It was difficult to choose from among so many candidates, but we were eventually assured that the right man had been found in the person of a retired poacher who knew so well how to circumvent both rural guards and forest guards, that during a career of twenty years or so he had never once been caught in flagrante delicto. Expert, moreover, in tracking game, he would also well know how to detect—and to avoid—the tracks of the Prussians. We were therefore invited to confide our correspondence to this sagacious individual, who would undertake to carry it through the German lines and to return with the answers in a week or ten days. The charge for each letter, which was to be of very small weight and dimensions, was fixed at five francs, and it was estimated that the ex-poacher would be able to carry about 200 letters on each journey.
Many people were anxious to try the scheme, but rival newspapers denounced it as being a means of acquainting the Prussians with everything which was occurring in Paris—Villemessant, who they declared had taken bribes from the fallen Empire, being probably one of Bismarck's paid agents. Thus the enterprise speedily collapsed without even being put to the proof. However, the public was successfully exploited by various individuals who attempted to improve on Villemessant's idea, undertaking to send letters out of Paris for a fixed charge, half of which was to be returned to the sender if his letter were not delivered. As none of the letters handed in on these conditions was even entrusted to a messenger, the ingenious authors of this scheme made a handsome profit, politely returning half of the money which they received, but retaining the balance without making the slightest effort to carry out their contract.
Dr. Rampont, a very clever man, who was now our postmaster-general, had already issued a circular bidding us to use the very thinnest paper and the smallest envelopes procurable. There being so many failures among the messengers whom he sent out of Paris with correspondence, the idea of a balloon postal service occurred to him. Although ninety years or so had elapsed since the days of the brothers Montgolfier, aeronautics had really made very little progress. There were no dirigible balloons at all. Dupuy de Lôme's first experiments only dated from the siege days, and Renard's dirigible was not devised until the early eighties. We only had the ordinary type of balloon at our disposal; and at the outset of the investment there were certainly not more than half a dozen balloons within our lines. A great city like Paris, however, is not without resources. Everything needed for the construction of balloons could be found there. Gas also was procurable, and we had amongst us quite a number of men expert in the science of ballooning, such as it then was. There was Nadar, there was Tissandier, there were the Godard brothers, Yon, Dartois, and a good many others. Both the Godards and Nadar established balloon factories, which were generally located in our large disused railway stations, such as the Gare du Nord, the Gare d'Orléans, and the Gare Montparnasse; but I also remember visiting one which Nadar installed in the dancing hall called the Elysée Montmartre. Each of these factories provided work for a good many people, and I recollect being particularly struck by the number of women who were employed in balloon-making. Such work was very helpful to them, and Nadar used to say to me that it grieved him to have to turn away so many applicants for employment, for every day ten, twenty, and thirty women would come to implore him to "take them on." Nearly all their usual workrooms were closed; some were reduced to live on charity and only very small allowances, from fivepence to sevenpence a day, were made to the wives and families of National Guards.
But to return to the balloon postal-service which the Government organized, it was at once realized by my father and myself that it could be of little use to us so far as the work for the Illustrated London News was concerned, on account of the restrictions which were imposed in regard to the size and weight of each letter that might be posted. The weight, indeed, was fixed at no more than three grammes! Now, there were a number of artists working for the Illustrated in Paris, first and foremost among them being M. Jules Pelcoq, who must personally have supplied two-thirds of the sketches by which the British public was kept acquainted with the many incidents of Parisian siege-life. The weekly diary which I helped my father to compile could be drawn up in small handwriting on very thin, almost transparent paper, and despatched in the ordinary way. But how were we to circumvent the authorities in regard to our sketches, which were often of considerable size, and were always made on fairly substantial paper, the great majority of them being wash-drawings? Further, though I could prepare two or three drafts of our diary or our other "copy" for despatch by successive balloons—to provide for the contingency of one of the latter falling into the hands of the enemy—it seemed absurd that our artists should have to recopy every sketch they made. Fortunately, there was photography, the thought of which brought about a solution of the other difficulty in which we were placed.
I was sent to interview Nadar on the Place Saint Pierre at Montmartre, above which his captive balloon the "Neptune" was oscillating in the September breeze. He was much the same man as I had seen at the Crystal Palace a few years previously, tall, red-haired, and red-shirted. He had begun life as a caricaturist and humorous writer, but by way of buttering his bread had set up in business as a photographer, his establishment on the Boulevard de la Madeleine soon becoming very favourably known. There was still a little "portrait-taking" in Paris during those early siege days. Photographs of the celebrities or notorieties of the hour sold fairly well, and every now and again some National Guard with means was anxious to be photographed in his uniform. But, naturally enough, the business generally had declined. Thus, Nadar was only too pleased to entertain the proposal which I made to him on my father's behalf, this being that every sketch for the Illustrated should be taken to his establishment and there photographed, so that we might be able to send out copies in at least three successive balloons.
When I broached to Nadar the subject of the postal regulations in regard to the weight and size of letters, he genially replied: "Leave that to me. Your packets need not go through the ordinary post at all—at least, here in Paris. Have them stamped, however, bring them whenever a balloon is about to sail, and I will see that the aeronaut takes them in his pocket. Wherever he alights they will be posted, like the letters in the official bags."
That plan was carried out, and although several balloons were lost or fell within the German lines, only one small packet of sketches, which, on account of urgency, had not been photographed, remained subsequently unaccounted for. In all other instances either the original drawing or one of the photographic copies of it reached London safely.
The very first balloon to leave Paris (in the early days of October) was precisely Nadar's "Neptune," which had originally been intended for purposes of military observation. One day when I was with Nadar on the Place Saint Pierre, he took me up in it. I found the experience a novel but not a pleasing one, for all my life I have had a tendency to vertigo when ascending to any unusual height. I remember that it was a clear day, and that we had a fine bird's-eye view of Paris on the one hand and of the plain of Saint Denis on the other, but I confess that I felt out of-my element, and was glad to set foot on terra firma once more.
From that day I was quite content to view the ascent of one and another balloon, without feeling any desire to get out of Paris by its aerial transport service. I must have witnessed the departure of practically all the balloons which left Paris until I myself quitted the city in November. The arrangements made with Nadar were perfected, and something very similar was contrived with the Godard brothers, the upshot being that we were always forewarned whenever it was proposed to send off a balloon. Sometimes we received by messenger, in the evening, an intimation that a balloon would start at daybreak on the morrow. Sometimes we were roused in the small hours of the morning, when everything intended for despatch had to be hastily got together and carried at once to the starting-place, such, for instance, as the Northern or the Orleans railway terminus, both being at a considerable distance from our flat in the Rue de Miromesnil. Those were by no means agreeable walks, especially when the cold weather had set in, as it did early that autumn; and every now and again at the end of the journey one found that it had been made in vain, for, the wind having shifted at the last moment, the departure of the balloon had been postponed. Of course, the only thing to be done was to trudge back home again. There was no omnibus service, all the horses having been requisitioned, and in the latter part of October there were not more than a couple of dozen cabs (drawn by decrepit animals) still plying for hire in all Paris. Thus Shanks's pony was the only means of locomotion.
In the earlier days my father accompanied me on a few of those expeditions, but he soon grew tired of them, particularly as his health became affected by the siege diet. We were together, however, when Gambetta took his departure on October 7, ascending from the Place Saint Pierre in a balloon constructed by Nadar. It had been arranged that he should leave for the provinces, in order to reinforce the three Government delegates who had been despatched thither prior to the investment. Jules Favre, the Foreign Minister, had been previously urged to join those delegates, but would not trust himself to a balloon, and it was thereupon proposed to Gambetta that he should do so. He willingly assented to the suggestion, particularly as he feared that the rest of the country was being overlooked, owing to the prevailing opinion that Paris would suffice to deliver both herself and all the rest of France from the presence of the enemy. Born in April, 1838, he was at this time in his thirty-third year, and full of vigour, as the sequel showed. The delegates whom he was going to join were, as I previously mentioned, very old men, well meaning, no doubt, but incapable of making the great effort which was made by Gambetta in conjunction with Charles de Freycinet, who was just in his prime, being the young Dictator's senior by some ten years.