“There are dupes and victims as well as fiends among them,” Aline assured her; “and those who are guilty are the most to be pitied.” After a time, however, the dangers attendant on going into the streets became so great that Aline was forced to remain indoors. Barricades were thrown up in every direction, and made the circulation a dangerous and almost impracticable feat to members of the party of order. The Rue Royale, which had been safe during the first siege, was now a threatened centre of accumulated danger. It was armed to the teeth. The Faubourg end of it was barred by a stone barricade that might have passed for a fortress—a wall of heavy masonry weighted with cannon, two black giants that lay couched like monster slugs peeping through a hedge. But after those terrible weeks there came at last the final tug, the troops came [pg 231] in, and Greek met Greek. Shell and shot rained on the city like hailstones. The great black slugs gave tongue, bellowing with unintermitting fury; all round them came responsive roars from barricades and batteries; it was the discord of hell broke upward through the earth, and echoing through the streets of Paris.
Aline de Lemaque and her sister sat in the little saloon at No. 13, listening to the war-dogs without, and straining their ears to catch every sound that shot up with any significant distinctness from the chaos of noise. Mme. Cléry was with them; she stayed altogether at No. 13 now, sleeping on the sofa at night. It would have been impossible for her to come and go twice a day while the city was in this state of commotion. To-day the old woman could not keep quiet; she was constantly up and down to the concierge's lodge to pick up any stray report that came through the chinks of the porte-cochère. Once she went down and remained so long that the sisters were uneasy. An explosion had reverberated through the street, shaking the house from cellar to garret, and, like an electric shock, flinging both the sisters on their knees simultaneously. Mme. de Chanoir's spine had recovered itself within the last week as if by magic. She had abandoned her usual recumbent position, and came and went about the house like the rest of them. If the Commune did nothing else, it did this. We must give the devil his due.
“Félicité, I must go and see what it is. I hear groans close under the window; perhaps a shell has fallen in the court and killed her,” said Aline. And, rising, she turned to go.
“Don't leave me! For the love of heaven, don't leave me alone, Aline!” implored her sister. “I'll die with terror if that comes again while I'm here by myself.”
“Come with me, then,” said Aline. And, taking her sister's hand, they went down together.
Mme. Cléry was not killed. This fact was made clear to them at once by the spectacle of the old woman standing in the porte-cochère, and shaking her fist vehemently at somebody or something at the further end of it.
“Stay here,” said Aline to Mme. de Chanoir, motioning her back into the house. “I will see what it is; and if you can do anything I'll call you.”
It was the concierge that Mme. Cléry was apostrophizing. And this was why: a shell had burst, not in the yard, as the sisters fancied, but in the street just outside, and the explosion was followed by a shriek and a loud blow at the door, while something like a body fell heavily against it.
“Cordon!” cried Mme. Cléry; “it is some unfortunate hit by the shell.”
“More likely a communist coming to pillage and burn. I'll cordon to none of 'em!” declared the concierge. “The door is locked; if they want to get in, they may blow it open.” But Mme. Cléry flew at her throat, and swore, if she didn't give up the key, she, Mme. Cléry, would know the reason why. The concierge groaned, and felt, in bitterness of spirit, what a difficult task the cordon was. But she opened the door; under it lay two wounded men, both of them young; one was evidently dying; he had been mortally struck by a fragment of the shell that had burst over the thick oaken door and dealt death around and in front of it. The other was wounded, too, but much less seriously; he had been flung down by his companion, and the shock of the fall, more than his wound, had stunned [pg 232] him. Mme. Cléry dragged them in under the shelter of the porte-cochère, and proposed laying them on the floor of the lodge. But the concierge had no mind to take in a dead and a dying man, and vowed she would not have her lodge turned into a coffin. The dispute was waxing warm, Mme. Cléry threatening muscular argument, when Aline made her appearance. Her training in the Ambulance stood her in good stead now.