Between two thieves

by Richard Dehan

Now as the foggy dusk of the gray February day closed coldly in, and the muddy sea of humanity surged up against the wall of steel and discipline that Authority had built before the lofty gilt-topped railings of the Hotel of Foreign Affairs, the oil-cressets on the gate-pillars and above the central arch that spanned the entrance were lighted by the porters, the great gas-lamp in the courtyard and under the portico roared and hooted into an illumination that dimmed the smoky, flaring torches of the men who marched with the Red Flag. As the Adjutant on the iron-gray charger rode along the gleaming gray line of leveled bayonets, bidding the men close up;—as he called over the heads of the rank-and-file, giving some order to the Lieutenant, the young attaché who was conversing with the lady in the ermine mantle started and looked round. There was something in the clear, frosty ring of the voice that recalled ... a voice he had once known. His hard blue eyes met the eyes of the black-haired swarthy officer on the half-breed Arab the next instant. And—with a cold, thrilling shock of recognition, dying out in a crisping shudder of the nerves, Redskin and de Moulny knew each other again.

The fiery, sensitive Arab felt her rider’s violent start, a sudden contraction of the muscles of the sinewy thighs that gripped her satiny sides drove both spurs home to the quick, behind the girths. As the Red Flag showed through the thick rank smoke of naphtha-torches held high in grimy hands, Djelma bounded forwards, snorting fiercely at the unexpected sting; reared at the checking bit, backed, still rearing, upon the goading steel points behind; lashed madly out, wounding herself yet more, and, knocking down two linesmen; then plunged forwards, kicking, screaming, and biting, into the thick of the crowd.

Those who marched with the Red Flag took the rebellion of Djelma as obedience, and resented being trampled, after the manner of mankind. Dunoisse was struck on the bridle-arm by a bludgeon wielded by a red-capped, bloused, bearded artisan. A frowsy, bare-bosomed woman aimed a savage blow at him with that deadly weapon of the lower classes, a baby. The man who carried the drum went down at a blow from the Arab’s fore-foot. The empty-sounding crack of the splintered instrument, the oaths and yells and curses of the crowd were mingled in the ears of Dunoisse with the snorting of Djelma, the cries and exclamations from the thronged courtyard behind the wall of soldiers. A single shot cracked out behind him: the finger that pressed the trigger upset the Cabinet, changed the Government, toppled the rocking House of Orleans over with one touch. For instantly following the detonation of the shot a sharp, loud, bold, imperious voice cried:

“Fire!”

And, the next instant, jagged tongues of flame ran along the front line of leveled bayonets, the deafening clatter of a volley of musketry reverberated from the many-windowed façade of the Hotel, mingled with the splintering and shattering of glass; ran rattling up and down adjacent streets and neighboring thoroughfares, mingled with the echoes of shrieks and curses and groans.... Tumult prevailed, the Municipal Guard charged, striking with the flat of the saber ... the Red Flag wavered and staggered, the column broke up, its units fled in disorder to the Rue Lafitte. Pandemonium reigned there, a hundred voices telling a hundred stories of massacre deliberately planned....

XXVIII

You could not see the soldiers’ faces, the smoke of that deadly volley had rolled back and hung low, topping the living wall of steel and flesh. But as it lifted, and they saw, by the light of the lamps in the courtyard behind them, the bloody heaps of dead and wounded men and women, mingled with children not a few, that made a shambles of the thoroughfare, upon whose gory stones the drum lay flattened, a hollow groan burst from the wavering ranks, and oaths and threats were uttered. Some wept, others were violently sick, as dying fellow-creatures crept to their feet to call them murderers, as fallen torches hissed and sputtered in the blood that ran down the gutters and lay in puddles on the pavement of the boulevard.

Confusion reigned in the Hotel, a Babel of voices clamored in the courtyard that was seething with excited humanity and littered with broken glass and bits of plaster knocked from the walls by ricocheting bullets. As Dunoisse returned on foot, leading his limping, bleeding mare through the dead and dying; de Roux, Colonel commanding the 999th, a plethoric pursy bon-vivant, who had been dining with the unpopular Minister in his private cabinet that looked upon the gardens, and had been snatched from the enjoyment of an entrée of canard à la, Rouennaise by the crash of the discharge, burst out of the Hotel, thrust his way through the huddled ranks, bore down on the supposed culprit, gesticulating and raving:

“Death and damnation! Hell and furies!——”

The purple, glaring Colonel struck his breast with his clenched hand, and though the action smacked of tragedy, the napkin, still tucked between the military stock and the gold-encrusted collar that had preserved the gray-blue uniform field-frock from spatterings of soup or splashes of gravy—no less than the silver fork the warrior yet grasped, imparted an air of farce to his passionate harangue.