A Girl of the Commune

by G. A. Henty

"There is no fear of anything of that sort, Hartington; but should you, by any possibility, get into trouble, you have but to send to me. However, this state of things will not last long, the people are fairly roused now and will soon sweep the butchers of Versailles before them, and a reign of perfect freedom and equality will be established, and the world will witness the spectacle of a free country, purging itself from the tyranny of capital and the abuse of power, under which it has so long groaned. But I have much to do and must be off," and with a hasty shake of the hand he hurried away again.

Cuthbert looked after him. "The poor fellow is fast qualifying for a mad-house," he said; "he has changed sadly, his cheeks are hollow and his eyes unnaturally brilliant. Those patches of color on his cheeks are signs of fever rather than of health. That woman, Minette, is responsible for this ruin. It must end badly one way or the other; the best thing that could happen to him would be to fall in one of these sorties. He has made himself so conspicuous that he is almost certain to be shot when the troops take Paris, unless, indeed, he becomes an actual lunatic before that. Wound up as he is by excitement and enthusiasm he will never bring himself to sneak off in disguise, as most of the men who have stirred up this business will do."

The time passed quickly enough in Paris, events followed each other rapidly, there was scarce a day without fighting, more or less serious. Gradually the troops wrested position after position from the Communists, but not without heavy fighting. The army at Versailles had swelled so rapidly by the arrival of the prisoners from Germany that even in Paris, where the journals of the Commune endeavored to keep up the spirits of the defenders by wholesale lying as to the result of the fighting outside its walls. It was known that at least a hundred thousand men were now gathered at Versailles.

"There is no doubt of one thing," Cuthbert said, as standing with Mary on the Trocadero, they one day watched the duel, when the guns at Meudon were replying vigorously to the fire of the forts, "I must modify my first opinions as to the courage of the Communists. They have learnt to fight, and allowing for all the exaggeration and bombast of their proclamations, they now stand admirably; they have more than once retaken positions from which they have been driven, and although very little is said about their losses, I was talking yesterday to a surgeon in one of the hospitals, and he tells me that already they must be as great as those throughout the whole of the first siege.

"They are still occasionally subject to panics. For instance, there was a bad one the other night when the troops took the Chateau of Becon, and again at Clamart, but I fancy that is owing to the mistake the Communists made in forcing men who are altogether opposed to them into their ranks. These men naturally bolt directly they are attacked, and that causes a panic among the others who would have fought had the rest stood. Still, altogether, they are fighting infinitely better than expected, and at Clamart they fought really well in the open for the first time. Before, I own that my only feelings towards the battalions of beetle-browed ruffians from the faubourgs was disgust, now I am beginning to feel a respect for them, but it makes the prospect here all the darker.

"I have no doubt that as soon as McMahon has got all his batteries into position he will open such a fire as will silence the forts and speedily make breaches in the walls; but the real fighting won't begin till they enter. The barricades were at first little more than breastworks, but they have grown and grown until they have become formidable fortifications, and, if stoutly defended, and with every house occupied by desperate men, it will be terrible work carrying them by assault. However, there are few places where the main defences cannot be turned, for it is impossible to fortify every street. However, if the Communists fight as desperately as we may now expect, in their despair, the work of clearing the whole city must occupy many days."

"It will be very unpleasant in Passy when the batteries on all those heights open fire."

"It would, indeed, if they were to direct their fire in this direction, for they could wipe Passy out altogether in a few hours; but everything shows that Thiers is anxious to spare Paris itself as much as possible. Not a shot has been fired at random, and scarcely a house has been injured. They fire only at the forts and at the batteries on this side, and when they begin in earnest I have no doubt it will be the same. It would be a mere waste of shot to fire up there, and if the Versailles people were to do unnecessary damage it would bring them into odium throughout all France, for it would be said that they were worse than the Prussians."

On the 25th of April, at 8 o'clock in the morning, the long silence of the besiegers' batteries ended. Cuthbert was taking his coffee when he heard a sound like the rumble of a heavy wagon. He ran to his window. There was quiet in the street below, for everyone had stopped abruptly to listen to the roar, and from every window heads appeared. Completing his dressing hastily, he went out and took the first fiacre he met and drove to Passy. The rumble had deepened into a heavy roar; the air quivered with the vibrations, and the shriek of the shells mingled with the deep booming of the guns. When he entered Madame Michaud's, she, her husband and Mary were standing at the open window.

"We have just come down from the top of the house," Mary said, "it is a grand sight from there; will you come up, Cuthbert?"