A panic now seized the wealthier classes of Lyons. Some sixty anarchists—all workers, and only one middle-class man, Emile Gautier, who was on a lecturing tour in the region—were arrested. The Lyons papers undertook at the same time to incite the government to arrest me, representing me as the leader of the agitation, who had come from England in order to direct the movement. Russian spies began to parade again in conspicuous numbers in our small town. Almost every day I received letters, evidently written by spies of the international police, mentioning some dynamite plot, or mysteriously announcing that consignments of dynamite had been shipped to me. I made quite a collection of these letters, writing on each of them ‘Police Internationale,’ and they were taken away by the police when they made a search in my house. But they did not dare to produce these letters in court, nor did they ever restore them to me. In December, the house where I stayed was searched in Russian fashion, and my wife, who was going to Geneva, was arrested at the station in Thonon, and also searched. But of course nothing was found to compromise me or anyone else.
Ten days passed, during which I was quite free to go away, if I had wished to do so. I received several letters advising me to disappear—one of them from an unknown Russian friend, perhaps a member of the diplomatic staff, who seemed to have known me, and who wrote that I must leave at once, because otherwise I should be the first victim of an extradition treaty which was about to be concluded between France and Russia. I remained where I was; and when the ‘Times’ inserted a telegram saying that I had disappeared from Thonon, I wrote a letter to the paper giving my address, and declaring that since so many of my friends were arrested I had no intention of leaving.
In the night of December 21, my brother-in-law died in my arms. We knew that his illness was incurable, but to see a young life extinguished in your presence, after a brave struggle against death, is terrible. We both were quite broken down. Three or four hours later, as the dull winter morning was dawning, gendarmes came to the house to arrest me. Seeing in what a state my wife was, I asked to remain with her till the burial was over, promising upon my word of honour to be at the prison door at a given hour; but this was refused, and the same night I was taken to Lyons. Elisée Reclus, notified by telegraph, came at once, bestowing on my wife all the gentleness of his great heart; friends came from Geneva; and although the funeral was an absolutely civil one, which was a novelty in that little town, half of the population was at the burial, to show my wife that the hearts of the poorer classes and the simple Savoy peasants were with us, and not with their rulers. When my trial was going on, the peasants followed it with sympathy, and used to come every day from the mountain villages to town to get the papers.
Another incident which profoundly touched me was the arrival at Lyons of an English friend. He came on behalf of a gentleman well known and esteemed in the English political world, in whose family I had spent many happy hours at London in 1882. He was the bearer of a considerable sum of money for the purpose of obtaining my release on bail, and he transmitted me at the same time the message of my London friend that I need not care in the least about the bail, but must leave France immediately. In some mysterious way he managed to see me freely—not in the double-grated iron cage in which I was allowed interviews with my wife—and he was as much affected by my refusal to accept the offer he came to make as I was by this touching token of friendship on the part of one who, with his wonderfully excellent wife, I had already learnt to esteem so highly.
The French government wanted to have one of those great trials which produce an impression upon the population, but there was no possibility of prosecuting the arrested anarchists for the explosions. It would have required bringing us before a jury, which in all probability would have acquitted us. Consequently, the government adopted the Machiavellian course of prosecuting us for having belonged to the International Workingmen’s Association. There is in France a law, passed immediately after the fall of the Commune, under which men can be brought before a simple police court for having belonged to that association. The maximum penalty is five years’ imprisonment; and a police court is always sure to pronounce the sentences which are wanted by the government.
The trial began at Lyons in the first days of January 1883, and lasted about a fortnight. The accusation was ridiculous, as everyone knew that none of the Lyons workers had ever joined the International, and it entirely fell through, as may be seen from the following episode. The only witness for the prosecution was the chief of the secret police at Lyons, an elderly man, who was treated at the court with the utmost respect. His report, I must say, was quite correct as concerns the facts. The anarchists, he said, had taken hold of the population, they had rendered opportunist meetings impossible because they spoke at each such meeting, preaching communism and anarchism, and carrying with them the audiences. Seeing that so far he had been fair in his testimony, I ventured to ask him a question: ‘Did you ever hear the name of the International Workingmen’s Association spoken of at Lyons?’
‘Never,’ he replied sulkily.
‘When I returned from the London congress of 1881, and did all I could to have the International reconstituted in France, did I succeed?’
‘No. They did not find it revolutionary enough.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, and turning toward the procureur I added, ‘There you have all your case overthrown by your own witness!’