Hotel de Clugny incendie but unhurt. All along streets notice holes to cellars stopped up with plaster for fear of petroleum.
Thursday. Drove by Champs Elysées, to Champ de Mars, Porte de Neuilly (where such destruction from bombs, etc., vault of railway crashed in,—trees in splinters, etc.) Then by Quaies, into Place de Carrousel between Tuileries and Louvre to Bastille Column and (through bad parts of town ...) to Père la Chaise, with its horrible trenches filled with hundreds of bodies and soaked black with petroleum (clothes, etc., burnt over them?).
Then that ghastly corner where 250 and 140 (‘4, 5 femmes,’) were shot ‘en pleine vigueur’ crying ‘Vive la République!’ as a keen young fossier told with evident sympathy, he having had to stand by,—see the firing, and bury the results.
Today Friday, 16th. The Petit Moniteur gives a horrible circular (torn down last night in the Rue Rochechouard) inciting ‘Travailleurs from every country to join against priests, soldiers and tyrants, and succeed, or nous nous ensevelirons sous les ruines de Paris!’
Fancy crying for fresh bloodshed when steeped in it to the lips now!
Some Frenchwomen at table curiously indignant at our small care about English ‘communists’,—quite unable to understand how the solidarity of national sentiment made such as these late events impossible in England, and then, when I mildly said so, shooting at me:—‘Pourtant, la Révolution où on a tué votre roi!’!!”
“Monday 20th. Went to Versailles to see the Chambre;—unpunctual sitting, I only present during some minutes of debate. Given ticket in ‘D’ by President Grévy.
6.30. Left Paris via Dieppe. 8 hours roughish sea.
Tuesday. Brighton.”
So there was no Heidelberg after all,—no sitting on the brow of the hill to look down on the valley of the Neckar, and recall ces jours heureux où nous étions si misérables. We are not told why S.J.-B.’s holiday was cut so short: perhaps railway communication was broken for the moment, and it proved impossible to proceed: but in any case it may be that the intense and unexpected picture of carnage and strife served to take her more completely out of herself and her worries than the more peaceful experience she would have chosen.