While we were at breakfast this morning the servant came rushing in, pale and trembling, and announced to us that pillage had commenced in the Boulevard Haussmann, just around the corner, and that the mob was coming toward our house. We flew to the window, and, sure enough, there we saw a mass of soldiers collected on the other side of the street, in front of the Princess Mathilde's palace, gesticulating and pointing over at us.
We thought our last day had come; certainly it did look like a crisis of some kind. We gazed blankly at one another. Mademoiselle disappeared, to seek refuge, I fancy, between the mattresses of her bed, and the smile and the urbane language with which she was prepared to face this emergency (so often predicted by her) disappeared with her.
The mob crossed the street, howling and screaming, and on finding the gate locked began to shake it. The frightened concierge, already barricaded in his lodge, took care not to show himself, which infuriated the riotous crowd to such an extent that they yelled at the top of their lungs to have the gate opened.
Mr. Moulton sent a scared servant to order the still invisible concierge to open not only one gate, but all three. He obeyed, trembling and quaking with fear. The Communists rushed into the courtyard, and were about to seize the unhappy concierge, when Mr. Moulton, seeing that no one else had the courage to come forward, went himself, like the true American he is,… out on to the perron, and I went with him. His first words (in pure Angle-Saxon), "Qu'est-ce que vous voolly?" made the assembled crowd giggle.
The leader pushed forward, and, presenting a paper with the official seal of the Comité de Transport, demanded, in the name of the Commune (requisitioned, they call it), everything we had in the way of animals.
Mr. Moulton took the paper, deliberately adjusted his spectacles, and, having read it very leisurely (I wondered how those fiery creatures had the forbearance to stay quiet, but they did; I think they were hypnotized by my father-in-law's coolness), he said, in his weird French, "Vous voolly nos animaux!" which sounded like nos animose. The crowd grinned with delight. His French saved the situation. I felt that they would not do us any great harm now.
Mr. Moulton fumbled in his pocket, and, judging from the time he took and the depths into which he dived, one would have thought he was going to bring out corruption enough to bribe the whole French nation. But he only produced a gold piece, which he flourished in front of the spokesman, and asked if money would be any inducement to leave us les animose. But the not-to-be-bribed Communard put his hand on his heart, and said, in a tone worthy of Delsarte, "Nous sommes des honnêtes gens, Monsieur," at which my father-in-law permitted himself to smile. I thought him very brave.
Raising his voice to an unusually high pitch, he cried, "Je ne peux pas vous refiuser le cheval, mais [the pitch became higher] je refiuse le vache (I cannot refuse to give you the horse; but I refuse the cow)."
The men before us were convulsed with laughter. Then Mr. Moulton gave the order to bring out the horse, but not the cow. The official turned to me. "Madame," he said, "you have a cow, and my orders are to take all your animals. Please send for the cow."
"It is true, Monsieur," I answered, with a gentle smile (like the one reposing under the mattress), "that we have a cow; but we have the permission from your Government to keep it."