The Drums of War

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

I came back on foot. It was a long way; and as I passed the crowded cafés, the crowds of excited and fever-stricken people, it seemed to me that I was in a city whose inhabitants had at one stroke gone mad.

I found myself, for the first time in many days, able to note the things around me, and to take some interest in them. The great upheaval had shaken me in part away from my own especial preoccupation, the grief of the parting with Eloise and Franzius had obscured in part that other grief which had pursued me.

The great city had been stirred to its uttermost depths, as the great sea is sometimes stirred by a submarine explosion. Dregs came to the surface and floated as scum; and I saw people that day in the streets that I had never seen before: terrible people, cast up from the purlieus and the slums, dog-men and beast-women, such as insulted the light of heaven during the Terror; faces that might have served Retzsch for his picture of the fiend, or Calot for his fantastic devil-drawings. Collette la Charonne, Mathurine Giroron, Elizabeth Trouvain, the capon and the franc-mitou from the past, elbowed the bully of the barrier and the fishwife from the Halles of the present.

At the word "War" Mathias Hungadi Spiculi rose from his long sleep, just as he had risen at the word "Revolution." All the elements of the Commune were there that day, shouting France to war, and ready to dance on her ruins.

Even the bourgeoisie, the placid people, the café loungers, were changed. The tiger-cat which lies at the heart of the Latin races, the animal that spits, and snarls, and howls, was unchained at last; and the joyful ferocity of the women was a thing to see and to remember. It was the uprising of the pampered beast, the beast that had sunned itself for years in prosperity. Long ages of insult might have condoned what I saw that day, but the circumstances never.

Bands of women arm-in-arm, students, waving the tricolour, cabs and carriages crowded with people driving nowhere, anywhere, so that they could find a new place to shout in, girls with men's hats on their heads, men with women's bonnets—it was Mabille, into which the beasts of the Jardin des Plantes had broken; La Closerie des Lilas on an infinite scale, roofed with sky.

And, beyond the Vosges, at his desk, quite unmoved, with a cigar in his mouth and a folio in his hand, was sitting Bismarck, secure in everything, possessed of everything, from the Erbswurst for the Prussian cooking-pot to the guns that were to batter down Paris.

I have said little about my social life in Paris, but I have indicated, I think, that my guardian and I were friends of the Emperor's; and I mention it as a strange fact, and a fact that casts volumes of light on his character, that now, in my desolation, deserted by my guardian, deserted by Franzius and Eloise, deserted by everyone I loved, the image of Napoleon arose before me as a person I would like to speak to. You know just what I mean. There is generally amongst one's friends some person, some homely individual, some good man or good woman, to whom we go when in affliction for a word of consolation, or even just to feel their presence. We look in and see them, even though we may say nothing of our troubles. Moved by this instinct, I resolved to look in and see the Emperor. To get near the Tuileries was a difficult business, and even to pass the Cent Gardes at the gate, but once inside, things were easier.

The Emperor had come to Paris from the Council at Saint Cloud, held the night before. I do not know whether the Empress accompanied him or not, but he was in the palace, and the great hall was thronged.