CHAPTER XI
THE SIEGE OF PARIS
September 19, 1870-January 28, 1871
“Ce caractère parisien, qu’on peut aujourd’hui résumer en un seul mot: héroïsme?.”—Mme. Adam, Souvenirs, December 7, 1870.
“At present,” said Mme. Adam to a friend on the 27th of September, 1870, “we have barely endured ten days of siege. And I will wager that in three months I shall not be any more disgusted with it than I am at present.”[189]
Juliette won her bet, for during the first three months of the siege she bore her sufferings cheerfully and without flinching. And even during the fourth month, though her health broke down, her courage did not fail.
During those interminable four months the two million souls cooped up in Paris knew every misery which has ever fallen to the lot of the besieged: internal discontent and disorder, resulting in the abortive revolution of the 31st of October; extreme scarcity of food and munitions of war for nearly three weeks, the 20th of December until the 8th of January; complete isolation from the rest of France and from the whole outer world.[190] To these sufferings, which Juliette shared with her fellow-citizens, was added her personal anxiety for her daughter’s safety. She did not even know where her daughter was. She hoped that Alice, with her grandparents, had succeeded in crossing to Jersey; for the Prussians were said to have invaded Normandy. But for many a long week, from the 19th of September until the 20th of December, no news came. Juliette endured this agony of suspense with fortitude. Then at length, through Mme. de Pierreclos, came tidings that Alice was well and with her grandparents at St. Helier. Straightway Juliette’s motherly mind flies at once to other anxious parents in the besieged city who are still without news of their children. For all through those days of horror Mme. Adam’s heart never ceased to beat in unison with the hearts of her fellow-sufferers, to bleed with their sorrows, to throb with their anxieties and their fears. Living thus in constant communion with her neighbours, she was able to depict graphically in her journal the perpetual ebb and flow of public feeling and opinion: now it was confident and hopeful, now foreboding and doubtful, but never, not even in the ghastly days of the end, completely conquered by despair. Throughout, with the exception of the actual days of bombardment, the comic spirit, Juliette’s inseparable friend, never forsook her; and, while feeling to the tragic point the sufferings of others, she was able to joke about her own sorrows and privations.
Next to her separation from Alice, the hardest to bear of her personal trials during the siege was being compelled to leave her flat in the Boulevard Poissonnière. On the 11th of October, Adam having been appointed Prefect of Police, he and his wife had to take up their abode in the Préfecture.