The attempted assassination of the préfet had an unexpected effect upon public opinion in Marseilles. It turned the mercurial Frenchman against the Commune. I advised General Cluseret to go at once to Paris. I even purchased a gold-laced uniform for him. His subsequent history, as military leader of the Commune in Paris, his capture, trial, release, and retirement to Switzerland, are well known.
At this time I believe the tide of war might have been turned in favor of France by some swift movement like those of which the mobile Boers made good use in South Africa, perhaps by an attack on the rear of the German armies. France was filled with German soldiers, but Germany was unguarded; and I believed then that a body of light horsemen, say, like the Algerians, might have created such a diversion by a rapid raid to the rear that it would have forced the Germans back to the Rhine, or even to Berlin. I was astonished by the tremendous amount of munitions of war, and by the masses of troops that were still available in the south of France. Leadership, and not troops, was what France lacked.
I left Marseilles for Lyons, after the troops tried to shoot me in the balcony of the hotel, and was accompanied by Cremieux, one of the leaders of the Ligue du Midi. As we left Marseilles, a man, wearing conspicuously the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, entered our compartment. I at once set him down as a spy, and began talking with Cremieux in a loud voice. My estimate of his character was justified in an unpleasant way at Lyons. No sooner had we entered the suburbs of that city than our friend left the compartment and got off the train.
When the train came to a stop in the station, I sprang out of the compartment with Cremieux, and was confronted by six bayonets. Both of us were placed under arrest. Immediately I remembered the little slip of paper in my pocket which might betray Cluseret, if found, and I seized it hastily and put it into my mouth. The officer of the squad of soldiers rushed forward to stop me, but it was too late. The slip had gone. I had swallowed it.
"That was the address of General Cluseret!" shouted the officer.
"Of course," said I. "And it has gone to a rendezvous with my breakfast!"
The soldiers took Cremieux and myself to the Bastile, in Lyons, and I was detained there for thirteen days. When I went into the cell I was very tired and sat up against the wall and leaned my head against it. In a moment I detected the breathing of a man very near me, and perceived a crack in the wall, against which a spy in the adjacent cell was inclining his ear to catch any incriminating words that might pass between Cremieux and myself. It was the old trick of the Inquisition; but it did not serve the purposes of these late players of it.
My secretary, Mr. Bemis, who came on from Marseilles by a later train, could not find me in Lyons. He spent a week in looking for me. At the end of that time my wife, who was in New York, telegraphed to the American legation at Paris asking if the report were true that I had been killed. It had been currently reported in America that the soldiers had shot me in Marseilles. Mr. Bemis went immediately to the Guarde Mobile, which was in sympathy with the Commune, the organization from which General Cluseret had been driven by Gambetta. The Guarde sent a deputation of 150 officers to the préfet of the city, who ordered my immediate release. Gambetta was appealed to, and he directed that I be sent to him at Tours by special train.
To Tours I went in style. I had been poisoned in the Lyons Bastile, and was ill, in consequence, having lost thirty pounds of flesh in thirteen days. I was met at Tours by Gambetta's secretary, M. Ranc, afterward a deputy, who told me I could see the Dictator at four o'clock. "Why not now?" I asked. "Because it is not possible for M. Gambetta to work until he has had his dinner." I found that these French officials were as fond of their dinner as English officials. At the appointed hour M. Ranc took me to the palace of the prefecture, and I was admitted at once to Gambetta's presence.
I found everything in confusion. The prefecture was filled with men who had been waiting for the Dictator's pleasure. In the first ante-rooms I saw men who had been waiting for three weeks; in the next rooms were those who had waited for two weeks; and in the third rooms I found officers of the army and navy, who had waited one week. As I passed in among these throngs with an air of self-possession, they took me for some grand personage, and I heard whispers that I must be the ambassador from Spain or the Papal Nuncio.