A Girl of the Commune

by G. A. Henty

"By the way," he said, without pursuing the subject farther, "I hear that there is a movement on foot for forming a corps of women. If they should do so it will afford you another illustration of the equality of your sex to ours in all matters, and I will go so far as to admit that I would much rather lead a company of the market-women than one composed of these Parisian shopkeepers."

"Don't, Mr. Hartington," she said, appealingly, "I don't feel equal to fighting now."

"Then we won't fight. Good-bye! If we are not lucky enough to light upon some empty cottages to sleep in I fancy the gloss will be taken out of this uniform before I see you again." He picked up his cap, shook hands, and was gone.

Madame Michaud woke up as the door closed.

"He has gone? your tall countryman."

"Yes, he is going out to-morrow to the outposts. I think it is very silly of him and very wrong mixing up in a quarrel that does not concern him, especially when there are tens of thousands here in Paris who, instead of fighting for their country, are content to sit all day in cafés and talk."

"They will fight when the time comes," Madame Michaud said, complacently. "They will fight like heroes. The Prussians will learn what Frenchmen are capable of doing."

But Mary had no patience just at present to listen to this sort of thing, and with the excuse that her head ached went at once to her room.

"I do not understand these English," Madame Michaud thought, as she drew the lamp nearer and resumed her knitting, "here are a young woman and a young man who are more like comrades than lovers. She was angry, more angry than I thought she could be, for she is generally good-tempered, when I asked her, the first time he came, if they were affiancés, 'We are old friends, madame,' she said, 'and nothing but friends. Cannot a girl have a man as a friend without there being any thought of love? In England people are friends, they can talk and laugh to each other without any silly ideas of this sort occurring to them. This is one of the things that keeps woman back in the scale, this supposition that she is always thinking of love.' I did not believe her then, but I have listened to-night when they thought I was asleep, and I even peeped out two or three times between my eyelids. I could not understand a word of what they said, but one can tell things by the tone without understanding the words. There was no love-making. She scolded him and he laughed. He sat carelessly in his chair, and did not move an inch nearer to her. She was as straight and as upright as she always is.

"That is not the way lovers act when one is going out to fight. I peeped out when he shook hands with her. He did not hold her hand a moment, he just shook it. They are strange people, these English. It would be wrong for a French girl thus to talk to a young man, but I suppose it is different with them. Who can understand these strange islanders? Why, if Lucien were going out to fight I should dissolve in tears, I should embrace him and hang on his neck; I might even have hysterics, though I have never had them in my life. She is a good girl, too, though she has such strange ideas about women. What can she want for them? I manage the house and Lucien goes to his office. If I say a thing is to be done in the house it is done. I call that equality. I cannot tell what she is aiming at. At times it seems to me that she is even more mad than her compatriots, and yet on other subjects she talks with good sense. What her father and mother can be about to let her be living abroad by herself is more than I can think. They must be even more mad than she is."