Our principal occupation at Versailles was keeping a post-office for Americans in Paris. M. Rampont, the directeur des postes, had escaped, with all his staff, and established the office at Versailles. The archives of the bureau of the Avenue Joséphine were placed in our Legation. The Communists were angry enough to find themselves cut off from all postal communication with the departments. It diminished their chances of success. The only means Americans had of communicating with their friends in Paris was to send their letters to the care of the Legation at Versailles. We have received as many as fifty in one day. Two or three times a week we took or sent them to Paris. They were there mailed by the Legation, and distributed by the rebel post-office. It cost Uncle Samuel a penny or two, but he and his representatives at Washington did not grumble.
The only episode of interest that occurred at Versailles was our attempt to save the life of the Archbishop of Paris. He had been arrested by the Commune, and held as a hostage for the release of some of their own rag, tag, and bobtail. One day the Pope's Nuncio called to see Mr. Washburne. He was in Paris. The Nonce thereupon explained his business to me, and afterward sent two canons of the Metropolitan Church to see me. They came to beg Mr. Washburne to do all in his power to save the life of the Archbishop, which they considered to be in imminent danger. They had already tried one or more European embassies, but were met with the answer that they could have nothing to do with the Commune. They handed me their papers, and I went at once to Paris. Mr. Washburne took up the matter with his accustomed energy and kindliness. He got permission to see the prisoner. He took him books and newspapers and old wine. He did all in his power to negotiate an exchange with Blanqui, a veteran agitator held by the Government. The Commune consented, but the Versailles authorities would not. M. Thiers consulted his ministers and his council of deputies. They were unanimously of opinion that they could hold no dealings with the Commune. It was then proposed to let Blanqui escape, and that thereupon the Archbishop should escape too, and that there need be no negotiations whatever. This M. Thiers declined.
Matters were complicated by the conduct of the Vicar-general Lagarde. He had been a prisoner with the Archbishop, and had been released for the purpose of bringing letters to Versailles with a view to negotiate the proposed exchange, and on condition that he should return. Once safely at Versailles, he declined to go back. His pretext was that M. Thiers's letter in reply to the Archbishop's was sealed, and that he could not carry back a sealed letter in reply to one unsealed. I remember the sad and resigned, but not bitter tone, in which the Archbishop wrote of this desertion, and the exceedingly cautious terms in which the Pope's Nuncio referred to it.
But Mr. Washburne's untiring efforts were in vain. He had to contend with the vis inertia of French bureaucracy, and he who can move this mass must be ten times a Hercules.
The Archbishop was murdered; but Blanqui, whom the French Government held with so relentless a grip, was condemned to a year or two's imprisonment only.
I thought at that time, and think still, that no determined effort was made to save the Archbishop's life, except by two or three canons of his Church, and by the Minister of the United States. The French authorities certainly were lukewarm in the matter. The Archbishop was a Gallican, a liberal Catholic, notably so. Had he been an Ultramontane, I think that the extreme Right of the Assembly—the Legitimists—would have so exerted themselves that his life would have been saved. M. Thiers occupied a difficult position. He was suspected by the Legitimists of coquetting with the radicals, and of having no serious intention of putting down the insurrection. The suspicion was, of course, unfounded; but it may have prevented him from entering upon those informal negotiations which would probably have resulted in the release of the prisoner.
I once expressed these views to a lady in Paris, herself a liberal Catholic. She would not admit them to be true. Some weeks later, I met her again, and she told me that she believed that I was right; that she had heard such sentiments expressed by Legitimist ladies, that she was satisfied that there was an influential, if not a large, class of Ultramontanes, to whom the death of the Archbishop was not unwelcome. He has been succeeded by a noted Ultramontane.
Meantime the army was being rapidly reorganized. The Imperial Guard, and other corps d'élite, had returned from Germany, where they had been prisoners of war. Marshal MacMahon took command. Why M. Thiers did not then assault the city, and carry it, as he undoubtedly could have done, was a matter of surprise to every one, and especially to those whose lives and property lay at the mercies of the Commune. But Thiers had built the fortifications of Paris. He looked upon them with a paternal eye. To him they were not like other men's fortifications. They were impregnable to ordinary assault, and could only be taken by regular approaches. How I wished that Guizot had built them! We might have been saved a month of danger, loss, and intense anxiety.