"Yes, the protection of a husband."
It was an invention of her goodness, my darling! Knowing the monstrous plot the Socialists were meditating, she wished me to be absent. And I went, regretting only our present separation and fearing nothing for the future.
I was defeated with Motterouge, and afterward fought with D'Aurelle and Chanzy until hostilities ceased. On the third of March Paris was evacuated by the Germans, and fifteen days after followed the revolt of the Commune. Heaven only knows how I suffered during that time. I would have given my life to know she was safe: I would have risked it by deserting could I have hoped to find and protect her. But had she not said, "Where he is, I am"? and would not Favart be in the thickest of the fight? Oh cruel necessity! My best chance of meeting her was at the point of the bayonet with the troops.
Fort Valérien was taken: we entered Paris, and like a living web encircled the insurgents. Step by step they retreated, step by step we followed: we could not miss the way; ruin and blood marked their path.
On the twenty-sixth of May but one barricade remained standing. I was in the front rank when the order was given to charge on it, and amid smoke and noise and the glare of burning buildings we obeyed. There I saw Favart: almost face to face we met. His eyes the color of blood and starting from his head, his nostrils distended, his face livid, his hair and moustache bristling with rage, his hoarse voice shouting commands, he stood indifferent to danger, fighting like a wild beast, furious as a madman. A moment, and then, a bullet entering his forehead, he fell, and a woman's shriek rang on the air.
Oh for the strength of a thousand men! oh for wings! oh for power! Might my whole life be contained in that moment could I but save her! Suddenly the street, the barricade, the houses on either side, trembled, heaved and leapt into the air. A tremendous explosion, with flame and debris, forced what remained of us to retreat—forced also the poor remnant of our enemy to surrender. A cordon was formed around the quarter, so that none escaped. Wounded, blackened, bleeding, torn, they crawled by, and she was among them, my darling, my angel—among those shameless women, those hardened men!
I could not save her, tried, convicted and sentenced at Versailles, my beautiful, innocent Sidonia. I wrote letters; my perseverance gained me admission to the highest authorities; I prayed, I wept, I pleaded, but the name of Favart closed every avenue to pity. The most active, the most cruel, the most merciless in the Commune, foremost in destruction, indefatigable in barbarity, her brother, the shadow of her life, was the cause of her death.
I heard the sentence pronounced, "Transportation for life:" it did not seem to move her. Wan, her once neat dress in disorder, a shadow of her former self, she sat immovable. Once I met her eye, but she did not recognize me: only when the wind accidentally blew back the torn sleeve from her white arm I saw a moment's consciousness, and she blushed as she replaced it. Haply, she was deaf to the cries of "Pétroleuse!" and shouts of imprecation that met her as she was taken through the crowd; but what fearful suffering must that sensitive mind have endured before its faculties were thus benumbed!
I gained one slight concession: I was permitted to write one letter to her before she was sent away. I begged her not to lose hope that after the first excitement was over I might gain for her a commutation of the sentence—to have courage and trust me. I received no answer. I do not even know if her condition permitted her to receive one ray of comfort from my love: I only know she died. She never reached Cayenne. The transport-ship was her deathbed, and the ocean my martyr's grave.
But I cannot die. Memory, the portrait, and I live together—the portrait at once recalling the angel, the devil, the joy, the sorrow of my life. Yet let me not curse him: he was her brother, and she loved him. I would not vex my Sidonia in heaven.