At Ferrières, above the park,
Behold him darting through the sky,
Soaring to heaven like a lark.
At Ferrières above the park;
Whilst William whispers to Bismarck—
'Silence, see Nadar there on high!'
At Ferrières above the park
Behold him darting through the sky.
Oh, thou more hairy than King Clodion,
Bearer on high of this report,
Thou yellower than a pure Cambodian,
And far more daring than King Clodion,
We'll cast thy statue in collodion
And mount it on a gas retort.
Oh, thou more hairy than King Clodion,
Bearer on high of this report!
Perhaps it may not be thought too pedantic on my part if I explain that the King Clodion referred to in Millaud's last verse was the legendary "Clodion the Hairy," a supposed fifth-century leader of the Franks, reputed to be a forerunner of the founder of the, Merovingian dynasty. Nadar's hair, however, was not long like that of les rois chevelue, for it was simply a huge curly and somewhat reddish mop. As for his complexion, Millaud's phrase, "yellow as a pure Cambodian," was a happy thought.
These allusions to Millaud's sprightly verse remind me that throughout the siege of Paris the so-called mot pour rire was never once lost sight of. At all times and in respect to everything there was a superabundance of jests—jests on the Germans, the National and the Mobile Guard, the fallen dynasty, and the new Republic, the fruitless sorties, the wretched rations, the failing gas, and many other people and things. One of the enemy's generals was said to have remarked one day: "I don't know how to satisfy my men. They complain of hunger, and yet I lead them every morning to the slaughterhouse." At another time a French colonel, of conservative ideas, was said to have replaced the inscription "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," which he found painted on the walls of his barracks, by the words, "Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery," declaring that the latter were far more likely to free the country of the presence of the hated enemy. As for the "treason" mania, which was very prevalent at this time, it was related that a soldier remarked one day to a comrade: "I am sure that the captain is a traitor!" "Indeed! How's that?" was the prompt rejoinder. "Well," said the suspicious private, "have you not noticed that every time he orders us to march forward we invariably encounter the enemy?"
When Trochu issued a decree incorporating all National Guards, under forty-five years of age, in the marching battalions for duty outside the city, one of these Guards, on being asked how old he was, replied, "six-and-forty." "How is that?" he was asked. "A few weeks ago, you told everybody that you were only thirty-six." "Quite true," rejoined the other, "but what with rampart-duty, demonstrating at the Hôtel-de-Ville, short rations, and the cold weather, I feel quite ten years older than I formerly did." When horseflesh became more or less our daily provender, many Parisian bourgeois found their health failing. "What is the matter, my dearest?" Madame du Bois du Pont inquired of her husband, when he had collapsed one evening after dinner. "Oh! it is nothing, mon amie" he replied; "I dare say I shall soon feel well again, but I used to think myself a better horseman!"
Directly our supply of gas began to fail, the wags insinuated that Henri Rochefort was jubilant, and if you inquired the reason thereof, you were told that owing to the scarcity of gas everybody would be obliged to buy hundreds of "Lanternes." We had, of course, plenty of sensations in those days, but if you wished to cap every one of them you merely had to walk into a café and ask the waiter for—a railway time-table.
Once before I referred to the caricatures of the period, notably to those libelling the Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie, the latter being currently personified as Messalina—or even as something worse, and this, of course, without the faintest shadow of justification. But the caricaturists were not merely concerned with the fallen dynasty. One of the principal cartoonists of the Charivari at that moment was "Cham," otherwise the Vicomte Amédée de Noé, an old friend of my family's. It was he, by the way, who before the war insisted on my going to a fencing-school, saying: "Look here, if you mean to live in France and be a journalist, you must know how to hold a sword. Come with me to Ruzé's. I taught your uncle Frank and his friend Gustave Doré how to fence many years ago, and now I am going to have you taught." Well, in one of his cartoons issued during the siege, Cham (disgusted, like most Frenchmen, at the seeming indifference of Great Britain to the plight in which France found herself) summed up the situation, as he conceived it, by depicting the British Lion licking the boots of Bismarck, who was disguised as Davy Crockett. When my father remonstrated with Cham on the subject, reminding him of his own connexion with England, the indignant caricaturist replied: "Don't speak of it. I have renounced England and all her works." He, like other Frenchmen of the time, contended that we had placed ourselves under great obligations to France at the period of the Crimean War.
Among the best caricatures of the siege-days was one by Daumier, which showed Death appearing to Bismarck in his sleep, and murmuring softly, "Thanks, many thanks." Another idea of the period found expression in a cartoon representing a large mouse-trap, labelled "France," into which a company of mice dressed up as German soldiers were eagerly marching, their officer meanwhile pointing to a cheese fixed inside the trap, and inscribed with the name of Paris. Below the design ran the legend: "Ah! if we could only catch them all in it!" Many, indeed most, of the caricatures of the time did not appear in the so-called humorous journals, but were issued separately at a penny apiece, and were usually coloured by the stencilling process. In one of them, I remember, Bismarck was seen wearing seven-league boots and making ineffectual attempts to step from Versailles to Paris. Another depicted the King of Prussia as Butcher William, knife in hand and attired in the orthodox slaughter-house costume; whilst in yet another design the same monarch was shown urging poor Death, who had fallen exhausted in the snow, with his scythe lying broken beside him, to continue on the march until the last of the French nation should be exterminated. Of caricatures representing cooks in connexion with cats there was no end, the lapin de gouttière being in great demand for the dinner-table; and, after Gambetta had left us, there were designs showing the armies of succour (which were to be raised in the provinces) endeavouring to pass ribs of beef, fat geese, legs of mutton, and strings of sausages over several rows of German helmets, gathered round a bastion labelled Paris, whence a famished National Guard, eager for the proffered provisions, was trying to spring, but could not do so owing to the restraining arm of General Trochu.
Before the investment began Paris was already afflicted with a spy mania. Sala's adventure, which I recounted in an earlier chapter, was in a way connected with this delusion, which originated with the cry "We are betrayed!" immediately after the first French reverses. The instances of so-called "spyophobia" were innumerable, and often curious and amusing. There was a slight abatement of the mania when, shortly before the siege, 188,000 Germans were expelled from Paris, leaving behind them only some 700 old folk, invalids, and children, who were unable to obey the Government's decree. But the disease soon revived, and we heard of rag-pickers having their baskets ransacked by zealous National Guards, who imagined that these receptacles might contain secret despatches or contraband ammunition. On another occasion Le Figaro wickedly suggested that all the blind beggars in Paris were spies, with the result that several poor infirm old creatures were abominably ill-treated. Again, a fugitive sheet called Les Nouvelles denounced all the English residents as spies. Labouchere was one of those pounced upon by a Parisian mob in consequence of that idiotic denunciation, but as he had the presence of mind to invite those who assailed him to go with him to the nearest police-station, he was speedily released. On two occasions my father and myself were arrested and carried to guard-houses, and in the course of those experiences we discovered that the beautifully engraved but essentially ridiculous British passport, which recited all the honours and dignities of the Secretary of State or the Ambassador delivering it, but gave not the slightest information respecting the person to whom it had been delivered (apart, that is, from his or her name), was of infinitely less value in the eyes of a French officer than a receipt for rent or a Parisian tradesman's bill. [That was forty-three years ago. The British passport, however, remains to-day as unsatisfactory as it was then.]
But let me pass to other instances. One day an unfortunate individual, working in the Paris sewers, was espied by a zealous National Guard, who at once gave the alarm, declaring that there was a German spy in the aforesaid sewers, and that he was depositing bombs there with the intention of blowing up the city. Three hundred Guards at once volunteered their services, stalked the poor workman, and blew him to pieces the next time he popped his head out of a sewer-trap. The mistake was afterwards deplored, but people argued (wrote Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles, who sent the story to The Morning Post) that it was far better that a hundred innocent Frenchmen should suffer than that a single Prussian should escape. Cham, to whom I previously alluded, old Marshal Vaillant, Mr. O'Sullivan, an American diplomatist, and Alexis Godillot, the French army contractor, were among the many well-known people arrested as spies at one or another moment. A certain Mme: de Beaulieu, who had joined a regiment of Mobiles as a cantiniere, was denounced as a spy "because her hands were so white." Another lady, who had installed an ambulance in her house, was carried off to prison on an equally frivolous pretext; and I remember yet another case in which a lady patron of the Societe de Secours aux Blesses was ill-treated. Matters would, however, probably be far worse at the present time, for Paris, with all her apaches and anarchists, now includes in her population even more scum than was the case three-and-forty years ago.