'Till we meet again, Maurice!'
'Till we meet again, Jean!'
It was a regiment of infantry, the 79th of the Line, which, debouching in a compact mass from a side street, had just thrown the mob back upon the footways. There was again some shouting and hooting, but none were bold enough to bar the road to the soldiers, whose officers were urging them along. And the little squad of the 124th, thus extricated from the mob, was able to follow in the wake of the regiment without further hindrance.
'Till we meet again, Jean!'
'Till we meet again, Maurice!'
Again did they wave their hands, yielding to the fatality of that violent parting, but with their hearts still full of one another.
During the ensuing days Maurice at first forgot this incident, so absorbing were the extraordinary events which now followed one upon another in fast succession. On the 19th Paris awoke without a Government; still, it was more surprised than frightened on learning how panic had carried off the army, the public services, and the ministers to Versailles during the night; and, as the weather was magnificent that fine March Sunday, the city simply streamed into the streets to gaze at the barricades. A large white placard emanating from the Central Committee, and convoking the population for the Communal elections, appeared a very sensible production. People merely expressed surprise at finding it signed by names so utterly unknown. At the dawn of the Commune, indeed, Paris, in the bitter memory of all that it had suffered, in the suspicions also which ever haunted it, was hostile to Versailles. Absolute anarchy, moreover, prevailed; the district mayors and the Central Committee contending for authority, and the former making ineffectual efforts at conciliation, whilst the latter, as yet uncertain whether it could rely upon the entire federated National Guard, modestly limited its demands to municipal liberty. The shots fired at the pacific demonstration of the Place Vendôme, the few victims who then fell, staining the pavement with their blood, sent the first thrill of terror circulating through the city. And whilst the triumphant insurrection was at last taking possession of all the ministries and public departments, equal rage and alarm prevailed at Versailles, where the Government was hastily gathering together sufficient military forces to repel the attack which it felt to be imminent. The most reliable troops of the armies of the North and of the Loire were speedily summoned; and, ten days having sufficed to collect a force of nearly eighty thousand men, confidence returned so rapidly that already on April 2 a couple of divisions opened hostilities by taking the suburbs of Puteaux and Courbevoie from the Federals.[54]
It was only on the morrow that Maurice, who had set out with his battalion to effect the capture of Versailles, again beheld Jean's sorrowful countenance rise up amid his feverish souvenirs. The attack of the Versaillese had stupefied and exasperated the National Guard, and three columns of the latter, some fifty thousand men, had poured forth from Paris early that morning, rushing towards Versailles by way of Bougival and Meudon with the design of seizing the monarchical Assembly and the murderer Thiers! 'Twas the torrential sortie, the sortie so ardently demanded during the siege, and Maurice wondered where he should again see Jean, whether it would not be over yonder among the corpses on the battlefield? But the rout came too promptly for his surmises; his battalion had barely reached the Plateau des Bergères, on the road to Reuil, when some shells, fired from the fort of Mont Valérien, fell among the ranks. For a moment perfect stupor prevailed; some of the men had imagined that the fort was held by their comrades, whilst others averred that the commander had promised that he would not fire. Then a mad terror took possession of the Federals, the battalions disbanded and scurried back into Paris, whilst the head of the column, cut off by a turning movement which General Vinoy promptly effected, only reached Reuil to be cut to pieces there.
Maurice, who had escaped from the slaughter unharmed, and was thrilled with the emotion of fighting, now nourished intense hatred for that so-called government of law and order, which, beaten by the Prussians in every encounter, could only muster up courage to conquer Paris. And the German armies were still there, encamped on the north-eastern side of the city from St. Denis to Charenton, and gazing on that fine spectacle of a nation's Downfall! In the gloomy passion for destruction which was gaining upon him, Maurice approved of the first violent measures to which the Commune resorted, the erection of barricades in the streets and squares, the arrest of the hostages, the Archbishop, the priests, and the ex-functionaries. Atrocities were already being perpetrated on either side; Versailles shot its prisoners, whilst Paris decreed that for the head of each of its soldiers the heads of three hostages should fall; and the little reason which Maurice still retained, after so many shocks and so much havoc, was speedily swept away by the blast of fury now blowing from every side. In his eyes the Commune appeared as the Avenger of all the shame and degradation that had been endured, as the Liberator armed with the knife to amputate and the flame to purify. All this was not quite clear in his mind; the cultured being yet lingering within him merely evoked the old classical memories of triumphant free cities, and federations of rich provinces imposing their will upon the world. Should Paris prove victorious, he pictured her crowned with an aureole of glory, building up a new France where justice and liberty would reign supreme, and organising a new society after first sweeping away the rotten remnants of the old. To tell the truth, when the elections were over, he felt some surprise on reading the names of the members of the Commune; so extraordinary was the mingling of Moderates, Revolutionaries, and Socialists of all sects, to whom the mighty task was confided. He knew several of these men, and esteemed them to be of very limited attainments. And would not even the best of them come into collision and neutralise one another's efforts, representing as they did such conflicting principles? However, on the day when the Commune was solemnly installed in office at the Hôtel-de-Ville, whilst the guns were booming and the trophies of red flags were flapping in the breeze, he strove to forget everything, buoyed up once more by boundless hope. And, fanned by the lies of some and the unquestioning faith of others, his illusions were all revived in this acute stage of his malady, which was now fast reaching a climax.
Maurice spent the entire month of April in the neighbourhood of Neuilly, firing away at the Versaillese. The spring was an early one, and the lilacs were already blooming; they fought amid the tender greenery of the villa gardens, and some National Guards would return home at nightfall with nosegays in their gun-barrels. The troops assembled at Versailles were now so numerous that they had been divided into two armies, the first actively engaged under Marshal MacMahon, and the second forming a reserve force, commanded by General Vinoy. The Commune, on its side, had about one hundred thousand mobilised National Guards, and nearly as many men in the sedentary battalions, but of all these not more than fifty thousand really fought. And day by day the plan of the Versaillese became more and more evident; after taking Neuilly they had occupied the château of Bécon and then Asnières, but simply with a view of bringing the line of investment closer to the city, which they purposed entering by the Point-du-Jour, as soon as they could force the rampart there by means of the converging fire of Mont-Valérien and the fort of Issy. Mont-Valérien belonged to them, and all their efforts were directed towards capturing the fort of Issy, in attacking which they availed themselves of some of the works which had been thrown up by the Prussians during the late siege.