In the Rue des Saintes-Pères, a gentleman and lady whom I knew, but whose names I could not recall, stopped to ask if I was one of the Jesuit Fathers, and if I came from La Roquette. They wished news of Père Caubert. I informed them he was shot on Friday with Père Olivaint. At this, the gentleman raised his eyes to heaven, while the lady made an effort to overcome her emotion. “You see before you,” said he, “Père Caubert’s sister!” It was M. Lauras, one of the directors of the Orleans Railway, and Madame Lauras, née Caubert.
I accompanied the soldiers, who had participated in my captivity, to the Palais Bourbon, and after a fraternal grasp of the hand I turned toward the Madeleine. The Place de la Concorde was upset, and a part of the Rue Royale burned down with petroleum. I found the Madeleine standing, and my residence in the Rue de la Ville-l’Evêque, but both injured by the firing. No one knew of, and what was more strange,
no one would believe in, the horrible deaths of Mgr. Darboy and M. Deguerry. My two confrères at the Madeleine expressed the same doubt, the same incredulity. When at vespers I was about to ascend the pulpit to recommend the victims to the prayers of the faithful, they advised me to defer it, hoping the fatal news would not be confirmed.
I had told it to more than one hundred persons, begging them to inform, in their turn, the other parishioners of the Madeleine, but when, in an affecting but cautious and brief manner, I requested the faithful gathered at the foot of the altar to pray for the pastor of the diocese and the curé of the parish, basely shot on the twenty-fourth of May, in the prison of La Roquette, a cry of grief and horror escaped from every soul; the men and the women rose up in confusion, as if to protest against it; the gravest and most reverential for a moment seemed to lose their balance. Among the confused voices around the pulpit, these words were the most distinct: “No, no, such a crime is not possible!”
My moral conclusions will be simple and brief. It would be an insult to the reader to dwell on the great lessons to be drawn from such sorrowful and overwhelming catastrophes.
First Lesson. Divine Providence never chastised and enlightened a nation by severer blows. It behooves us therefore to consider the grave and exceptional malady that is afflicting society, and seek an efficacious and permanent remedy for it. We are all suffering from the evil, and we all should be preoccupied about the means of recovery.
Some days after leaving La Roquette, I wished to revisit the places where I had been imprisoned, in order to retrace, with precision, the
events that took place in the last days of the Commune. I met there one of the most intelligent and most religious juges d’instruction on the bench of the Seine. I visited with him the places of the greatest interest, Mgr. Darboy’s cell, and the spot on the circular road where the murder of the six principal hostages took place. The warden took us to Troppmann’s cell. “I supposed, till within a few days,” said I to the magistrate of the Seine, “that criminals like Troppmann were of a rare species that required fifty or sixty years to develop in the lowest grades of society. After the realities I witnessed at La Roquette, I am convinced they are to be found by thousands in Paris.” The juge d’instruction replied that all the magistrates who studied the mysteries of those grades had the same conviction. It would therefore be simply folly not to consider the remedy most suitable to counteract such a disorder.
Second Lesson. In the horrible catastrophe that has just revealed so many material or moral sores, every one is more or less responsible and culpable. Every one should say his meâ culpâ, and seek to become better. The most guilty are certainly the turbulent working classes, the demagogues, the International, the secret societies, outlaws, and governments without morality, but they alone are not guilty. Literary men who diffuse in their pernicious publications the poison of scepticism and immorality; artists who are wanting in respect and decency; the journals of the rich and influential bourgeoisie, which defend the principles of material conservation, while by their attacks on the Holy See, the clergy, and the church generally, they sap the very foundations of morality; politicians who brutally proclaim, with a view
to the rewards and the gratification of their cupidity, the primacy of might against right—should disavow and correct their errors. Pious people and the clergy should redouble their solicitude and energy in extending and strengthening their influence, particularly in the most populous districts. There are no other means of safety.