A Girl of the Commune

by G. A. Henty

He stood for a time at the corner of the street irresolute. He had seen scores of dead in the streets. He had thought he could see nothing worse than he had witnessed, but he felt that he could not go back, as he had first thought of doing, to the scene of execution. Comrades had fallen by his side in the fight at Champigny, but he had not felt for them as for this comrade who lay behind him, or for the girl who, with her talents, might have had a bright future before her had she been thrown amid other surroundings. He wondered whether he could obtain their bodies for burial.

It did not seem to him possible. Vehicles could not be obtained at any price. The very request would seem suspicious, and suspicion at that hour was enough to condemn a man unheard. The difficulties in the way would be enormous. Indeed, it would matter nothing. Arnold and Minette. They had fallen together and would lie together in one of the great common graves in which the dead would be buried. It would be little short of a mockery to have the burial service read over her, and had Arnold been consulted he would have preferred to lie beside her to being laid in a grave apart.

So after a pause of five minutes Cuthbert moved away without venturing a single look back at the group huddled down by the wall, but walked away feeling crushed and overwhelmed by the untimely fate that had befallen two persons of whom he had seen so much during the past year, and feeling as feeble as he did when he first arose from his bed in the American ambulance.

Several times he had to pause and lean against the wall, and when he had passed the barricade at the Place de la Concorde, towards which he had almost instinctively made his way, he sat down on one of the deserted seats in the Champs Elysées, and burst into tears. It had hardly come upon him as a surprise, for he had felt that, conspicuous as he had made himself, the chances of Arnold making his escape were small indeed, especially as Minette would cling to the Commune until the very end. Still it never struck him as being possible that he himself might witness the end. He had thought that the same obscurity that hung over the fate of most of the other leaders of the Commune would envelop that of Arnold. He would have fallen, but how or when would never have been known. He would simply have disappeared. Rumor would have mentioned his name for a few days, the rumor that was already busy with the fate of other leaders of the insurrection, and he had never dreamt that it would be brought home to him in this fashion. After a time Cuthbert pulled himself together, waited until a fiacre came along for on this side of Paris things were gradually regaining their usual aspect and then drove back to Passy.

"What is the matter, Cuthbert?" Mary exclaimed as she caught sight of his face. "Are you ill? You look terribly pale and quite unlike yourself. What has happened?"

"I have had a shock, Mary," he said, with a faint attempt at a smile, "a very bad shock. Don't ask me about it just at present. Please get me some brandy. I have never fainted in my life, but I feel very near it just at present."

Mary hurried away to Madame Michaud, who now always discreetly withdrew as soon as Cuthbert was announced, and returned with some cognac, a tumbler, and water. She poured him out a glass that seemed to herself to be almost alarmingly strong, but he drank it at a draught.

"Don't be alarmed, Mary," he said, with a smile, at the consternation in her face. "You won't often see me do this, and I can assure you that spirit-drinking is not an habitual vice with me, but I really wanted it then. They are still fighting fiercely from Porte St. Martin down to the Place de la Bastille. I believe all resistance has been crushed out on the south side of the river, and in a couple of days the whole thing will be over."

"Fancy a week of fighting. It is awful to think of, Cuthbert. How many do you suppose will be killed altogether?"

"I have not the least idea, and I don't suppose it will ever be known; but if the resistance is as desperate for the next two days as it has been for the last three, I should say fully 20,000 will have fallen, besides those taken with arms in their hands, tried, and shot. I hear there are two general court-martials sitting permanently, and that seven or eight hundred prisoners are shot every day. Then there are some eighteen or twenty thousand at Versailles, but as these will not be tried until the fighting is over, and men's blood cooled down somewhat, no doubt much greater leniency will be shown."