Love being thicker than blood, I feel sure they eventually got married; and after so romantic an opening, their story cannot but have proved interesting. Should anybody care to write it, I think the line to be taken should be this: They married, and lived "happy ever after"—as happily as their children would let them. They had four, differing widely in their tastes and convictions. One son enlisted in the German army; the other in the French. Both were deeply grieved to have fallen on evil times, when emperors and presidents were ever proclaiming the blessings of peace, and when even the people were beginning to question the desirability of attacking their neighbours.
Of the daughters, one loved the Germans, and was unhappy because she was to marry a Frenchman her parents had selected; the other hated the Germans, and was broken-hearted because she was not to marry the Frenchman she loved.
It must all end happily, however, for it is essential that the moral should be pointed: Love your neighbour, if only to show you are unshackled by prejudice. Marry him or her, whether he or she is your hereditary foe or not, and settle down to a life of peace and happiness, that you may inaugurate, by your noble example, the blessed era, when the lion and the lamb shall no longer hesitate to go and do likewise.
But not often was it my good fortune to spend a pleasant hour as at Saint Denis and to imagine little romances built on slight foundations. The tragedy being enacted around me forced itself on my view more than once, when I met batches of miserable prisoners marched off, some to be judged by court-martial, others already sentenced to be shot. The Parisian looked on without exhibiting much interest in their fate. He had seen so much of bloodshed in every form lately that he had grown callous. The day of settlement had come, the murder of the hostages must be avenged, and the canaille must be cleared away, just as the broken glass and the wrecked barricades had to be.
The reign of terror continued; it had only changed its name. Now it was called Justice. Shocking specimens of depraved humanity were those ill-fated prisoners, dragged from their haunts to be tried by the military authorities in Versailles.
I saw types such as only come to the surface when conflicting passions of the worst kind stir up the very dregs of society: dishevelled viragos, brutalised men, female fiends, men devils—hyænas, ready to spring and fasten their claws on you, were they not chained. I heard their howl of despair and their laugh of defiance, as they were led off to be shot.
And thus, whilst the beautiful city was smoothing her ruffled feathers and taking out a new lease of life, the poor wretches met their doom at the foot of the blood-spattered wall.
Wild beasts if you like—but men and women—our brothers and our sisters—alas! born in squalor, bred in vice, and tainted with hereditary ugliness of body and mind.
Who made them what they are? Let us try to find out, and, if we can, let us stand the guilty ones up against that wall, and clear them away with the other human wreckage. But no! neither you nor I would be left to do the clearing away.