Burning the Guillotine. April
XLV.
What is absolutely stupefying in the midst of all this, is the smiling aspect of the streets and the promenades. The constantly increasing emigration is only felt by the diminution in the number of depraved women and dissipated men; enough, however, remain to fill the cafés and give life to the boulevards. It might almost be said that Paris is in its normal state.
Every morning, from the Champs Elysées, Les Ternes, and Vaugirard, families are seen removing into the town, out of the way of the bombardment, as at the time when Jules Favre anathematised the barbarity of the Prussians. Some pass in cabs, others on foot, walking sadly, with their bedding and household furniture piled on a cart. If you question these poor people, they will all tell you of the shells from the Versailles batteries, destroying houses and killing women and children. What matters it? Paris goes her usual round of business and pleasure. The Commune suppresses journals and imprisons journalists. Monsieur Richardet, of the National, was marched off to prison yesterday, for the sole crime of having requested a passport of the savage Monsieur Rigault; the Commune thrusts the priests into cells, and turns out the young girls from the convents, imprisons Monsieur O’yan, one of the directors of the Seminary of St. Sulpice; hurls a warrant of arrest at Monsieur Tresca, who escapes; tries to capture Monsieur Henri Vrignault, who however, succeeds in reaching a place of safety; the Commune causes perquisitions to be made by armed men in the banking houses, seizes upon title deeds and money; has strong-boxes burst open by willing locksmiths; when the locksmiths are tired, the soldiers of the Commune help them with the butt-ends of their muskets. They do worse still, these Communists—they do all that the consciousness of supreme power can suggest to despots without experience; each day they send honest fathers of families to their death, who think they are suffering for the good cause, when they are only dying for the good pleasure of Monsieur Avrial and Monsieur Billioray. Well! and what is Paris doing all this time? Paris reads the papers, lounges, runs after the last news and ejaculates: “Ah! ah! they have put Amouroux into prison! The Archbishop of Paris has been transferred from the Conciergerie to Mazas! Several thousand francs have been stolen from Monsieur Denouille! Diable! Diable!” And then Paris begins the same round of newspaper reading, lounging, and gossiping again. Nothing seems changed. Nothing seems interrupted. Even the proclamation of the famous Cluseret, who threatens us all with active service in the marching regiments, has not succeeded in troubling the tranquillity and indifference of the greater number of Parisians. They look on at what is taking place, as at a performance, and only bestow just enough interest upon it to afford them amusement. This evening the cannonading has increased; on listening attentively, we can distinguish the sounds of platoon-firing; but Paris takes its glass of beer tranquilly at the Café de Madrid and its Mazagran at the Café Riche. Sometimes, towards midnight, when the sky is clear, Paris goes to the Champs Elysées, to see things a little nearer, strolls under the trees, and smoking a cigar exclaims: “Ah! there go the shells.” Then leisurely compares the roar of the battle of to-day to that of yesterday. In strolling about thus in the neighbourhood of the shells, Paris exposes itself voluntarily to danger; Paris is indifferent, and use is second nature. Then bed-time comes, Paris looks over the evening papers, and asks, with a yawn, where the devil all this will end? By a conciliation? Or the Prussians perhaps? And then Paris falls asleep, and gets up the next morning, just as fresh and lusty as if Napoleon the Third were still Emperor by the grace of God and the will of the French nation.
XLVI.
An insertion in the Journal Officiel of Versailles has justly irritated the greater part of the French press. This is the paragraph. “False news of the most infamous kind has been spread in Paris where no independent journal is allowed to appear.” From these few lines it may be concluded, that in the eyes of the Government of Versailles the whole of the Paris newspapers, whose editors have not deserted their posts, have entirely submitted to the Commune, and only think and say what the Commune permits them to think and say. This is an egregious calumny. No, thank heaven! The Parisian press has not renounced its independence, and if no account is taken (as is perfectly justifiable) of a heap of miserable little sheets which no sooner appear than they die, and of some few others edited by members of the Commune, one would be obliged to acknowledge, on the contrary, that since the 18th of March the great majority of journals have exhibited proofs of a proud and courageous independence. Each day, without allowing themselves to be intimidated, either by menaces of forcible suppression or threats of arrest, they have fearlessly told the members of the Commune their opinion without concealment or circumlocution. The French press has undoubtedly committed many offences during the last few years, and is not altogether irresponsible for the troubles which have overwhelmed the unhappy country; but reparation is being made for these offences in this present hour of danger, and the fearless attitude which it has maintained before these men of the Hôtel de Ville, atones nobly for the past. It has constituted itself judge; condemns what is condemnable, resists violence, endeavours to enlighten the masses. Sometimes too—and this is perhaps its greatest crime in the eyes of the Versailles Government—it permits itself to disapprove entirely of the acts of the National Assembly; some journals going as far as to insinuate that the Government is not altogether innocent of the present calamities. But what does this prove? That the press is no more the servant of the Assembly than it is the slave of the Commune; in a word, that it is free.
And what false news is this of which the Journal Officiel of Versailles complains, and against which it seems to warn us? Does it think it likely that we should be silly enough to give credence to the shouts of victory that are recorded each morning, on the handbills of the Commune? Does it suppose that we look upon the deputies as nothing but a race of anthropophagi who dine every day off Communists and Federals at the tables d’hôte of the Hôtel des Réservoirs? Not at all. We easily unravel the truth, from the entanglement of exaggerations forged by the men of the Hôtel de Ville; and it is precisely this just appreciation of things that we owe to those papers which the Journal Officiel condemns so inconsiderately.
But it is not of fake news alone, probably, that the Versailles Assembly is afraid. It would not perhaps be sorry that we should ignore the real state of things, and I wager that if it had the power it would willingly suppress ill-informed journals—although they are not Communist the least in the world—who allow themselves to state that for six days the shells of Versailles have fallen upon Les Ternes, the Champs Elysées and the Avenue Wagram, and have already cost as many tears and as much bloodshed, as the Prussian shells of fearful memory.