the government did not mean to carry out. It was like letting loose so many bloodhounds on France to set these women at large again.
“We have seen them de près,” continued the superioress, “and we are one and all convinced that the next attempt will be worse than the first; we have terrible days in store—the pétroleuses have not said their last word.”
Speaking of the Commune led to our asking about her own experiences under it. It appears that the employees at St. Lazare, the director, inspector-general, and their assistants, were among the first turned out, and agents of the Hôtel de Ville installed in their places. The first thing these guardians of public justice did was to set free one-half of the population, such as were available for the public services; and able servants they proved themselves on the barricades and as incendiaries. To account for and in some measure palliate the superhuman ferocity displayed by the women of the Commune, we may as well mention here a fact not generally known, and which was told to us by a distinguished medical man, who was here all through that terrible saturnalia, and by a Sister of Charity, who could also speak from personal knowledge. It would seem that the snuff dealt out to the people from the government manufactories was mixed in large proportions with gunpowder. The effect of this ingredient, taken in very small quantities, is to excite the brain abnormally, but taken in large ones it brings on a kind of savage delirium tremens. The wine distributed to the pétroleuses on the barricades and elsewhere was also heavily charged with some such element of madness. It seems to us that it is rather a consolation to hear this, for though it reveals a diabolical instinct of soul-hatred in the few, it
explains, on the other hand, how it was that occasionally we saw young and hitherto mild, inoffensive women suddenly transformed into demons.
The superioress said that for the first three weeks that the nuns did duty for the Commune, nothing could exceed the respect and consideration they received from them.
“They were as docile as little girls to us,” she said, “and never did anything without coming to consult us. The inspecteur-general named by the Commune happened to have formerly been a clerk at the prison. My surprise when I saw him in his new character, and with such credentials, was great; but he seemed himself very much ashamed, and when I asked him what had induced him to join the Commune, he replied that it was really devotion to the nuns; he had accepted the office because he knew we would want a protector, and he preferred being on the spot to watch over us. It was not laughing matter, or I could have laughed at his audacity. And he actually pleaded this argument on his trial at Versailles, and was acquitted on it! He had always been a well-conducted, honest man, and I am not sure but in the bottom of his heart this good intention toward us may not have been mixed up with a great many other less worthy ones. During all the time he was in constant communication with me, he never had the courage once to raise his eyes to my face. He told us a good deal about what was going on outside, and especially what the women were doing. He spoke in enthusiastic praise of their spirit and courage. He said the fort of Montrouge was lost one day but for a girl of seventeen, who, seeing the soldiers demoralized, and the gunners abandoning their guns and turning to fly, rushed up to one of them, and seized a
light and put it to the cannon, and so mocked the cowards, and taunted them all with cowardice and want of mettle, that she rallied every man of them and saved the place. But for this Versailles would have taken it. Ten minutes later, and the defence was abandoned. ‘Had it not been for this plucky little diablesse, we were lost!’ he exclaimed. Such traits as this prepared us for the pétroleuses of a few weeks later, but he only saw patriotism and valor in them.”
Things went on very amicably between the gentlemen of the Commune and the sisters for three weeks. Then a change came over them. They were not openly rude, but there was what the superioress described as restrained fury in their manner toward the nuns, and the latter felt that the blood-fever was rising in them, and that they would soon break out into open mutiny. The superioress felt this more strongly than the rest, and she was sorely perplexed how to get her flock out of the way of the wolves while it was yet time. It was no easy matter, for, as she quaintly said, “One cannot send off fifty religious like fifty pins, in a box by mail,” and in the present state of mind of the Communists, to awake suspicion was to have the whole community seized and locked up forthwith. The first thing to be done was to procure permission from the Hôtel de Ville. She had been obliged to go of late several times to the prefecture on one business or another connected with her functions in the prison, so the authorities there knew her, and had always treated her with marked civility. She said that the first time she went there the faces of the so-called officials struck her as demoniacal, they were all of them half-drunk—men taken from the gutters of Belleville and Villette to fill offices of whose
commonest outward forms they had no idea, yet they were as deferential to herself and the nun who accompanied her as so many priests might have been. This did not prevent her saying to her companion as soon as they were alone: “Well, if we did not believe in hell, the faces we have seen to-day would have revealed it to us.”
She applied for a permission to leave, and got it without any difficulty. She kept it in her pocket all that day, and the next morning she seemed to hear a voice saying to her interiorly: Now is the moment; send them off! The exodus was planned well, and carried out so discreetly, the nuns going in threes and fours at a time, that not a shadow of suspicion dawned on the employees—their jailers as they now considered them. All that day the superioress kept constantly with them, never letting them lose sight of her for a quarter of an hour at a time, coming and going perpetually, and making future arrangements for one thing or another, so as to put them more completely off the scent. It was only when evening came and there were but eight nuns in the house besides herself, that the flight was discovered. The rage of the director was undisguised. But if he could not catch the fugitives, he could revenge himself on the devoted ones who had shielded their flight at the peril of their own lives. The superioress was at work in the midst of the little remnant of her flock, when he rushed into the room, pistol in hand. A few words passed between them, angry on his part, calm and resolute on hers, then with an oath he left the room abruptly.