On the whole there was very little violence, for, in spite of their excitability, Parisian crowds are good-natured and law-abiding. But there was one section which gave trouble. It was the union of terrassiers or day laborers. They knocked off work and strolled down toward the center of Paris in strong bodies, looking dangerous and picturesque in their great loose breeches tucked into their boots, short jackets, and flat bonnets pulled over the right eye. Most of them carried knives or cheap pistols, and they had ancient, traditional grudges against the agents de police.
Those simple and admirable men were remarkably polite to them, and generally contrived to keep at a safe distance when they appeared in force. But the mounted police of the Garde Républicaine tried to herd them back from the shopping centers of the city which they threatened to loot, and came into immediate conflict with them. As an observer interested in the drama of life, I several times became unpleasantly mixed up with terrassiers and other rash onlookers when the Garde Républicaine rode among them, and I had some narrow escapes from being trampled down.
A hot affair took place round a scaffolding which had been put up for some new building up by Montmartre. The terrassiers, driven back by the mounted men who used the flat of their swords, made a stronghold of this place, and loosed off their pistols or flung brickbats at the “enemy,” inflicting several casualties. Orders were given to clear out this hornets’ nest, and the Garde Républicaine charged right up to the scaffolding and hauled out the ruffians, who were escorted as prisoners through hooting mobs. It was all very exciting, and Paris was beginning to lose its temper.
Jaurès had called a great meeting of cheminots—the railway workers—in the Salle de Manège, or riding school, down the rue St. Denis. In the interests of The Daily Chronicle I decided to attend it. It was in a low quarter of the city, and vast crowds of factory workers and young hooligans surged up and down the street, jeering at the police, and asking for trouble. Far away, above their heads, I could see the steel helmets with their long black plumes of the Garde Républicaine.
A narrow passage led to the Salle de Manège, where Jaurès had begun his meeting with an assembly of two thousand railway workers, packed tight, as I could see when the door was opened an inch to give them air. It was guarded by a group of strikers who told me in rough language to clear off, when I asked for admission. One of them, however, caught my remark that I belonged to The Daily Chronicle. It impressed him favorably. “I used to read it when I was a hairdresser in Soho,” he told me. He opened the door enough for me to step inside.
Presently I was sorry he did. The atmosphere was hellish in its heat and stench, arising from the wet sawdust of the riding school and the greasy clothes of this great crowd of men, densely massed. Jaurès was on the tribune, speaking with a powerful, sonorous voice, I forget his words, but remember his appeal to the men to reveal the nobility of labor by their loyalty and their discipline. He was scornful of the renegade Briand who had sold his soul for office and was ready to use bayonets against the liberties of men whose cause he had once defended with passionate hypocrisy.... After an hour of this, I thought I should die of suffocation, and managed to escape.
It was out of the frying pan into the fire, for the crowds in the rue St. Denis were being forced back by the Republican Guard, and I was carried off my feet in the stampede, until I became wedged against the wall of a corner café, with a surging crowd in front. Some one flung a wine bottle at one of the Republican Guards, and unseated him. Immediately the mounted troops rode their horses at the throng outside the café. Tables fell over, chairs were smashed, and a score of men and women fell in a heap through the plate glass windows. There were shrieks of terror, mingled with yells of mirth. I decided to watch the drama, if possible, from a more comfortable observation post, and knocked at the door of one of the tall tenement houses near by. It was opened by a villainous-looking man, shielding the flame of a candle with a filthy hand.
“What do you want?” he asked in French.
“A view from your top window,” I said.