Jourde was by no means a fool or a braggart; he was a very good administrator, and exceedingly conscientious. Like most men who have had the constant handling of important sums of money, he was absolutely indifferent to it; and I feel certain that he did not feather his own nest during the two months he had the chance. But he vainly endeavoured to impress upon the others the necessity for economy. Every now and then he tore his red hair and beard at the waste going on at the Hôtel-de-Ville, where, in the beginning, Assi was keeping open table. Not that they were feasting, but every one who had a mind could sit down, and, though the sum charged by the steward was moderate, two francs for breakfast and two francs fifty centimes for dinner, the number of self-invited guests increased day by day, and the paymaster-general was at his wits' end to keep pace with the expenses. The Central-Committee put a stop to this indiscriminate hospitality by simply arresting Assi, whom I never saw.
When the Commune decreed the demolition of the Vendôme column, Jourde was still more angry and in despair. He was, first of all, opposed to its destruction, from a patriotic and common-sense point of view: secondly, he objected to the waste of money that destruction entailed; he endeavoured to cut the Gordian knot by stopping the workmen's pay. Though three or four of his fellow "delegates" were absolutely of the same opinion, the rest sent him a polite intimation that if the necessary funds were not disbursed voluntarily they would send for them, and take the opportunity, at the same time, to "put him against the wall," and make an end of him. That night, Courbet, the painter, who had been the prime mover in this work of destruction, came to the Brasserie Saint-Séverin from the Brasserie Andler, hard by, to taste the sweets of his victory. His friend, Chaudey, of the Siècle, was no longer with him. Like Mgr. Darboy, the Abbés Lagarde, Crozés, and Deguerry, he had been arrested by Raoul Rigault as a hostage, in virtue of a decree by the Commune, setting forth that every execution of a prisoner of war, taken by the Versaillais, would be followed by the execution of three hostages to be drawn by lot.
Jourde did not wear a uniform; at any rate, I never saw him in one. I happened to remark upon it one evening, and he then gave me a partial explanation why the others did wear them in so ostentatious a manner.
"It is really done to please the National Guards; they mistrust those who remain 'in mufti;' they attribute their reluctance to don the uniform to the fear of being compromised, to the wish to escape unnoticed if things should go wrong. I grant you that all this does not warrant the uniforms most of my colleagues do wear, but to the Latin races the wisdom of Solomon lies in his magnificence, and they trace the elevation of Joseph to its primary cause—his coat of many colours. I am not only 'delegate of finances' and paymaster-general, but head cook and bottle-washer in all that concerns monetary matters to the Central-Committee. I have very few clerks to assist me in my work, and fewer still upon whose honesty I can depend; consequently, I am compelled to do a good deal of drudgery myself. Yesterday I received the fortnightly accounts of Godillot,[91] the military tailors and accoutrement manufacturers. They seemed to me simply monstrous, not so much in respect of the prices charged for each uniform, as in respect of the number of uniforms supplied. To have sent one of my clerks would have been of no earthly use; there is an old Normand saying about sending the cat to Rome and his coming back mewing; the clerk would have simply come back mewing, saying that there was no mistake, so I went myself. I saw the chief manager.
"'I am positive there is no mistake, monsieur,' he said, 'though I may tell you at once that I made the same remark when I passed the accounts; the number of uniforms seemed to me inordinately large; mais il faut se rendre à l'évidence, and I ticketed off every item by its corresponding voucher. Still I felt that there is a terrible waste somewhere, and said so to the head of the retail department. "If you will remain downstairs for one hour," was the answer, "you will have the explanation." I can only say the same to you, Monsieur le délégué.'
"I did remain on that ground-floor for one hour," Jourde went on, "and, during that time, no fewer than eight young fellows came in with vouchers for complete uniforms of lieutenants or captains of the staff. Most of them looked to me as if they had never handled a sword or rifle in their lives—yardsticks seemed more in their line; and the airs they gave themselves positively disgusted me; but I do not want another reminder of the Central-Committee about my cheeseparing, so I'll let things take their course. Look, here is a sample of how we deck ourselves out quand nous allons en guerre."
I looked in the direction pointed out to me, and beheld a somewhat dark individual with lank, black hair, of ordinary height, or a little below perhaps, dressed in a most extraordinary costume. He wore a blue Zouave jacket, large baggy crimson breeches tucked into a pair of quasi-hessian boots, a crimson sash, and a black sombrero hat with a red feather. A long cavalry sabre completed the costume. Upon the whole, he carried himself well, though there was a kind of swashbuckler air about him which smacked of the stage. I was not mistaken; the scent or the smell of the footlights was over it all.
"This is Colonel Maxime Lisbonne, an actor by profession, who has taken to soldiering with a vengeance," said Jourde. "There is no doubt about his bravery, but he is as fit to be a colonel as I am to be a general. It does not seem to strike my colleagues that, in no matter what profession, one has to serve an apprenticeship, and, most of all, in the science of soldiering; Maxime Lisbonne said he would be a colonel, so they, without more ado, made him one.[92] He never moves without that Turco at his heels."
On another occasion I saw the famous General Dombrowski, and the no less famous Colonel or General la Cécilia. I only exchanged a few words with the former, but I sat talking for a whole evening to the latter. He was a short, spare, fidgety man, strongly pitted with small-pox, with a few straggling hairs on the upper lip and chin. He was terribly near-sighted, and wore a pair of thick spectacles. Nervous and restless to a degree, but a voice of remarkable sweetness. His English was faultless, with scarcely any accent, and I was told that he spoke every European language and several Oriental ones with the same accuracy. He was the only Frenchman who could converse with Dombrowski and the other Poles in their native language. He was a clever mathematician, and, that evening, he endeavoured to prove mathematically that Von Moltke had committed several blunders, both at Sadowa and Sedan. "That kind of thing," said Jourde, after he was gone, "was sure to 'fetch' the Central-Committee; he always reminds me of the doctors in Molière trying to prove that one of their confrères had cured a patient contrary to the principles of medicine. Mind, do not imagine that La Cécilia is not a good soldier. He got all his grades in the Italian army, on the battle-fields of '59-'60, and, during the late war, he directed the brilliant defence of Alençon. But between a good soldier and a great general there is a vast difference."
Physically, Dombrowski was almost the counterpart of La Cécilia, with the exception of the glasses and the small-pox. But while the Frenchman—for Cécilia was a Frenchman notwithstanding his Italian name—was modest though critical, the Pole was a braggart, though by no means devoid of courage. Up to the very end, he sent in reports of his victories, all of which were purely imaginary. Even as late as the 21st of May, when the Versailles troops were carrying everything before them, the newspaper-boys were shouting, "Brilliant victory of General Dombrowski." Dombrowski had been invested with his high command under the pretext that he had fought under Garibaldi and in the Polish struggle against Russia. It transpired afterwards that he had never seen Garibaldi nor Garibaldi him, and that, so far from having aided his own countrymen, he had been a simple private in the Russian army. Still, he was a better man than his countryman Wrobleski, who showed his courage by going to bed while the Versaillais were shelling Vanves.