XXVI.
Monday, the 3rd of April.[[33]] A fearful day! I have been hurrying this way and that, looking, questioning, reading. It is now ten o’clock in the evening. And what do I know? Nothing certain; nothing except this, which is awful,—they are fighting.
Yes, at the gates of Paris, Frenchmen against Frenchmen, beneath the eyes of the Prussians, who are watching the battle-field like ravens: they are fighting. I have seen ambulance waggons pass full of National Guards. By whom have they been wounded? By Zouaves. Is this thing credible, is it possible? Ah! those guns, cannon, and mitrailleuses, why were they not all claimed by the enemy—all, every one, from soldiers and Parisians alike? But little hindrance would that have proved. It had been resolved—by what monstrous will?—that we should be hurled to the very bottom of the precipice. These Frenchmen, who would kill Frenchmen, would not be checked by lack of arms. If they could not shoot each other, they would strangle each other.
The Barricade: Evening Meal—soup and cigars, and a “petit verre”
This, indeed, was unlooked for. An insurrection was feared; men thought of the June days; that evening when the battalions devoted to the National Assembly camped in the neighbourhood of the Bank, we imagined, as a horrible possibility, muskets pointed from between the stones of barricades, blood flowing in the streets, men killed, women in tears. But who could have foretold that a new species of civil war was preparing? That Paris, separated from France, would be blockaded by Frenchmen? That it would once more be deprived of communication with the provinces; once more starved perhaps? That there would be, not a few men struggling to the death in one of the quarters of the town, but two armies in presence, each with chiefs, fortifications and cannon? That Paris, in a word, would be besieged anew? How abominable a surprise of fate!
The cannonading has been heard since morning. Ah! that sound, which, during the siege, made our hearts beat with hope,—yes, with hope, for it made us believe in a possible deliverance—how horrible it was this morning. I went towards the Champs Elysées. Paris was deserted. Had it understood at last that its honour, its existence even, were at stake in this revolution, or was it only not up yet? Battalions were marching along the boulevards, with music playing. They were going towards the Place Vendôme, and were singing. The cantinières were carrying guns. Some one told me that men had been at work all night in the neighbourhood of the Hôtel de Ville, and that the streets adjoining it were blocked with barricades. But in fact no one knows anything, except that there is fighting in Neuilly, that the “Royalists” have attacked, and that “our brothers are being slaughtered.” A few groups are assembled in the Place de la Concorde. I approach, and find them discussing the question of the rents,—yes, of the rents! Ah! it is certain those who are being killed at this moment will not have to pay their landlord. On reaching the Rond Point I can distinctly perceive a compact crowd round the Triumphal Arch, and I meet some tired National Guards who are returning from the battle. They are ragged, dusty, and dreary. “What has happened?”—“We are betrayed!” says one.—“Death to the traitors!” cries another.
No certain news from the field of battle. A runaway, seated outside a café amidst a group of eager questioners, recounts that the barricade at the Neuilly bridge has been attacked by sergents de ville dressed as soldiers, and Pontifical Zouaves carrying a white flag.—“A parliamentary flag?” asks some one.—“No! a royalist flag,” answered the runaway.—“And the barricade has been taken?”—“We had no cartridges; we had not eaten for twenty-four hours; of course we had to decamp.”
Farther on a soldier of the line affirms that the barricade has been taken again. The cannon roars still. Mont Valérien is firing, it is said, on the Courbevoie barracks, where a battalion of Federal guards was stationed yesterday.—“But they were off before daybreak,” adds the soldier.