On my weekly visit to Paris I had a better opportunity to observe the progress of events than if I had staid there without interruption, while my residence of three days gave me ample occasion to appreciate the full pleasures of the bombardment. It must always be a mystery why the French bombarded so persistently the quarter of the Arch of Triumph—the West End of Paris—the quarter where nine out of ten of the inhabitants were known friends of the Government. They had their regular hours for this divertissement, for so they seemed to regard it. They took a turn at it before breakfast, to give them an appetite; and at five o'clock in the morning I was waked by the shells from Mont Valérien bursting and crashing in the Place de l'Etoile. About noon they went at it again, and when I went home to breakfast (anglice lunch), I had to dodge round corners, and take refuge behind stone columns. Then, just before sunset, they always favored us with an evening gun, for good-night. The days, too, were so confoundedly long at that season of the year—April and May—and the weather provokingly fine. How I longed for a delicious London fog!
I remember one day, as I dodged behind a stone pillar in the Rue de Presbourg to avoid a coming shell, the concierge called me in. I went into his loge, but declined to go into the cellar, where his wife and children had taken refuge. He had two loges, and I strongly advised him to move into the unoccupied one as the safer of the two, for I had observed that the shells generally passed easily enough through one stone wall, but were arrested by a second. He took my advice. The next day a shell from one of their evening guns fell into the window of the loge he had left, passed through the floor into the cellar, and there exploded, and tore every thing to pieces.
My own apartment was struck eight times by fragments of shells. Fortunately but one exploded in the house, and that two stories above me. It shattered the room into which it fell fearfully, but, strange to say, did no damage in the adjoining rooms. Happily the apartment was unoccupied. The tenants, a few days before, had taken advantage of a law of the Commune which released all tenants from their rent if they found it inconvenient to pay it, and had decamped, furniture and all.
Mr. Washburne advised me to change my residence, as it was not safe. But I felt that the dignity of the great American people would not permit even one of its subordinate representatives to leave the building while a Frenchman remained in it. Mr. Washburne's practice, too, was not in accordance with his precepts. If we heard of any part of Paris where shells were likely to burst and bullets to whistle, Washburne was sure to have important business in that direction.
I was not in my house when the shell exploded. I generally came home to dinner after dark. If there is any thing thoroughly disagreeable, it is to have shells tumbling and bursting about you when you are at dinner. It is bad enough at breakfast, but the dinner-hour should be sacred from vulgar intrusion.
I recollect one day after my midday breakfast, as I left my house, I saw a knot of men standing on the corner of the Avenue de l'Impératrice and the Rue de Presbourg; I thought that I would go and see what was up. Mont Valérien was blazing away at a great rate. As I joined the group, one of them said, "They'll fire at us soon, seeing half a dozen people here." He had hardly said so, when there was a flash, and a puff of smoke, and in a minute we heard the huge shell hurtling through the air. It missed us, of course, and fell in the Place, and exploded. All these men were friends of the Government, and they were looking to Mont Valérien for help, longing for the troops to come in. This was the protection the Government gave its friends, "the protection which the vulture gives the lamb, covering and devouring it."
About once a week I was called in by some neighboring concierge to note the damage done by shells in apartments belonging to Americans. Shells are strangely capricious. One end of No. 8 Rue de Presbourg, opposite my own residence, was nearly torn to pieces; the other end was untouched. At No. 12, shell after shell penetrated the kitchen departments, while the salons were uninjured. I was called to see the damage done to the premier of No. 8, a beautiful apartment belonging to a New York lady. A shell had entered the salon and exploded. I have never seen more thorough destruction. The mirrors were shattered; the floors and ceilings rent and gaping; sofas, chairs, and tables upset and broken. In the midst of all this destruction stood a little table with a lady's work-basket upon it, the needle in the work, the thimble and scissors on the table, as if she had left them five minutes before—the only objects unhurt in the room. It was a touching souvenir of peaceful domestic life in the midst of the worst ravages of war.
Mr. Washburne and Lord Lyons complained to Jules Favre of this persistent bombardment, for the property destroyed and the lives endangered were largely American and English. He replied that it was "bad shooting," but he smiled as he said so, and evidently did not believe it himself. It was sheer wantonness, that irrepressible desire of artillery-men, of which I have before spoken, to hit something—an enemy if possible, a friend if no enemy offers.
It was singular that while so many shells fell in the immediate neighborhood of the Arch of Triumph, so little serious injury was done to it. I remarked a curious circumstance in this connection. The bas-reliefs on the arch facing the Avenue de la Grande Armée are Peace and War—on the right, as you face the Arch, War; on the left, Peace. War was very much injured; Peace was scarcely touched.