“In these days there is nothing surprising in that,” I replied.
“I have come to see you, either to make peace or declare war,” he continued.
This way of talking did not suit me, and I sprang up. “As I can foresee that your conditions of peace would not suit me, cher monsieur, I will not give you time to declare war. You are one of the men one would prefer, no matter how spiteful they might be, to have for enemies, rather than for friends.” With these words I rang for my footman to show the Prefect of Police to the door.
Mme. Guérard was in despair. “That man will do us some harm, my dear Sarah, I assure you,” she said.
She was not mistaken in her presentiment, except that she was thinking of me and not of herself, for his first vengeance was taken on her, by sending away one of her relatives, who was a police commissioner, to an inferior and dangerous post. He then began to invent a hundred miseries for me. One day I received an order to go at once to the Prefecture of Police, on urgent business. I took no notice. The following day a mounted courier brought me a note from Sire Raoul Rigault, threatening to send a prison van for me. I took no notice whatever of the threats of this wretch, who was shot shortly after, and died without showing any courage.
Life, however, was no longer possible in Paris, and I decided to go to St. Germain en Laye. I asked my mother to go with me, but she went to Switzerland with my youngest sister.
The departure from Paris was not as easy as I had hoped. Communists, with gun on shoulder, stopped the trains and searched in all our bags and pockets, and even under the cushions of the railway carriages. They were afraid that the passengers were taking newspapers to Versailles. This was monstrously stupid.
The installation at St. Germain was not easy. Nearly all Paris had taken refuge in this little place, which is as pretty as it is dull. From the height of the terrace, where the crowd remained morning and night, we could see the alarming progress of the Commune. On all sides of Paris the flames rose, proud and destructive. The wind often brought us burnt papers, which we took to the Council House. The Seine brought quantities along with it, and the boatmen collected these in sacks. Some days—and these were the most distressing of any—an opaque veil of smoke enveloped Paris. There was no breeze to allow the flames to pierce through. The city then burned stealthily, without our anxious eyes being able to discover what fresh homes these furious madmen had set alight.
I went for a ride every day in the forest. Sometimes I would go as far as Versailles, but this was not without danger. We often came across poor starving wretches in the forest, whom we joyfully helped, but often, too, there were prisoners who had escaped from Poissy, or Communist sharp shooters trying to shoot a Versailles soldier. One day on the way back from Triel, where Captain O’Connor and I had been for a gallop over all the hills, we entered the forest rather late in the evening, as it was a shorter way. A shot wits fired from a neighboring thicket, which made my horse bound so sharply toward the left that I was thrown. Fortunately my horse was quiet. O’Connor hurried to me, but I was already up and ready to mount again. “Just a second,” he said, “I want to search that thicket.” With a short gallop he was soon at the spot, and I then heard a shot, some branches breaking under flying feet, then another shot, not at all like the two former ones, and my friend appeared again with a pistol in his hand.
“It has not touched you?” I asked.