This was M. Dalibouze's firm opinion, and he gave it in public and private to any one who cared to hear it. When Mme. de Chanoir asked if he meant to remain in Paris through the siege, the professor was so shocked by the implied affront to his patriotism that he had to control himself before he could trust himself to answer her.
“Comment, Mme. la Générale! You think so meanly of me as to suppose I would abandon my country at such a crisis! Is it a time to fly when the enemy is at our gates, and when the nation expects every man to stand forth and defend her, and scatter those miserable eaters of sauerkraut to the winds!”
And straightway acting up to this noble patriotic credo, M. Dalibouze had himself measured for a National Guard uniform. No sooner had he endorsed it than he rushed off to Nadar's and had himself photographed. He counted the hours till the proofs came home, and then, bursting with satisfaction, he set out to No. 13.
“It is unbecoming,” he said, shrugging his shoulders as he presented his carte de visite to the générale, “mais que voulez-vous? A man must sacrifice everything to his country; what is personal appearance that it could weigh in the balance [pg 076] against duty! Bah! I could get myself up as a punchinello, and perch all day on the top of Mont Valérien, if it could scare away one of those despicable brigands from the walls of the capital!”
“You are wrong in saying it is unbecoming, M. Dalibouze,” protested the générale, attentively scanning the portrait, where the military costume was set off by a semi-heroic military pose, “I think the dress suits you admirably.”
“You are too indulgent, madame,” said the professor. “You see your friends through the eyes of friendship; but, in truth, it was purely from an historical point of view that I made the little sacrifice of personal feeling; the portrait will be interesting as a souvenir some day when we, the actors in this great drama, have passed away.”
But time went on, and the prophetic triumphs of M. Dalibouze were not realized; the eaters of sauerkraut held their ground, and provisions began to grow scarce at No. 13. The purse of the sisters, never a large one, was now seriously diminished, Aline's contribution to the common fund having ceased altogether with the beginning of the siege. Her old pupils had left, and there was no chance of finding any new ones at such a time as this. No one had money to spend on lessons, or leisure to learn; the study that absorbed everybody was how to realize food or fuel out of impossible elements. Every one was suffering, in a more or less degree, from the miseries imposed by the state of blocus; but one would have fancied the presence of death in so many shapes, by fire without, by cold and famine within, would have detached them generally from life, and made them forgetful of the wants of the body and absorbed them in sublimer cares. But it was not so. After the first shock of hearing the cannon at the gates close to them, they got used to it. Later, when the bombardment came, there was another momentary panic, but it calmed down, and they got used to that too. Shells could apparently fall all round without killing them. So they turned all their thoughts to the cherishing and comfort of their poor afflicted bodies. It must have been sad, and sometimes grimly comical, to watch the singular phases of human nature developed by the blocus. One of the oddest and most frequent was the change it wrought in people with regard to their food. People who had been ascetically indifferent to it before, and never thought of their meals till they sat down to table, grew monomaniac on the point, and could think and speak of nothing else. Meals were talked of, in fact, from what we can gather, more than politics, the Prussians, or the probable issue of the siege, or any of the gigantic problems that were being worked out both inside and outside the besieged city. Intelligent men and women discussed by the hour, with gravity and gusto, the best way of preparing cats and dogs, rats and mice, and all the abominations that necessity had substituted for food. Poor human nature was fermenting under the process like wine in the vat, and all its dregs came uppermost: selfishness, callousness to the sufferings of others, ingratitude, all the pitiable meanness of a man, boiled up to the surface and showed him a sorry figure to behold. But other nobler things came to the surface too. There were innumerable silent dramas, soul-poems going on in unlikely places, making no noise beyond their quiet sphere, but travelling high and sounding loud behind the curtain of gray sky that shrouded the winter sun of [pg 077] Paris. The cannon shook her ramparts, and the shells flashed like lurid furies through the midnight darkness; but far above the din and the darkness and the death-cries rose the low sweet music of many a brave heart's sacrifice; the stronger giving up his share to the weaker, the son hoarding his scanty rations against the day of still scantier supplies, when there would be scarcely food enough to support the weakened frame of an aged father or mother, talking big about the impossibility of surrender, and lightly about the price of resistance. There were mothers in Paris, too, and wherever mothers are there is sure to be found self-sacrifice in its loveliest, divinest form. How many of them toiled and sweated, aye, and begged, subduing all pride to love for the little ones, who ate their fill and knew nothing of the cruel tooth that was gnawing the bread-winner's vitals!
We who heard the thunder of the artillery and the blasting shout of the mitrailleuse, we did not hear these things, but other ears did, and not a note of the sweet music was lost, angels were hearkening for them, and as they rose above the dark discord, like crystal bells tolling in the storm wind, the white-winged messengers caught them on golden lyres and wafted them on to paradise.
To Be Continued.