Chapter XXIII (2)

True to his word, our Amphitryon revealed the real ingredients of the menu forty-eight hours after. The entree had been composed of very small mice--field-mice, I think we call them in England; the second dish was rat. Not a single ounce of butter or lard had been used in the sauces or for the macaroni. The dried cod was still plentiful enough to be had at any grocer's or salted provision shop. Instead of butter, Joseph used horse-marrow. The horse-butchers sold the bones ridiculously cheap, not having the slightest idea what to do with them. The mice, Joseph caught round about the fortifications, whither he went almost every day. The rats he caught in the cellarage of the Halles. He had a cousin there in a large way of business, and access to the underground part of the market was never refused to him.

"From what you have tasted at my rooms," concluded the ex-lieutenant, "you will easily see that our vaunted superiority as cooks is so much humbug. The dish of cod I gave you, and which you liked so much, may be seen on the table of the poorest household in Holland and Flanders at least once, sometimes twice, a week, especially in North-Brabant, where the good Catholics scarcely ever eat anything else on Fridays. The sauce, which they call a mustard-sauce, would naturally be better if made with butter, but you could not taste the difference if the cook takes care to sprinkle a little saffron in her fat or marrow. Saffron is a great thing in cooking, and still our best chefs know little or nothing about it. But for the saffron, you would have detected a slight odour of musk in the entree you took to be larks. You may almost disguise anything with saffron, except dog's-flesh. Listen to what I tell you, and in a month or so, perhaps before, you'll admit the truth of my words. The moment horseflesh fails, the Parisians will fall back upon dogs, turning up their noses at cats and rats, though both are a thousand times superior to the latter. In saying this, I am virtually libelling the cat and the rat; for 'the friend of man,' be he cooked in ever so grand a way, is always a detestable dish. His flesh is oily and flabby; stew him, fry him, do what you will, there is always a flavour of castor oil about him. The only way to minimize that flavour, to make him palatable, is to salt, or rather to pepper him; that is, to cut him up in slices, and leave them for a fortnight, bestrewing them very liberally with pepper-corns. Then, before 'accommodating' them finally, put them into boiling water for a while, and throw the water away.

"No such compromises are necessary with 'the fauna of the tiles,' who, with his larger-sized victim, the rat, has been the most misprized and misjudged of all animals, from the culinary point of view. Stewed puss is by far more delicious than stewed rabbit. The flesh of the former tastes less pungent than that of the latter, and is more tender. As for the prejudice against cat, well, the Germans have the same prejudice against rabbit, and while I was in the Foreign Legion there was a Wurtemberger, a lieutenant, who would not touch bunny, but who would devour grimalkin. Those who have not tasted couscoussou of cat, prepared according to the Arabian recipe--though the Arabs won't touch it--have never tasted anything."[86]

[Footnote 86: The Arab _kuskus_ generally consists of a piece
of mutton baked in a paste with the vegetables of the season,
flavoured with herbs; and the addition of half a dozen
hard-boiled eggs. The whole of the flesh is boned.--EDITOR.]

Our friend said much more, notably with regard to rat and horseflesh; and then he wound up: "But what is the good? Those who might benefit by my advice are not here, and, if they were, they would probably scorn it; I mean the very poor. The only item of animal food which cannot be adequately replaced by something else yielding as much or nearly as much nourishment is milk. But, unless an adult be in delicate health or suffering from ailments to the alleviation and cure of which milk is absolutely necessary, he may very well go without it for six months. Not so children. I am only showing you that the poor, with their slender resources--and Heaven knows they are slender enough--might do better than they are doing, for cats and rats must still be very plentiful, only they won't touch them."

The reference to the very poor and their slender resources recurred more than once that evening, but I knew that the authorities were trying to do all they could in the way of relieving general and individual distress, and that they were admirably seconded by private charity, which not only placed comparatively large sums at their disposal, but bestirred itself by means of specially appointed committees and visitors. The rations of meat (horsemeat) and bread distributed were not sufficient. The first had already fallen to forty-five grammes per day per head, the second to three hundred and fifty grammes;[87] they were to fall much lower. Tickets were also distributed for set meals, with and without meat. There was, furthermore, a distribution of fuel, albeit that there was really no more fuel to distribute. All the wooden seats in the public thoroughfares, the scaffoldings before the half-finished buildings had disappeared. At one of my friend's apartments there was none but the outer door left, all the others had been replaced by curtains. They had been chopped up to keep his family warm. The fear of the terrible landlord may have prevented the poor from imitating this proceeding. At any rate, I noticed no absent doors in my visits to any of them. A further supply of meat or bread, even if they had the money, was out of the question for them; because, though some shops remained open and their owners were compelled to sell according to the tariff set forth by the municipality, they had nothing to sell. I remember being in the Rue Lafayette one morning, near one of those shops, when I saw the whole of the crowd, that had been waiting there for hours probably, turn away disappointed. The assistant had just told them that "this morning we have nothing to sell but preserved truffles."

[Footnote 87: Five hundred French grammes make seventeen ounces
English, and a fraction.--EDITOR.]

At the same time, I am bound to note the fact that, at the slightest rumours of peace, the usually empty windows became filled with artistically arranged pyramids of "canned" provisions, at prices considerably below those charged twenty-four hours before, and even below those mentioned in the municipal tariff. Frequent attempts were made by the police to discover the hiding-places for this stock, but they failed in every instance. Those hiding-places were far away from the shops, and the shopkeepers themselves were too wary to be caught napping. A stranger might have safely gone in and offered a hundred francs for half a dozen tins of their wares. They would have looked a perfect blank, and told him they had none to sell: and no wonder; their detection would have meant certain death; no earthly power could have saved them from the legitimate fury of the populace. And even those who bought the hidden food at abnormal prices were compelled to preserve silence, at the risk of seeing their supplies cut off. One thing is certain, and I can unhesitatingly vouch for it. My name had become known in connection with several committees for the relief of the poor. On the 25th of January, at 11 a.m., when the negotiations between Bismarck and M. Jules Favre could have been but in the preliminary stage, I received a note, brought by hand, from a grocer in the Faubourg Montmartre, asking me to call personally, as he had something to communicate which might be to the advantage of my proteges. An hour later, I was at his establishment, and he offered to sell me five hundred tins of various provisions and two hundred and fifty boxes of sardines at two francs each. It was something like double the ordinary price. A little more than three weeks before that date, I had sent a letter to the same man, asking him for a similar quantity of goods, which I intended to distribute as New Year's gifts. The reply was, that he had none, but that he might _possibly_ procure them at the rate of five francs a tin and box. I found out afterwards, that the excellent grocer had a son at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. I need not point out the logical deduction.

I am equally certain that there were large quantities of horseflesh, salted or fresh, hidden somewhere; for, as I have already noted, it was officially, or at any rate semi-officially stated, that, on the day of the conclusion of the armistice, there were thirty thousand live horses in Paris, and the greater part of these would have been slaughtered by order of the Government, if the measure had been thought expedient, for there is scarcely any need to say that the pretext of their being wanted for military purposes would not hold water. A sixth part of them, or less, would have been amply sufficient for that. In reality, M. Favre and his colleagues were, by this time, fully convinced that all further resistance was useless, but they had not the courage to say so frankly, and they wished to convert the advocates of "resistance to death" to their side by aggravating the scarcity of the food supply, as if it were not bad enough already. The horses confiscated by the Government for food were paid for by them at the rate of between one and two francs per pound, yet there was no possibility of buying a single pound of horseflesh, beyond what was distributed at the municipal canteens, for less than seven or eight francs. Whence this difference?

Butter could be bought for thirty to thirty-five francs per pound, but such butter! Anything worth eating commanded sixty francs. There was a kind of grease that fetched two francs per pound, but even the poorest shrank from it, and preferred to eat dry bread, which was composed as follows:--

(FOR A LOAF OF 300 GRAMMES.)

75 grammes of wheat.
15 " rye, barley, or peas.
60 " rice.
90 " oats.
30 " chopped straw mixed with starch.
30 " bran.

As for the rest, here are some of the prices--at which, however, things were not always to be had:--

frs.
A dog or a cat 20
A rat, crow, or sparrow 3 or 4
1 lb. of bear's flesh 12
1 lb. of venison 14
1 lb. of wolf's flesh, or porcupine's 8
A rabbit 40
A fowl 40
A pigeon 25
A goose 80
A turkey 100
1 lb. of ham (very rare) 10
1 lb. of bacon (not so rare) 6
Eggs (each) 5
Haricot beans (per litre) 8
Cabbages (each) 16
Leeks (each) 1
Bushel of carrots (2-3/4 gallons) 75
Bushel of potatoes 35
Bushel of onions 80

Still, until the very last, there occurred, as far as I know, no case of actual starvation, and I was pretty well posted up in that respect. The very young and very old suffered most: for the milk that was sold at two francs per litre was simply disgraceful, three-fourths of it was water; and beef-tea, or that worthy of the name, was not to be had at any price. Both commodities were distributed to the poor at the municipal canteens, on the certificate of a doctor; but the latter, though by no means hard-hearted, and thoroughly sympathetic with the ills he was scarcely able to alleviate, had to draw the line somewhere. Of bedding, bed-linen, and warm underclothing there was little or no lack; but the cold, for several days, at frequent intervals was severe to a degree.

Our ex-lieutenant's reference to the poor and their slender resources recurred frequently to my mind for several days after the scene described above, and set me wondering how far the poor had parted, finally or temporarily, with their household goods and small valuables in order to obtain some of the quasi-luxuries I have just enumerated. In order to get at the truth of the matter, I determined to pay a visit to the central pawnbroking office in the Rue des Blancs Manteaux. I provided myself with a letter of introduction to the director, who placed an official at my disposal. This was towards the latter end of December.

I transcribe my informant's statement in brief and from memory, but I am positive as to main facts. Up till the end of August the transactions at the central office, which virtually include those of the whole of the capital, presented nothing abnormal, but the moment the investment became an almost foregone conclusion, there was a positive run on the Mont-de-Piete. The applicants for loans, however, were by no means of the poorest or even of the lower-middle class, but the well-to-do people, whose chief aim was to place their valuables in safety, and who looked upon the 9-1/2 per cent. interest they had to pay on the advances received as a premium for warehousing and insurance. They knew that nothing could be more secure than the fire and burglar proof receptacles of the Mont-de-Piete, and that, come what might, the State would be responsible for the value of the articles deposited.

This run ceased when the investment was an accomplished fact, but, as a matter of course, the financial resources had been put to a severe test, and, at the time my informant spoke to me, they had dwindled from nearly eight millions of francs, at which they were computed in the beginning of August, to about three-quarters of a million. The order of the mayor of Paris, intended to prevent this, had come too late. The decree of 1863, limiting the maximum of a loan to ten thousand francs at the chief office, and to five hundred francs at any of the auxiliary ones, had been suspended in favour of a decision that, during the investment, no loan should exceed fifty francs.[88] From the 19th of September to the end of October, the cessation from _all_ labour, and, consequently, the non-receipt of wages throughout the capital, had to be faced in the acceptance of thousands of pledges, consisting of household goods, apparel, etc.; but, curiously enough, workmen's tools and implements formed but a small proportion of these. At present, the whole of the business was at a standstill; there was no redemption of pledges, and few were offered.[89]

[Footnote 88: A similar measure had been decided upon in 1814,
under analogous circumstances, but the maximum was twenty
francs instead of fifty francs.--EDITOR.]

[Footnote 89: A curious feature in connection with the pledging
of tools and implements may be recorded here. At the
termination of the siege, a committee in London transmitted
20,000 francs (L800) for the express purpose of redeeming
these. The Paris committee entrusted with the task, while
grateful for the solicitude shown, rightly considered that it
would not _go_ very far, considering that, at the time, the
Mont-de-Piete held a total of 1,708,549 articles, representing
loans to the amount of 37,502,743 francs. The authorities took
particular pains to publish the receipt of the 20,000 francs,
and the purposes thereof. Within a given time, they returned
6,430 francs to the committee. Only 2,383 tools (or sets of
tools) had been redeemed, representing a lent value of 13,570
francs.]

Meanwhile, Christmas and the New Year were at hand, and not a single sortie had led to any practical modification of the situation. The cold was intense. Coal and coke could be obtained for neither money nor love. The street lamps had not been lighted for nearly a month; up till the end of October, one had been lighted here and there; then there had been an attempt to supply the absence of gas by paraffin in the public thoroughfares, but the stock of mineral oil was also getting lower. Most of the shops were closed, but, at the advent of the festive season, a few took down their shutters and made a feeble display of bonbons in sugar and chocolate, and even of marrons glaces. I doubt whether these articles found many purchasers. The toy-shops never took the trouble of exhibiting at all. They were wise in their abstention, for even the most ignorant Parisian was aware that nine-tenths of the wares in these establishments hailed from Germany, and he would assuredly have smashed the windows if they had been offered for sale. Nay, the booths that make their appearance on the Boulevards at that time of the year displayed few toys, except of a military kind. It was very touching, in after years, to hear the lads and lassies refer to the 1st of January, 1871, as _the New Year's Day without the New Year's gifts_.

Nevertheless, it must not be thought that Paris was given over to melancholy on these two days. Crowds perambulated the streets and sat in the cafes. In spite of all that has been said by ultra-patriotic writers, I am inclined to think that the Parisians no longer cherished any illusions about the possibility of retrieving their disasters, though many may have thought that the besiegers would abstain, at the last moment, from shelling the city. The Government--whether with the intention of cheering the besieged or for the purpose of exhausting their stock of provisions as quickly as possible, in order to capitulate with better grace--had made the city a magnificent New Year's gift of

104,000 kilogrammes of preserved beef,
52,000 " " dried haricot beans,
52,000 " " olive oil,
52,000 " " coffee (not roasted),
52,000 " " chocolate;

which gift elicited the reply of a group of artists and litterateurs that, though thankful for their more epicurean brethren and sisters, they, the litterateurs and artists, had fared very well on Christmas Day and would meet again on New Year's Day to discuss the following menu:--

"Consomme de Cheval au millet.
Brochettes de Foie de Chien a la Maitre d'Hotel.
Emince de Rable de Chat, Sauce Mayonnaise.
Epaules et Filets de Chien braises a la Sauce Tomate.
Civet de Chat aux Champignons.
Cotelettes de Chien aux Champignons.
Gigots de Chien flanques de Ratons.
Sauce Poivrade.
Begonias au Jus.
Plum-pudding au Rhum et a la Moelle de Cheval."

Simultaneously with the publication of the menu, a dealer in the St. Germain Market put up a new signboard:--

"RESISTANCE A OUTRANCE.

"GRANDE BOUCHERIE CANINE ET FELINE.

"L'heroique Paris brave les Prussiens;
Il ne sera jamais vaincu par la famine!
Quand il aura mange la race chevaline
Il mangera ses rats, et ses chats, et ses chiens."

The proprietor of a cookshop in the Rue de Rome had confined himself to prose, but prose which, to those who could read it aright, was much cleverer than the poetry of his transpontine fellow-tradesman.

"VIN A DIX-HUIT SOUS ET EAU-DESSUS,
Rosse Beef.
Rat Gout de Mouton."[90]

[Footnote 90: Here are the two English readings, as far as I am
able to give them:--

"WINE AT EIGHTEEN SOUS THE LITRE AND UPWARDS.
Roast Beef.
Ragout of Mutton."

"WINE AT EIGHTEEN SOUS THE LITRE AND WATER ATOP.
Old Crock's Flesh.
Rat Tasting of Mutton."--EDITOR.]

Personally, I have eaten the flesh of elephants, wolves, cassowaries, porcupines, bears, kangaroos, rats, cats, and horses. I did not touch dog's-flesh knowingly after I had been warned by our ex-lieutenant. The proprietor of the English butcher-shop, M. Debos, who was not an Englishman at all, supplied most of these strange dishes; for he bought nearly all the animals from the Zoological Gardens at tremendous prices. These were only the animals from the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois, which had been sent as guests to the Jardin des Plantes. The elephants belonged to the latter establishment, and were sold to M. Debos for twenty-seven thousand francs. In January I was elected a member of the Jockey Club, but I had dined there once before by special invitation. I give the menu as far as I remember:--

"Soupe au Poireau.
Aloyau de Boeuf.
Poule au Riz.
Flageolets aux Jus.
Biscuits de Reims glaces.
Charlotte aux Pommes."

In spite of the hope that Paris would escape being shelled, minute instructions how to act, in the event of such a calamity, had been posted on the walls. In fact, if speechifying and the promulgation of decrees could have saved the city, Trochu first, and the rest afterwards, would have so saved it. But I have solemnly promised myself at the outset of these notes not to be betrayed into any criticism of the military operations, and I will endeavour to keep my promise to myself.

The first and foremost result of those directions on the part of the Government was a display of water-butts, filled to the brim, in the passage, and of sand-heaps in the yard of every building. As the months went by, and there was no sign of a bombardment, the contents of the casks became so much solid ice, and the sand-heaps disappeared beneath the accumulated snow, to be converted into slush and mire at the first thaw, which gave us, at the same time, a kind of miniature deluge, because, as a matter of course, the barrels had sprung leaks which were not attended to at the time.

And when, early on the 5th of January, the first projectiles crashed down upon some houses in the south of Paris, the people were simply astonished, but still deluded themselves into the belief that it was a mistake, that the "trajectory" had been miscalculated, and the shells had carried farther than was intended. To a certain extent they had good grounds for their supposition. They had heard the big cannon boom and roar at frequent intervals ever since the morning of the 27th of December, and been given to understand that it was merely a big artillery duel for the possession of the plateau d'Avron, between the positions of Noisy-le-Grand and Gournay on the enemy's side, and the forts of Nogent, Rosny, and Noisy on that of the French. They were, furthermore, under the impression that the shelling of the city would be preceded by a final summons to surrender: they had got that notion mostly from their military dramas and popular histories. But there were men, better informed than the majority of the masses, who made sure that, if not the Parisians themselves, the foreign consuls and the aliens under their charge would receive a sufficiently timely notice, in order to leave the city if they felt so minded.

The 5th of January was a bitterly cold day; it had been freezing hard during the whole of the night, and, as I wended my way across the Seine, about noon, the mist, which had been hanging over the river, was slowly rising in banked and jagged masses, with only a rift here and there for the pitilessly glacial sun to peer through and mock at our shivering condition. When I got to the Boulevard Montparnasse, I met several stretchers, bearing sentries who had been absolutely frozen to within an ace of death.

I know nothing of the military import of a bombardment, but have been told that even the greatest strategists only count upon the moral effect it produces upon the besieged inhabitants. I can only say this: if Marshal von Moltke took the "moral effect" of his projectiles into his calculations to accelerate the surrender of Paris, he might have gone on shelling Paris for a twelvemonth without being one whit nearer his aim; that is, if I am to judge by the scene I witnessed on that January morning, before familiarity with the destruction-dealing shells could have produced the proverbial contempt. At the risk of offending all the sensation-mongers, foreign and native, with pen or with pencil, I can honestly say that a broken-down omnibus and a couple of prostrate horses would have excited as much curiosity as did the sight of the battered tenements at Vaugirard, Montrouge, and Vanves. On the Chaussee du Maine, the roadway had been ploughed up for a distance of about half a dozen yards by a shell; in another spot, a shell had gone clean through the roof and killed a woman by the side of her husband; in a third, a shell had carried away part of the wall of a one-storied cottage, and the whole of the opposite wall: in short, there was more than sufficient evidence that life was no longer safe within the fortifications, and yet there was no wailing, no wringing of hands, no heart-rending frenzied look of despair, either pent up or endeavouring to find vent in shrieks and yells, nay, not even on the part of the women. There was merely a kind of undemonstrative contempt--very unlike the usual French way of manifesting it--blended with a considerable dash of _badauderie_,--for which word I cannot find an English equivalent, because the Parisian loafer or idler is unlike any of his European congeners. To grasp the difference between the former and the latter, one must have had the good fortune to see the same incident in the streets of Paris, London, Madrid, Florence, and Rome, Vienna, Berlin, and St. Petersburg, not to mention Brussels, the Hague, Amsterdam, Munich, and Dresden. The "Monsieur Prudhomme" of Charles Monnier shows but one facet of the Paris badaud's character. The nearest approach to him is the middle-class English tourist on the Continent, who endeavours to explain to his wife and companions things he does not know himself, and blesses his stars aloud for having made him an Englishman.

But even the Paris badaud, who is not unlike his Roman predecessor in his craving for circuses, must have bread; and when the cry arises, a fortnight later, that "there is no more bread," the siege is virtually at an end.