The Martian: A Novel

by George Du Maurier

So time wore on with us gently; through the short vacation at New‑year's day till the 23d or 24th of February, when the Revolution broke out, and Louis Philippe premier had to fly for his life. It was a very troublous time, and the school for a whole week was in a state of quite heavenly demoralization! Ten times a day, or in the dead of night, the drum would beat le rappel or la générale. A warm wet wind was blowing—the most violent wind I can remember that was not an absolute gale. It didn't rain, but the clouds hurried across the sky all day long, and the tops of the trees tried to bend themselves in two; and their leafless boughs and black broken twigs littered the deserted playground—for we all sat on the parapet of the terrace by the lingerie; boys and servants, le père et la mère Jaurion, Mlle. Marceline and the rest, looking towards Paris—all feeling bound to each other by a common danger, like wild beasts in a flood. Dear me! I'm out of breath from sheer pleasure in the remembrance.

One night we had to sleep on the floor for fear of stray bullets; and that was a fearful joy never to be forgotten—it almost kept us awake! Peering out of the school‑room windows at dusk, we saw great fires, three or four at a time. Suburban retreats of the over‑wealthy, in full conflagration; and all day the rattle of distant musketry and the boom of cannon a long way off, near Montmartre and Montfaucon, kept us alive.

Most of the boys went home, and some of them never came back—and from that day the school began to slowly decline. Père Brossard—an ancient "Brigand de la Loire," as the republicans of his youth were called—was elected a representative of his native town at the Chamber of Deputies; and possibly that did the school more harm than good—ne sutor ultra crepidam! as he was so fond of impressing on us!

However, we went on pretty much as usual through spring and summer—with occasional alarms (which we loved), and beatings of le rappel—till the July insurrection broke out.

My mother and sister had left Mlle. Jalabert's, and now lived with my father near the Boulevard Montmartre. And when the fighting was at its height they came to fetch me home, and invited Barty, for the Rohans were away from Paris. So home we walked, quite leisurely, on a lovely peaceful summer evening, while the muskets rattled and the cannons roared round us, but at a proper distance; women picking linen for lint and chatting genially the while at shop doors and porter's lodge‑gates; and a piquet of soldiers at the corner of every street, who felt us all over for hidden cartridges before they let us through; it was all entrancing! The subtle scent of gunpowder was in the air—the most suggestive smell there can be. Even now, here in England, the night of the fifth of November never comes round but I am pleasantly reminded of the days when I was "en pleine révolution" in the streets of Paris with my father and mother, and Barty and my little sister—and genial piou‑pious made such a conscientious examination of our garments. Nothing brings back the past like a sound or a smell—even those of a penny squib!

Every now and then a litter borne by soldiers came by, on which lay a dead or wounded officer. And then one's laugh died suddenly out, and one felt one's self face to face with the horrors that were going on.

Barty shared my bed, and we lay awake talking half the night; dreadful as it all was, one couldn't help being jolly! Every ten minutes the sentinel on duty in the court‑yard below would sententiously intone:

"Sentinelles, prenez‑garde à vous!" And other sentinels would repeat the cry till it died away in the distance, like an echo.

And all next day, or the day after—or else the day after that, when the long rattle of the musketry had left off—we heard at intervals the "feu de peloton" in a field behind the church of St.‑Vincent de Paul, and knew that at every discharge a dozen poor devils of insurgents, caught red‑handed, fell dead in a pool of blood!

I need hardly say that before three days were over the irrepressible Barty had made a complete conquest of my small family. My sister (I hasten to say this) has loved him as a brother ever since; and as long as my parents lived, and wherever they made their home, that home has ever been his—and he has been their son—almost their eldest born, though he was younger than I by seven months.