such frightful ravages had privations and sufferings wrought on his frail and delicate constitution. He was immediately surrounded by the priests of the eastern building. The laymen were not
less eager to manifest their respectful sympathy. While he was addressing me a friendly word, and I was kissing his hand, M. Deguerry entered the court. I had been for ten years one of his vicars at the Madeleine. Knowing his great need of an active life and a certain impressionability of his character, I expected to find him enfeebled, discouraged, and ill after two months’ confinement in the cell of a prison. Happily, there was nothing of the kind. His face was fresh and healthy, and his conversation cheerful and enlivening. In spite of his seventy-four years, he was as erect as ever. He, as well as the archbishop, had undergone much suffering, but privations and trials had made no inroads upon his strong constitution.
With the exception of a quarter of an hour I passed with Mgr. Surat, Père Olivaint, M. Bayle, M. Petit, the chief secretary of the archbishop, M. Moléon, the curé of St. Séverin, and some other confrères, I passed the whole time of recreation with M. Deguerry. He was desirous of news concerning his clergy and parish. The closing of the Madeleine greatly distressed him, but, when he heard that nothing had been injured or desecrated, he resumed his serenity. He said little of the humiliating treatment of Raoul Rigault, and the ennui and sufferings of his long imprisonment in the cells of Mazas. So far from retaining any bitterness in his heart, he wished “to consecrate the few years he still had to live in doing as much good as possible to those who had been persecuting the clergy and injuring the cause of religion; in adapting the charities and the ministry of the times to the exceptional wants of Paris; and in showing that by abandoning Jesus Christ and his holy teachings, peoples, as well as individuals, only meet with deceptive
illusions and material and moral ruin.”
We quote these words to show that M. Deguerry had no grave fears respecting his situation. The archbishop and he both knew that the death of the hostages had been discussed by the Commune, but they were convinced that these threats would never be executed. What reasons had they for such an assurance? Had they received an absolute promise? Were they ignorant of the revolutionary orgies of Paris, and the brutal hatred of its tyrants? Did they think, having nothing to reproach themselves for, that no one could conceive the idea of putting them to death? I was vainly endeavoring to find an explanation of this assurance when Mgr. Darboy joined us.
If his health was affected and his body enfeebled, his mind was undoubtedly clear and sagacious. He not only took broad and correct views of the events and men of the times, but he displayed an acuteness almost caustic. The consciousness of his ecclesiastical dignity and his intellectual strength suggested to him many observations, full of animation and reality, respecting the incredible humiliations that he had received from Raoul Rigault and other heroes of the club, or estaminet, who thought they were aggrandizing themselves and acquiring claims on the admiration of posterity by their absurdity and impertinence. He bitterly deplored the weakening of the public sense of respect for authority, and thought, without a reformation in this respect, Paris and the whole of France would never recover from their misfortunes. To support these observations, Mgr. Darboy recalled the conclusion of one of his last pastoral letters, in which he predicted that, if society, persisted in disregarding the precepts of the Gospel and
abandoning the principles of religion and morality, it would be liable to a terrible overthrow.
I, in my turn, recalled to his recollection that a democratic journal had not hesitated to condemn this language as bearing the impress of exaggeration, so desirous was it that Paris should be divested of all religious belief or practice. He remembered the article spoken of, and seemed pleased to hear it quoted.
The archbishop knew I had only been arrested the week before, and was aware that, in consequence of my former functions, I had frequent intercourse with the political world. After questioning me respecting the religious condition of Paris and the parish affairs, and inquiring about Mgr. Buquet, who, notwithstanding his great age and notoriety, had bravely remained at Paris, rendering quite providential service in the diocesan administration, of which he was the only member free after the arrest and incarceration of M. Jourdain at the Conciergerie, and M. Icard at the Prison de la Santé, Mgr. Darboy added, in a tone that excluded all personal preoccupation:
“What is thought of the situation and fate of the hostages in the political world of Paris?”
“Thanks to the confidence inspired by the Commune, honest men, monseigneur, are daily taking flight. When the committee of public safety came to prove my mistake in not following in their traces, I only knew four persons in Paris with whom I could converse, and that rarely, on the events of the day:—M. L——, the chief secretary of the Crédit Foncier; M. G——, a former deputy from Seine-et-Marne; the Count de L——, an old officer; and M. G——, the president of the Conseil de Fabrique, at St. Eustache, imprisoned for a short time, though eighty-four years
old, because a supply of bread and meat was found at his house which he had the boldness to distribute to the poor of the Quartier des Halles. If, therefore, you wish to know the impressions of the political and diplomatic world now at Paris, you will be nearly reduced to mine, and it is a question if my modest régal could tempt monseigneur’s appetite.”
“I perceive,” said Mgr. Darboy, smiling, “that the Commune has not had any time to depress your spirits. I am waiting for an answer to my question.”
“All persons of honesty and intelligence condemn your arrest, monseigneur, and that of the other hostages. Only the Prussians and the Commune are capable of reviving this barbarous custom. I have been assured that the representatives of several foreign powers have taken steps to free you from danger, and doubtless the government at Versailles, in the impossibility of directly intervening, will consider it a duty to encourage these efforts.”
“I was aware of this,” replied the archbishop with marked satisfaction. “It was doubtless under this diplomatic pressure that Protot declared to me that, if the Commune had taken hostages, it was in obedience to the brutal requirements of the lowest demagogues, and if they should possibly consider an execution necessary, they would choose one or two officers of the peace, or sergents de ville, and by no means a member of the clergy. As for the rest, I have entire confidence in the goodness of God and the testimony of my conscience.”
As Mgr. Darboy ended these words, at about half-past two, the warden, who guarded us, gave the signal for returning to our cells. His confidence astonished me, and would have diminished my apprehensions if, after my transfer to La Roquette, I had
not firmly resolved not to yield to my illusions. And afterwards, in writing an account of this final interview to an eminent friend of the archbishop and my curé, I said: “While they seemed to have no fears, I had no hope.”
This was on Wednesday, the twenty-fourth of May. Some time after, about seven o’clock, I observed, through the bars of my cell, a strange movement in the large interior court. There was a great difference between Mazas and La Roquette. At Mazas, the prison discipline was in sufficient vigor, but at La Roquette there was no order and no discipline. This prison, placed between the Faubourgs St. Antoine, Ménilmontant, and Charonne, was at the mercy of all the wild beasts of these quarters, who knocked around and roared without any restraint. Some men of sinister appearance went from the office to the western building where the first hostages were kept, some armed with revolvers and others carrying mysterious documents. The director of the prison, with his red girdle and pantaloons, gave, or rather received, orders with an air that might be regarded as embarrassed or satisfied, according to one’s idea of his principles. The bad wardens did not conceal their joy, the good ones disappeared in consternation. A citoyen of imperious manners and wild aspect, before whom some bowed and others trembled, proceeded like a man in a fit of madness or intoxication towards the western building. I had not then sufficient presence of mind to recognize him, but I was convinced afterwards that it was Ferré; others, with less probability, declare it was Raoul Rigault. These two rivals of Robespierre would figure equally well at the post of infamy.
Most of the windows were closed in the first story of the western part
facing us, where the principal hostages were incarcerated; a few were open, revealing empty cells. At the same time, the windows of the second and third stories, occupied by those condemned by the court of assize, were filled with prisoners who were wondering, with a lively curiosity, at the meaning of the unusual spectacle which had struck us.
My anxiety became more and more intense, when I saw an officer of the insurgents half open the door that led from the court to the office, and say, with a solemn voice: “Are the hommes de guerre ready?” Without being thoroughly initiated into the military language, I understood they were about to shoot the whole or a part of us. I threw myself on my knees to implore God to grant us all strength and courage. A few minutes past eight, I was stunned by a horrible firing. Six almost simultaneous discharges of chassepots, succeeded by some single reports, resounded in the prison court. A deadly silence succeeded this noise, and revealed to me that only a few steps distant had been committed one of those monstrous crimes that constitute an epoch in the history of the human race.
From the prayers for the dying I passed to the prayers for the dead. Never had I so thoroughly sounded the depths of God’s mercy. I no longer conjured him, but claimed an indemnification, worthy of him, for the victims of so base and execrable an outrage. I never could have survived this excess of man’s iniquity, if I had not felt myself sustained by an assurance of the eternal goodness and justice of God.
When I rose, the mournful noise of the clarions and drums, and the dismal rumbling of a cart towards Charonne, seemed to put an end to this tragedy.
Wednesday night was truly a night
of torture for me. Every instant the outer and inner doors of the prison were opened to bring in, or carry away, victims. A court martial, or rather banditti under the guise of judges, held a session in the office. The unfortunate men, who were suspected of “complicity with the chouans at Versailles,” or who refused to die for the Commune under the orders of old criminals, were mercilessly sacrificed. With the sound of drums and trumpets mingled the noise of the carriages that brought the suspected to La Roquette, and carried to Père-la-Chaise those who had been shot, and the bombs à pétrole. At the same time the cemetery battery did not cease its thunder, and the flames that were consuming the monuments of Paris cast their lurid gleams into our cells. Let the reader for a moment take my place, and he will feel that no description could equal so overwhelming a spectacle.
Being on the eastern side of the prison, which has no direct communication with the western, I was still ignorant on Thursday morning of the names of the victims of the night before. Two faithful wardens came at an early hour to announce the fatal news, and give me nearly the same details of this sad drama. According to them, the emissaries of the Commune were the only witnesses of the execution: it was therefore difficult to obtain a precise, and, especially, a complete account. One of these wardens, who went as near as he could to the place of execution, received orders to aid the executioners in placing the bodies upon a cart which was to take them to a corner of Charonne, at the extremity of Père-la-Chaise. It is to his details, and those of other wardens, and the prisoners of the western side, that I owe the following particulars.
An emissary of the préfecture of police presented himself with some armed insurgents in the first story of the western side, uttering horrible threats: “The royalists are assassinating the republicans: it is horrible! it must be stopped!” Then taking a list marked with a red pencil, he cried in a loud voice: “Citoyen Darboy! citoyen Deguerry! citoyen Bonjean! citoyen Ducoudray! citoyen Clerc! citoyen Allard!” They were the six victims given up to the jury of frenzied demagogues. Everybody knows the three first. Père Ducoudray, of the Society of Jesus, was the superior of an educational establishment in the old Rue des Postes, and devoted himself to the formation of good Christians and good Frenchmen; Père Clerc, also a Jesuit, and formerly a naval officer, was one of the directors of the same establishment; and the Abbé Allard, an old apostolic missionary, who had been devoting his time to the service of the ambulances and still wore the armlet and cross of the international society of Geneva.
Each one replied in a firm and resigned voice: “Present.” I learned the next day from Mgr. Surat, the first vicar-general of Paris, that the Jesuit fathers had received two days before some consecrated hosts, and the Fathers Ducoudray and Clerc were able at this critical moment to give themselves the Holy Communion. They also gave him two sacred hosts at the arrival of their murderers, one of which he offered M. Deguerry, who thus met death with the Christian fortitude and the boundless trust that the bread of life confers.
In going down, Mgr. Darboy and M. Bonjean, who showed an invincible firmness to the end, locked arms.
They were all overwhelmed with gross insults on their way to the place of execution. An obscure corner
had been chosen, on the circular railway that separates the main prison from the outer ramparts. The victims were able to give one another encouragement and final absolution and benediction. Some words have been attributed to the archbishop, the authenticity of which I cannot vouch for: I am not even sure that he spoke at all. It is very probable that, in the presence of death, they preserved a religious recollection, replying only by their silence and forgiveness to the insults of their murderers. What is beyond doubt, they all displayed an unalterable calmness and dignity.
Their murderers could not have been numerous, or else their state of intoxication and fury must have prevented their correctness of aim. Some of their victims, in fact, received only two shots. When their bodies were discovered, I had that of M. Deguerry examined by three physicians—Drs. de Beauvais, Moissenet, and Raynaud. A round ball had passed through one side of the eye into the skull, where it was imbedded in the fractured bones. It is preserved at the Madeleine. The other ball passed through one of the lungs. The physicians thought that his death must have been instantaneous. At the moment of being shot, M. Deguerry, with an impulse in accordance with his military turn, opened his cassock and exposed his chest to the aim of his murderers; the ball which entered his lung only passed through the back part of his cassock.
The wardens informed me that, before throwing the bodies into the cart, they were stripped of a part of their clothes, which were burned on the place of execution. I can testify to the exactitude of this, having twice seen the spots covered with the burning clothes. I also ascertained
that the money of the six victims was afterward stolen from their cells, and their books and papers cast into the fire. Some weeks after a half-burned breviary was seen in one of the closets of the ante-room of La Roquette. It is thus the Commune respected the last wishes and testamentary dispositions of its victims.
Those who were shot on Wednesday and the following days, and all the prisoners whom the committee of public safety reserved for the same fate, were victims of their devotedness to two noble and grand causes. They were persecuted through hatred of religion, the abolition of which the Commune had inscribed in its sacrilegious programme, and through hatred of the country represented by the French army and the national assembly at Versailles, who were defending order, liberty, honor, civilization, and the faith against barbarians.
After the massacre on Wednesday, the hostages could entertain no further illusion as to their fate. This was only the commencement of a bloody drama. Everything convinced me it would only end with the last of the hostages. Then we entered upon a long agony of four days, the sad changes in which no human tongue could describe. I will confine myself to enumerating without comment the most remarkable incidents.
On Thursday noon, we were allowed recreation together in the same court as the day before. Our faces were sadder, but our hearts were as courageous. The laymen manifested a cordial sympathy for the clergy and a like serenity. It was evident that all put their confidence in God—a confidence that is not vain. I conversed twenty minutes with Père Olivaint. Smitten in his dearest affections, he still had a gracious
smile on his lips. I will not attempt to depict the expression of his face or repeat his conversation. His face had something about it truly supernatural, and his words were those of an angel. At the proposition of Mgr. Surat, M. Bayle, and Père Olivaint, the priests made a vow, if God would deign to snatch them from the jaws of death, to celebrate a Mass of thanksgiving in honor of the Blessed Virgin on the first Saturday of every month for the space of three years. I noticed among the laymen a face familiar to me. I inquired his name. It was that of one of the most intelligent and most courageous commissaires de police. It was he whom the government appointed in January, 1864, to make me a domiciliary visit and seize my papers, by way of expiating my support of M. Thiers as a candidate, and my opposition to the measures that had brought destruction on the empire and threatened at this very moment to cover Paris with blood and ruins. By a strange freak of fortune, our struggles in opposite directions had brought us to the same fate, which neither of us had hardly anticipated. If I had not been afraid of recalling a delicate remembrance, I would have assured him of my absolute forgiveness and of my devoted regards. Towards the end of our recreation, one of the shells from the battery of Père-la-Chaise broke, with a loud explosion, a stone in the wall under which we were walking. In ordinary times we should have shuddered and taken flight, but now it scarcely excited attention. In separating, we bade one another farewell till we met again—below, or in heaven: we did not know which.
In the evening we noticed fresh fires in Paris, and learned that the insurgents were setting fire to all the
monuments of those quarters where they had been repulsed by the army of Versailles. These fires distressed and exasperated me. Forgetting the danger I was in, I broke out in bitter complaints before my companions, who could not succeed in calming me. I was indebted to the heroes of petroleum, picrate, and glycerine for the only moments of irritation and despondency I felt during my captivity.
That morning they shot M. Jecker, the celebrated Mexican banker, in the court of La Roquette, and in the evening a refactory national guardsman against the outer wall. I comprehended the execution of the latter, but that of M. Jecker would have seemed to me an atrocious logogriph, if we had been on earth and not in the realm of demons. At eight o’clock, a warden notified M. Amodru and myself to descend to be shot. “Finitum est,” “All is finished,” said my kind neighbor to me. We knelt down by the window common to both cells, and gave each other absolution. The prisoners who understood the warden’s order regarded us from their cells with curiosity. The most cynical laughed at the prayers we were making in view of immediate death. I put on my sacerdotal garments, wrote my relatives, friends, and confrères a few farewell lines, and read in my breviary the prayers of the dying. After half an hour, I learned they had made a mistake, and instead of exposing M. Amodru and myself to the range of loaded chassepots, two laymen were to be taken before a court-martial, which amounted to the same thing, if I except a pretence of trial. I learned later, from an under-officer and some sergents de ville, that the agents of the Commune announced, more than once, that prisoners were about to be shot, adding some time after
with a malicious smile that they would lose nothing by waiting, and the ceremony was merely deferred till the next day.
I passed a part of the night in regarding the fires. The whole horizon was aflame toward Bercy. The battery at Père-la-Chaise, encouraged by the progress of the flames, redoubled its violence. The firing of arms and the booming of the cannon at the same time resounded in the direction of Montmartre and the Hôtel de Ville. I wondered if I was awake or under the influence of a horrible nightmare. A complete exhaustion of physical strength prevented me from fully deciding. I only mention this strange sensation because my companions in captivity also experienced it.
On Friday morning, at an early hour, my neighbor and myself received a visit from one of the subaltern employees of the prison. At first we felt some confidence in him, and we gave him two or three francs a day, as much from a wish to do a kind act, as a reward for his services, which were in a state of project. It did not require profound sagacity to discover that he was at the bottom only a spy and an accomplice of the Commune. The equivocal manner in which he pretended to console us in relating the progress of the Versailles army, showed he had the highest ideas of our simplicity and candor. Finding us more depressed and reserved after the catastrophe of Wednesday, he said to us in that tone, at once bantering and polite, which the Parisian voyou has at command: “Is it possible you give credit to the stories in circulation respecting the death of the Archbishop of Paris and the Curé of the Madeleine? They are simply absurd. Some of the national guards, who had been drinking too much,
were amusing themselves in discharging their guns against the prison walls: I assure you, no one was shot.”
Then, knowing we were to undergo the same fate in a few hours, he eagerly proposed to the clergy of our story a lottery which, according to his delicate calculations, would procure him some profits without depriving him of the objects of art he was proud of fabricating. For eight days I was obliged to swallow such humiliations, which revealed poor human nature in quite a new aspect. The selfish proposition of this deceitful employee was rejected promptly, but we concluded to continue our daily gratuity, in gratitude for services he was always promising, and which were never performed.
When he left our story, he always went directly to the office to give an account of what he had seen or heard. We had not only to resist ferocity, but also craftiness and duplicity.
It was in the plans of the Commune that none of the hostages should escape death. The next Sunday, the first object that struck my eyes at the office of La Roquette was the list of their names. There was a horizontal mark against the names of those who were to be shot: when the execution was accomplished, they added a vertical mark, thus forming a cross. Every name had a horizontal line before it. If my memory does not deceive me, they followed the order of the list in the executions.
About two o’clock, three shells from the battery of Père-la-Chaise hit the prison roof only a few mètres above our heads, and covered the court with tiles and fragments of the chimneys. Some of the prisoners protested against the danger of these projectiles exploding in their closed cells and had the doors opened;
others did not seem to heed the stunning incident: absorbed in prayer, they were more preoccupied with eternal than temporal things.
The shells that hit our prison were an indication of the rapid progress of the French troops, but this progress threw us into the most perplexing and intolerable of situations. We could only expect our safety from the Versailles army; we ought, then, in consideration of the general interests of civilization, and our own interests, to desire ardently its triumph. But it was no less evident that the nearer the army approached, the more imminent became our end. Thus the perspective which was our only hope of safety, inevitably announced at the same time our destruction. If the illimitable consolations of religion had not raised us above our misfortunes, we should have been a prey to the anticipated horrors of everlasting woe. In such cruel hours we comprehend the words of the God-Man, who, in the garden of Gethsemani and on Golgotha, drank to the dregs the chalice of all humiliations, all sorrows, and every kind of anguish, in order to sanctify them. “My God, my God, why hast thou abandoned me?” should not be separated from these other words, which exclude all despondency and presage a wonderful recompense: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit!”
IV.
LA ROQUETTE—INSURRECTION—DELIVERANCE—CONCLUSION.
The close of the day on Friday was exceedingly gloomy. The same events took place in the interior court of the prison as on Thursday evening. At the sight of the mysterious agent who held a list in his hand, each one said to himself: “My
name is probably inscribed on that list: may God have mercy on me!” I again heard the fatal interrogation from the mouth of an insurgent officer: “Are the soldiers at their post?” From the cells in the building opposite some friendly hands indicated to us by signs that the number to be shot amounted to twelve, fifteen, sixteen!... It was hardly a fourth of those immolated to the hatred of the Commune. Unfortunately, the facts that each one witnessed were limited, as our horizon was restricted to the four corners of our cell, or at most to a part of the story we were in: each one, therefore, could only give some particulars of the changes of fortune and the victims executed.
On Saturday morning, one of the employees of the library, who manifested a solicitude beyond all praise, gave me, with tears in his eyes, the most minute details about the extent of the sad event. At five o’clock, an emissary of the Commune entered the first story of the western side, and called out: “Citoyens, attention to the roll: here, fifteen are wanted!” Among these victims were the Jesuit Fathers Olivaint, Caubert, and De Bengy; the four principal Fathers of the Society of Picpus: Abbé Sabattier, the second vicar of Notre Dame de Lorette: Abbé Seigneret, a young pupil of the Seminary of St. Sulpice; and Abbé Planchat, a genuine missionary, who displayed all the zeal of an apostle, not in China or Japan, but among the working-classes of the Faubourg St. Antoine. About forty gendarmes, soldiers, officers of the peace, and Parisian guardsmen were also summoned, the most of whom were imprisoned in the first story of our building to the east. They were conducted to Belleville, preceded by drums and trumpets, into one of the courts of the Rue Haxo. All the long way, a furious crowd, among whom
women made themselves conspicuous by a frenzy bordering on drunkenness, vomited forth threats and imprecations. After shooting them with chassepots and revolvers, they mutilated their bodies with kicks and the butt-end of their muskets, and afterwards threw them pell-mell into a cellar, whence they were taken out three days after in a state of advanced putrefaction.
The most incredulous saw their last hour approaching, and I prepared myself once more to die. The insurgents stole or burned the things left in the cells. I placed my watch, papers, and my testamentary dispositions in the care of the employee at the library, with the names of the persons to whom he was to transmit them. I earnestly desired my body might receive a suitable burial, and, not knowing what means to take that it might be recognized, I communicated my anxiety to the Abbé Amodru, my neighbor. He had foreseen, and provided for, the difficulty, and, following his example, I wrote my name in legible characters upon several small slips of paper, which I put into my shoes and the different pockets of my habit.
It was the eve of Whit-Sunday. Having no longer the strength to kneel, I seated myself on my bed, and took sometimes my breviary, and then The Following of Christ in my hands. I prayed God for courage and a spirit of sacrifice. In reading the Thirtieth Psalm, I was struck with these words: “Let me not be confounded, O Lord, for I have called upon thee!... Thou shalt protect them in thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues. Blessed be the Lord, for he hath shown his wonderful mercy to me, a fortified city.” But I immediately distrusted the hopes that so readily pervaded my soul I wished to remain facing the sad realities of death.
The constantly increasing noise of the firing announced the approach of the contending parties. The barricades of the Château d’Eau had been valiantly taken by the Versailles troops: the Commune, in session at the Mairie du Prince Eugène, was obliged to beat a retreat. By a great effort, the scattered members sucoeeded in gaining the office of La Roquette, to conduct the labors of the cosmopolitan banditti. Between the army of deliverance and us were still those men of blood, whose last ravings were so many decrees of death and incendiarism. It is said that Ferré sprang like a tiger about to lose his prey, crying in a hoarse voice: “Make haste! shoot them, the chouans! Cut their throats, the robbers! do not leave one standing! Citoyens and citoyennes of the faubourgs, come and avenge your sons and your fathers, basely assassinated!” The unhappy men had no time to lose; the Versailles troops, on the one hand, were entering the Boulevard du Prince Eugène; on the other, they surrounded Père-la-Chaise; but, by an intolerable fatality, the source of our safety was at the same time that of our destruction.
A few minutes past three, the heavy bolts of our cells flew back with unaccustomed quickness. I was on my knees, saying, with a voice almost extinct, the office of the Eve of Whit-Sunday. My neighbor quickly opened the door of my cell. “Courage,” he said, “it is now our turn; they are going to take us all down to shoot us!”
“Courage,” I replied, “and may the will of God be done!” I had on my clerical costume, and advanced into the corridor where priests, soldiers, and national guards were all mingled together. The priests and national guards appeared calm and
resigned, but the soldiers could not believe in the fate that awaited them. “What have we done to those wretches? we fought against the Prussians! we fulfilled our duty! What are they going to shoot us for? No, it is not possible!” Some uttered cries of anger, others remained silent and motionless as if they were in a dream. The priests knelt to fortify themselves by a last absolution; one of them urged the soldiers to imitate us, and addressed them some words of encouragement.
A voice with a metallic ring suddenly rose above this confused noise: “My friends, those ignoble villains have already killed too many; do not allow yourselves to be murdered; join me; let us resist; let us fight. Rather than give you up, I will die with you!” It was the voice of the warden Pinet. This generous son of Lorraine, aghast at so many crimes, could no longer stifle his indignation. Charged to open our cells slowly and deliver us two by two to the insurgents, who were waiting for us below, he had fastened the door of the third story behind him, rapidly opened our cells to advise us and aid in organizing a resistance, ready to sacrifice his life in aiding us to save ours. At first, I could not believe in so much heroism. The Abbé Amodru spoke in his turn, and joined his protestations to those of Pinet: “Let us not submit to be shot, my friends, let us defend ourselves. Have confidence in God; he is for us and with us; he will save us!”
There was a difference of opinion; some hesitated. To defend ourselves, objected one, would be madness; we should only incur a more cruel death. Instead of being simply shot, we shall be slaughtered by a mob or consumed in the flames. “Let us call up the national guards,” exclaimed a simple fellow (I had not believed
such naiveté possible at La Roquette), “and prove to them that we are honest men, and not robbers and assassins.” “It is not our lives they wish,” cried a soldier, whose impartial truthfulness renders it obligatory on me to repeat his words, and who had as little discernment as moral sense, “it is only the curés they have a grudge against; let us not expose our lives in trying to defend theirs!”
I had not yet uttered a word, but followed with an anxiety, easy to comprehend, the phases of this strange situation. Some of my brethren asked what there was to fear or to hope for. “The sergents de ville who are below are disposed to defend themselves,” cried the warden Pinet, whom the hesitation rendered more energetic and more eloquent. “Do not allow yourselves to be shot by that band of robbers.” I was already convinced that resistance, the success of which I thought more than improbable, was nevertheless the most suitable measure to be taken. From the eighteenth of March I had not ceased to protest against the silence and giving up of honest men to criminals; and to show myself to the end faithful to my programme, I emerged from my apparent inaction. M. Walbert, an old officier de paix, and the Abbé Carré, the Vicar of Belleville, suggested that a hole should be made in the floor to open communication with the sergents de ville imprisoned on the second story, and they immediately set to work with boards and iron rods that we wrenched from our beds. I joined them. I, who in the morning had no longer strength enough to stand, and who had not yet eaten a mouthful of bread, broke boards in pieces and twisted off the rods with irresistible facility! In five minutes a large opening was made between the second and third stories.
The sergents de ville were ready to pay dearly for their lives. The under-officer Teyssier hoisted himself through the opening to aid Pinet in the command of the insurrection.
The interior court of the prison was crowded by an abject multitude come to witness our last sufferings. It is easier to imagine than to depict the appearance and the threats of this crowd. We put mattresses against the windows as a protection against bullets. There was a young man in the crowd who ordered us to come down, and aimed at us with a coolness that attracted my attention. “See that wretch,” said the warden Pinet to me, “he is one of the two condemned to death by the court of assize of the Seine!.”
“The barricade is on fire,” exclaimed some soldiers. “We are stifled! Help!”
Two enormous barricades had been constructed against the two doors of the story, with our beds and the flagstones torn up from the floor. I ran to the barricade on fire, and found myself in a cloud of smoke. “Do not be alarmed,” said a soldier, whose skill and presence of mind I admired, “I constructed the barricade, and took care to place only mattresses in front: bring me some water.” In fifteen minutes the fire was extinguished. I heard the insurgents, who sometimes threatened to set fire to our building, to blow it up, or order the batteries of Père-la-Chaise to fire at it: sometimes they perfidiously cried: “Vive la ligne! surrender, and we will set you free!” The massacres of those who trusted to their promises proved how sincere they were.
At that moment, something as unexpected as fortunate took place in the prison. While we were organizing a desperate resistance, and the soldiers, more bold than prudent, were crying, “Let us go down to
the office, and boldly attack the Commune!” the Communists, frightened at our resistance and the rapid progress of the French army along the Boulevard du Prince Eugène, hastily fled from La Roquette in the direction of Belleville. The rabble, astonished at this sudden removal, were convinced of the great danger, and fled after them. The prisoners were restored to liberty, and naturally cried: Vive la République! vive la Commune!
Availing themselves of this confusion, the lay hostages who were to have been shot with us escaped from La Roquette: almost all succeeded in crossing the barricades or hiding till the next day in the late haunts of insurrection. Some of the clergy imitated them; others, particularly Mgr. Surat, who was dressed as a layman, hesitated. The wardens, from motives more praiseworthy than prudent, urged them to fly. This course seemed to me disastrous. The neighborhood of the prison was in the hands of the insurgents, whose irritation knew no bounds. I thought it my duty to warn the first vicar-general of Paris, and said to him through the bars: “Take care; to leave is certain death; to remain, uncertain!” I ascertained afterwards that I had not been heard. In going out of the prison, he was murdered in a frightful manner, with M. Bécourt, the curé of Bonne Nouvelle; M. Houillon, a missionary of the Missions Etrangères, and a lay prisoner. Some priests succeeded in concealing themselves in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and some returned to the prison.
Notwithstanding the departure of the insurgents who were to put us to death, we were still exposed to sudden attack and every danger while the prison gates were unfastened. I therefore protested in violent terms to the two wardens, who, frightened
at the terrible consequences that would result from a return of the insurgents, urged us strongly to descend and go out. “We will not go out,” I replied; “the Versailles troops will be here in a few hours: if any misfortune happens to us by your fault, on you will fall the responsibility. Fasten all the prison doors, and only open them to the Versaillais.”
They warmly reproached me for an obstinacy they thought must prove fatal to us, but they faithfully obeyed my orders.
At eleven o’clock at night, the firing, which was not far off, ceased. The frenzied demagogues without uttered powerless threats against us. We kept a strict guard, and seriously began to hope. At a quarter before three, the firing recommenced toward Père-la-Chaise. Every hour now seemed an age. There was a formidable barricade in the Rue de la Roquette in front of the prison. Attacked on the side of the Bastille, it would have opposed a formidable resistance on account of its steepness, but, owing to the winding and concentric course of the French army, the insurgents, stormed from the heights occupied by our troops, left the barricade in disorder, and a battalion of marines took possession of La Roquette. Our resistance, that at first was only madness, ended miraculously. It was the great festival of Whit-Sunday. After four days of the greatest agony that can be imagined, we were, contrary to all expectation, restored to life and liberty.
While some of the prisoners cried, “Vive l’armee! Vive la France!” the most of them, affected by want of sleep and the mental torture that no human tongue could express, persisted in regarding our liberators as insurgents disguised as marines. Then began a singular negotiation between the prisoners and the marines, in
which the former, more incredulous than St. Thomas, saw nothing but snares, and the latter with immovable patience submitted to requirements that were almost puerile. The arms, flags, books, and papers of the battalion were demanded. The marines consented, but the prisoners, blinded and confused, were still far from being reassured concerning the identity of the marines.
Some of my companions and myself, who could not believe a disguise could be so perfect, were distressed at this prolonged hesitation, far from flattering to our courageous deliverers. We induced our companions to allow us to go out, that they might judge from our reception what course to take themselves. At the sight of the marines who rush toward us, not to massacre us, but to shake our hands and rejoice over our deliverance, the confidence of our companions revived, and they came to receive their share of cordial sympathy.
My surprise was great when I heard General Vinoy’s aide-de-camp eagerly inquire for Mgr. Darboy and M. Deguerry. “Where are they? How do they do?” It was four days since they were massacred by the Commune, and the frightful reality was still unknown at Versailles and Paris. Knowing the profound affection of the brave General Vinoy for the Archbishop of Paris, his aide-de-camp begged me to give him some correct details, which he immediately despatched to the general and to Versailles.
They were still fighting furiously around La Roquette. We were obliged to wait nearly an hour at the office, where we found, in fearful disorder, cartridges, cigars, swords, guns, proscription lists, proclamations, and the decrees of the expiring Commune, never to be issued.
Accompanied by an escort bearing
before us the French flag, we set out in a body by the heights of the Faubourg St. Antoine, the Jardin des Plantes, and the quais on the left bank of the river, toward our homes. At each step we had to struggle against the most poignant emotions. Here, in the boulevards, were heaps of men and horses who had been killed, with pools of blood beside piles of cartridges and broken chassepots. There, trees were broken down and houses shattered by shells. The few inhabitants we met seemed confounded and in despair. Further on, we uttered a cry of horror at the sight of the Hôtel de Ville, the Palais de Justice, the entrance of the Rue du Bac, the Tuileries, and the palaces of the Conseil d’Etat and of the Légion d’Honneur in flames or in ashes.
In the Rue des Saintes-Pères, a gentleman and lady whom I knew, but whose names I could not recall, stopped to ask if I was one of the Jesuit Fathers, and if I came from La Roquette. They wished news of Père Caubert. I informed them he was shot on Friday with Père Olivaint. At this, the gentleman raised his eyes to heaven, while the lady made an effort to overcome her emotion. “You see before you,” said he, “Père Caubert’s sister!” It was M. Lauras, one of the directors of the Orleans Railway, and Madame Lauras, née Caubert.
I accompanied the soldiers, who had participated in my captivity, to the Palais Bourbon, and after a fraternal grasp of the hand I turned toward the Madeleine. The Place de la Concorde was upset, and a part of the Rue Royale burned down with petroleum. I found the Madeleine standing, and my residence in the Rue de la Ville-l’Evêque, but both injured by the firing. No one knew of, and what was more strange,
no one would believe in, the horrible deaths of Mgr. Darboy and M. Deguerry. My two confrères at the Madeleine expressed the same doubt, the same incredulity. When at vespers I was about to ascend the pulpit to recommend the victims to the prayers of the faithful, they advised me to defer it, hoping the fatal news would not be confirmed.
I had told it to more than one hundred persons, begging them to inform, in their turn, the other parishioners of the Madeleine, but when, in an affecting but cautious and brief manner, I requested the faithful gathered at the foot of the altar to pray for the pastor of the diocese and the curé of the parish, basely shot on the twenty-fourth of May, in the prison of La Roquette, a cry of grief and horror escaped from every soul; the men and the women rose up in confusion, as if to protest against it; the gravest and most reverential for a moment seemed to lose their balance. Among the confused voices around the pulpit, these words were the most distinct: “No, no, such a crime is not possible!”
My moral conclusions will be simple and brief. It would be an insult to the reader to dwell on the great lessons to be drawn from such sorrowful and overwhelming catastrophes.
First Lesson. Divine Providence never chastised and enlightened a nation by severer blows. It behooves us therefore to consider the grave and exceptional malady that is afflicting society, and seek an efficacious and permanent remedy for it. We are all suffering from the evil, and we all should be preoccupied about the means of recovery.
Some days after leaving La Roquette, I wished to revisit the places where I had been imprisoned, in order to retrace, with precision, the
events that took place in the last days of the Commune. I met there one of the most intelligent and most religious juges d’instruction on the bench of the Seine. I visited with him the places of the greatest interest, Mgr. Darboy’s cell, and the spot on the circular road where the murder of the six principal hostages took place. The warden took us to Troppmann’s cell. “I supposed, till within a few days,” said I to the magistrate of the Seine, “that criminals like Troppmann were of a rare species that required fifty or sixty years to develop in the lowest grades of society. After the realities I witnessed at La Roquette, I am convinced they are to be found by thousands in Paris.” The juge d’instruction replied that all the magistrates who studied the mysteries of those grades had the same conviction. It would therefore be simply folly not to consider the remedy most suitable to counteract such a disorder.
Second Lesson. In the horrible catastrophe that has just revealed so many material or moral sores, every one is more or less responsible and culpable. Every one should say his meâ culpâ, and seek to become better. The most guilty are certainly the turbulent working classes, the demagogues, the International, the secret societies, outlaws, and governments without morality, but they alone are not guilty. Literary men who diffuse in their pernicious publications the poison of scepticism and immorality; artists who are wanting in respect and decency; the journals of the rich and influential bourgeoisie, which defend the principles of material conservation, while by their attacks on the Holy See, the clergy, and the church generally, they sap the very foundations of morality; politicians who brutally proclaim, with a view
to the rewards and the gratification of their cupidity, the primacy of might against right—should disavow and correct their errors. Pious people and the clergy should redouble their solicitude and energy in extending and strengthening their influence, particularly in the most populous districts. There are no other means of safety.
Third Lesson. The reign of the Commune has revealed a frightful number of wicked men in society capable of every excess. They have trampled under foot the very first principles of natural order and social life, which the Reign of Terror would have feared to disregard. The executions at La Roquette, without preparation, without discussion or preliminary trial, were a thousand times more monstrous than the executions of the Revolutionary tribunal. In 1793, the Dantons and Robespierres were imitators, more or less imposing, of the Catilines of ancient Rome: in 1871, we have had Raoul Rigault and Ferré, the Catilines of the gutter. Ferocious beasts are not reasoned with—they are muzzled. Society therefore should have a power of legal repression proportioned to the dangers that threaten it.
But as the material order of things is founded on the moral order, the great principles of reverence for God, a respect for others and for ourselves, should be diffused and practised. It has been wished to establish society with no religious belief, make laws, found institutions, and keep the people in order, without reference to the teachings of the Gospel: this is building the social edifice upon quicksands. How can an economist, a politician, however incredulous, help understanding that while the mass in the great cities, especially at Paris, do not find in the faith, in the observance of religious duties, and in the eternal recompense of a future life, a source of morality, strength and consolation in view of the inequalities of fortune and social position, in view of the enjoyments and leisure of the fortunate ones of this world and of the unforeseen trials and sufferings that too often beset them, there can be neither security nor repose?
Jesus Christ and his Gospel are still the salt of the earth and the light of the world. To withdraw society from this divine and guiding influence would condemn it to sorrow, crime, and shame.