CHAPTER V
THE DELUGE
One brilliant afternoon in July, five years later, all Paris went crazy. Vast multitudes surged through the streets cheering, laughing, shouting, singing, for were not the days of glory to be repeated? War was declared on Prussia, and, after more than fifty years, the eagles of France were to take their majestic course across the Rhine; again the soldiers of France were to bivouac in every capital in Europe, for once started upon the path of conquest, France has ever been impossible to stop, so thought everybody in Paris that July day.
The streets were like great rivers of humanity, with wild whirlpools and clamoring cataracts, all drifting toward the ocean, and that ocean was the Palace of the Tuilleries. Bands rent the air with the Marseillaise, the great battle hymn of liberty. Often wrested to unworthy purposes, often sung and played by those who hate liberty and love anarchy, the mighty hymn ever remained the battle-cry of those who would be free. Troops were marching along, splendid hussars and chasseurs trotting gayly through the sunlit streets, steady, red-legged infantry swinging along to their barracks, Zouaves in baggy trousers and hanging caps sauntered and swaggered. Officers clattered along joyously as they made a brilliant streak of color in the great river of men and women. Everywhere a uniform was seen a ringing cheer went up from men and women, young and old, palpitating with pride and joy in these men called to repeat the glories of their ancestors. As the Emperor had said, whatever road they took across the frontier they would find glorious traces of their fathers. Wherever the French had crossed in days past, they had left a trail of glory behind them.
Many groups of soldiers loitered along the streets, or stopped to laugh and joke on the street comers. Men clapped them on the back, and handsome young women smiled and waved their hands at them, and gray-haired grandmothers blessed them. Great ladies in their carriages stopped and laughed and talked with private soldiers; even the beggars forgot to beg, and hobnobbed with everybody. A beggar was as good as the best, provided only he were French.
All was sunshine, a splendor of hope, magnificence, joy. Once more France would “gird her beauteous limbs with steel,” and smite with her mailed hand those who would oppress her.
What were her resources? Every man who could carry a musket. What was her matériel? All the iron, all the steel, all the lead, all the gunpowder in France. What were her soldiers? Heroes, backed up by all her old men, her children, her maidens, and her matrons.
The crowd was most dense in the splendid open space before the Tuilleries gardens, and extended for a long distance on either side of the palace. The air was drenched with perfume from the gardens; the river ran red like wine, in the old Homeric phrase; the windows of the palace blazed in the afternoon light. On a balcony occasionally appeared the Emperor, who bore the magic name of Napoleon, the Empress, a dream of smiling beauty, and the Prince Imperial, a mere lad, but who was to go out on the firing line along with the veterans.
All the gorgeous carriages and all the graceful horsemen and horsewomen that were usually found at that hour on the Bois de Boulogne formed a great procession moving at a snail’s pace, and often stopped by the congestion in the broad Rue de Rivoli and all the fine streets adjacent.