“Now,” said M. Guérin, “you have seen the official organ of the Anti-Semitic League, and I could show you pamphlets and posters that are equally powerful. No League in Paris is so resolute, so strong, so efficiently organised. Such is our success that I am shortly removing to more spacious quarters. There we shall deliver Anti-Semitic lectures, and give Anti-Semitic plays—open to all, not a centime will be charged. Then, boxing and fencing classes, pistol practice, a library, a doctor and a solicitor on the premises—always, no charge. The Parisians, being thrifty, will flock to us. They will cry: ‘Here we get entertainment, medical and legal advice for nothing; it is admirable. Vive Guérin! Vive la France! À bas les Juifs!’ The Government will be furious. Loubet in the Élysée will shake in his shoes. And Lépine will shout: ‘We must arrest that canaille Guérin!’ But let him come. I shall be armed more strongly than ever in my new quarters in the rue de Chabrol.”
“A garden?” I ventured.
“There are no gardens in the rue de Chabrol: but there are cellars,” grimly replied M. Guérin. “Come and see me there. You will be astonished. Au revoir.”
Out in the passage, and on the staircase, I encountered four or five of Jules Guérin’s clerks and assistants; coarse, powerful young men, with bull-dog faces, who had been recruited by the chief of the Anti-Semites from the ghastly slaughter-house of Villette. In the garden I paused to inspect the stony flower-beds and the dilapidated well.
“The future cemetery of my enemies. Ah, the traitors, the brigands, the assassins! Let them come.”
At an open window, in his sombrero and smoking his eternal cigarette, stood fierce Jules Guérin.
“Lépine in that flower-bed,” he shouted, and then closed the window. But reopened it, when I reached the gateway, to cry:
“And Loubet, in the well.”
A month later, Paris in uproar. On the afternoon of the 3rd June the Cour de Cassation ordered the revision of the Dreyfus Affair; the same night official arrangements were made for the return to France of the shattered prisoner of the Devil’s Island; next day, during the race-meeting at Auteuil, President Loubet’s hat was smashed over his head by the stick of a certain Baron Christiani, a Royalist Anti-Dreyfusard. Then, the fall of the Dupuy Ministry, and M. Loubet in a dilemma. M. Poincaré, astutest of statesmen, was summoned to the Élysée; but, with characteristic shrewdness, declined the task of forming a Cabinet in such unfavourable circumstances. M. Léon Bourgeois (absent on a Peace mission at The Hague) was telegraphed for, but could not be persuaded to exercise a pacific influence in his own country. M. Waldeck-Rousseau was next requisitioned; and left the Élysée with the assurance: “Monsieur le Président, I will do my best to succeed.” Nothing could have been more admirable than his subsequent exertions, for, in making them, M. Waldeck-Rousseau, the most distinguished and most prosperous lawyer at the Paris Bar, had nothing to gain and everything to lose; and he must have been dismayed at the refusal, or the reluctance, of highly esteemed politicians to serve their country by fighting a just if an unpopular cause. Well, for a whole week the most painstaking, the most level-headed and truly patriotic Prime Minister who has yet worked for the Third Republic, visited prominent statesmen with the earnest desire to form a ministère d’apaisement, founded on the principles of disinterestedness and justice. Throughout that week, he was hooted in the streets, and ridiculed and insulted by MM. Rochefort, Millevoye, Drumont and Jules Guérin, who triumphantly predicted in their newspapers that “Panama Loubet”—like “Père Grévy” before him—would be compelled to resign for want of a ministry. And biting was the satire, and more savage became the contumely, when at last the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry was completed, by the inclusion of such opposite, hostile personages as the “citizen Millerand” and fierce, aristocratic and despotic old General the Marquis de Galliffet. “After this,” wrote Henri Rochefort, “the deluge.” “At last,” declared M. Drumont, “Paris will rebel; and the next events will prove fatal to this unspeakable Republic.” The next important event was the landing in France, in the middle of the night, of a bent, prematurely aged figure: Captain Dreyfus. How the musty old carriage in which he sat, dazed, exhausted, shivering, rattled over the cobble-stones to the Rennes prison! How the prison gates clanged to when the shabby vehicle had entered the dark, grim courtyard! And how split and how cracked was the voice of the prisoner from the Devil’s Island when, at the court-martial a few days afterwards, he protested his innocence and refuted the new monstrous accusations of highly respected and brilliantly uniformed Generals Gonse, de Boisdeffre and Mercier! Solitary confinement had left him almost inarticulate. But he defended himself heroically: and, with an effort, straightened his bent back when questioned by his judges. Then how the trial dragged on; and what scenes took place in the streets, hotels and cafés of Rennes, which were crowded with le Tout Paris and echoed with Parisian exclamations and disputes! Brawls, duels, Henri Rochefort’s white “Imperial” pulled; Maître Labori, Captain Dreyfus’s brilliant counsel, shot between the shoulders; a famous demi-mondaine expelled the town; arrests, startling canards, alarms; hysteria, chaos, and delirium enough for Paris itself; and in Paris—whilst these exhibitions were occurring in the Rennes streets, and Captain Dreyfus (in the severe court-room) was stiffening his back and straining his split voice until it rose to an uncanny scream—what of Jules Guérin in Paris? and of his guns and revolvers, his well and his flower-bed? and of his assistants and clerks, the young men with the bull-dog faces, whom he had recruited from the ghastly slaughter-house of La Villette?
Well, first of all, came the dishevelled, dusty confusion of a déménagement in the rue Condorcet. The study walls were stripped of their revolvers; the basement was cleared of the printing-press that produced the murderous Anti-Juif; huge packing-cases were passed into a number of furniture vans; and so, farewell to the stony garden—in which not an “enemy” lay buried; and en route to No. 12 rue de Chabrol, a commodious, massive building with large windows and a solid oak door. The arrival of Jules Guérin and his assistants caused consternation amongst the peaceful, bourgeois inhabitants of the street. Lurid Anti-Semitic posters were stuck to the walls of No. 12; the din of the printing-machines disturbed the neighbours—and Guérin’s voice of thunder (execrating the Jews and demanding the lives of his enemies) was to be heard through the open windows, while his enormous sombrero was another disquieting element in the orderly, dull thoroughfare. The Anti-Semitic lectures and plays were announced; a solicitor and a doctor were engaged—and Paris was invited to visit No. 12 rue de Chabrol and partake of its pleasures and advantages. Then came the suggestion in the Anti-Juif that Paris should fix a day and an hour when the Jews should be hanged on the boulevard lamp-posts. And then followed the resolution of the Government—to have done with Jules Guérin! A warrant was issued for his arrest on the charge of “incitement to rebellion.” Somehow or other the news reached No. 12; and when the Commissary of Police (armed with his warrant) rang at the oak door, the massive form of Guérin appeared at a window. “Bandit,” he shouted. “There are twenty of us in here: and not one of us will be taken alive. Tell the Government of Traitors we shall fight to the death.” And he flourished a revolver, and his assistants, assembled behind him in the window, cheered wildly. Away went the Commissary of Police for further orders. Up came MM. Drumont, Millevoye and other leading Anti-Semites with exhortations to surrender. But Guérin, from his window, reiterated his determination to die heroically at his post: and again the young men with the bull-dog faces cheered enthusiastically. And there were cries of “Mon Dieu, quelle affaire!” and angry protests, lamentations and tears amongst the shopkeepers and peaceful old rentiers of the street. Many of them put up their shutters and fled, when policemen and Municipal Guards marched up and stationed themselves outside No. 12. Jules Guérin greeted them with cries of “Assassins!”; shook his great fist threateningly; rushed from window to window, shouting forth abuse. More cheering from his assistants, who pointed guns at the authorities.