Chapter XVII: Part I (2)

There was music enough chiming at No. 13 to keep a choir of angels busy. Mme. de Chanoir, with the petulance of weakness, grumbled unceasingly, lamenting the miseries of her own position, altogether ignoring the fact that it was no worse, but in some ways better, than that of those around her, whinging and whining from morning till night, pouring out futile invectives against the Prussians, the Emperor, the Republic, General Trochu, and everybody and everything remotely conducive to her sufferings. She threatened to let herself die of hunger rather than touch horse‐flesh, and for some days she so perseveringly held to her determination that Aline was terrified, and believed she would hold it to the end. The only thing that remained to the younger sister of any value was her mother’s watch, a costly little gem, with the cipher set in brilliants; it had been her grandfather’s wedding present to his daughter‐in‐law. Aline took it to the jeweller who had made it, and sold it for one hundred and fifty francs. With this she bought a ham and a few other delicacies that tempted Mme. de Chanoir out of her suicidal abstinence; she ate heartily, neither asking nor guessing at what price the dainties had been bought; and Aline, only too glad to have had the sacrifice to make, said nothing of what it had cost her. Gradually everything went that could be sold or exchanged for food. Aline would have lived on the siege bread, and never repined, had she been alone, but it went to her heart to hear the never‐ending complaints of Mme. de Chanoir, to see her childish indignation at the great public disasters which her egotism contracted into direct personal grievances. Fortunately for herself, Mlle. de Lemaque was not a constant witness of the irritating scene. From nine in the morning till late in the evening she was away at the Ambulance, active and helpful, and cheering many a heavy heart and aching head by her bright and gentle ministry, and forgetting her own sufferings in the effort to alleviate greater ones.

“If you only could come with me, Félicité, and see something of the miseries our poor soldiers are enduring, it would make your own seem light,” she often said to Mme. de Chanoir, when, on coming home from her labor of love, she was met by the unreasonable grumbling of the invalid; “it is such a delight to feel one’s self a comfort and a help to them. I don’t know how I am ever to settle down to the make‐believe work of teaching after this long spell of real work.”

She enjoyed the work so much, in fact, that, if it had not been for the sufferings, real and imaginary, of her sister, this would have been the happiest time she had known since her school days. The make‐believe work, as Aline called it, which had hitherto filled her time had never filled her heart. It was a means of living that kept her brains and her hands at work, nothing more; and it had often been a source of wonder to her in her busiest days to feel herself sometimes seized with _ennui_. That trivial, hackneyed word hardly, perhaps, expresses the void, the sort of hunger‐ pang, that more and more frequently of late years had made her soul ache and yearn, but now the light seemed to break upon her, and she understood why it had been so. The work itself was too superficial, too external. It had overrun her life without satisfying it; it had not penetrated the surface, and brought out the best and deepest resources of her mind and heart—it had only broken the crust, and left the soil below untilled. She had flitted like a butterfly from one study to another; history, and literature, and music had attracted her by turns; she had gone into them enthusiastically, mastered their difficulties, and appropriated their beauties; but after a time the spell waned, and she glided imperceptibly into the dry mechanism of the thing, and went on giving her lesson because it brought her so much a _cachet_. But this work of a Sister of Mercy was a different sort of life altogether. The enthusiasm, instead of waning, grew as she went on. At first, the prosaic details, the foul air, the physical fatigue and moral strain of the sick‐nurse’s life were unspeakably repugnant to her; her natural fastidiousness turned from them in disgust, and she would have thrown it all up after the first week but for sheer human respect; she persevered, however, and at the end of a fortnight she had grown interested in her patients; by degrees she got reconciled to the obnoxious duties their state demanded of her; and before a month had passed it had become a ministry of love, and her whole soul had thrown itself into the perfect performance of her duties. She was often tired and faint on leaving the Ambulance, but she always left it with regret, and the evident zest and gladness of heart with which she set out each morning became at last a grievance in the eyes of her sister. Mme. de Chanoir vented her discontent by harping all the time of breakfast on the hard‐heartedness of some people who could look at wounds and all sorts of horrors without flinching; whereas the very sight of a drop of blood made her almost faint; but then she was so constituted as to feel other people’s wounds as if they were her own; it was a great misfortune; she envied people who had hard hearts; it certainly enabled them to do more, while she could only weep and pity. Aline bore the querulous reproaches as cheerfully as if she had been blessed with one of those hearts of stone that Mme. de Chanoir so envied. She had the indulgence of a happy heart, and she had found the secret of making her life a poem. But the nurse’s courage was greater than her strength. After the first three months, material privations, added to arduous attendance on the sick and wounded, began to tell; her health showed signs of rebellion.

M. Dalibouze was the first to notice it. He came regularly on the Saturday evenings as of old; his age exempted him from the terrible outpost work on the ramparts; and he profited by the circumstance to keep up, as far as possible, his ordinary habits and enjoyments, “_afin de soutenir le morale_,” as he said. When he noticed this change in Aline, he immediately used his privilege of friend of the family to interfere; he begged her to modify her zeal for the poor sufferers at the Ambulance, and to consider how precious her life was to her sister and her friends.

Aline took the advice very kindly, but assured him that, far from wearing out her strength as he supposed, her work was the only thing that sustained it. The tone in which she said this convinced him it was the truth. It then occurred to him that her pallor and languid step must be caused by the unhealthy diet of the siege. Everybody suffered in a more or less degree; but, as it always happens, those who suffered most said least about it. The _gros rentier_, who fared sumptuously on kangaroo, and Chinese puppies, and elephant at a hundred francs a pound, talked loud about the miseries of starvation which he underwent for the sake of his country; but the _petit rentier_, whose modest meal had long since been replaced by a scanty ration of horse‐flesh, and that only to be had by “making tail,” as they call it, for hours at the butchers shop—the _petit rentier_ said very little. He was perishing slowly off the face of the earth; but, with the pride of poverty strong in death, he gathered his rags around him, and made ready to die in silence.

It was on such people as Mme. de Chanoir and her sister that the siege pressed hardest; their _concierge_ was far better off than they; she could claim her _bons_, and fight for her rations; and she had fifteen sous a day as the wife of a National Guard.

As to Mme. Cléry, she proved herself equal to the occasion. She had no National Guard to fall back upon, but she was sustained by the thought that she was suffering for her country; she, too, was a good patriot. Patriotism, however, has its limits of endurance, and hay bread was the border line that Mme. Cléry’s patriotism refused to pass. When the good bread was rationed, she showed signs of mutiny; but when it degenerated into that hideous compound, of which we have all seen specimens, her indignation declared itself in open rage. “What is this?” she cried, when the first loaf was handed to her after three hours’ waiting. “Are we cattle, to eat hay?” And, breaking the tawny, spongy lumps in two, she pulled out a long bit of the offensive weed, and held it up to the scorn of the _queue_.

As to Mme. de Chanoir, when she saw it she went into hysterics for the rest of the day. But Providence was mindful of No. 13. Just at this crisis, when Aline’s altered looks aroused her sister from the selfish contemplation of her own ailments and wants, M. Dalibouze arrived early one morning soon after Mme. de Lemaque had started for the Ambulance, and announced that he had received the opportune present of a number of hams, tins of preserved meat, condensed milk, and an indefinite number of pots of jam. It was three times as much as he could consume before the siege was raised—for raised it infallibly would be, and, if he were not greatly mistaken, within forty‐eight hours—so he begged Mme. la Générale to do him the favor of accepting the surplus.

Mme. de Chanoir, with infantine simplicity, believed this credible story, and did M. Dalibouze the favor he requested. So, thanks to his generous friend, the professor in turn became the benefactor of the two sisters, and had the delight of seeing Aline revive on the substantial fare that arrived so apropos. Well, it came at last, the end of the _blocus_; not, indeed, as M. Dalibouze had prognosticated. But that was not his fault. He had not reckoned with treachery. He could not suspect what a brood of traitors the glorious capital of civilization was nourishing in her patriotic bosom. But wait a little! It would be made square yet. Europe would see France rise by‐and‐by, like the Phœnix from her ashes, and spread her wings, and take a flight that would astonish the world. As to the Prussians, those vile vandals, whose greasy moustaches were not fit to brush the boots of Paris, let them bide a while, and they shall see what they should see!

Thus did M. Dalibouze _resumer la situation_, while Paris on her knees waited humbly the terms that Prussia might dictate as the price of a loaf of bread for her starving patriots.

But the worst was to come yet. Hardly had the little _ménage_ at No. 13 drawn a long breath of relief after the prolonged miseries and terrors of the siege, than that saturnalia, the like of which assuredly the world never saw before, and let us hope never will again, the Commune, began. Like a fiery flood it rose in Paris, and rose and rose till the red wave swept from end to end of the city, spreading desolation and terror everywhere, and making the respectable party of order long to call back the Prussians, and help them out of the mess. How it began, and grew, and ended we have heard till we know the miserable story by heart. I am not going to tell it here. The Commune is only the last episode in the history of No. 13.

There was work to do and plenty in binding the wounds and smoothing the pillows of dying men, and words to be spoken that dying ears are open to when spoken in Christian love. Aline de Lemaque’s courage did not fail her in this last and fearful ordeal. She resumed her duties as Sister of Mercy, asked no questions as to the politics of the wounded men, but did the best she could for them. Mme. de Chanoir could not understand how her sister spent her time and service on Red Republicans; the sooner the race died out, the better, and it was not the work of a Christian to preserve the lives of such snakes and fiends.

“There are dupes and victims as well as fiends among them,” Aline assured her; “and those who are guilty are the most to be pitied.” After a time, however, the dangers attendant on going into the streets became so great that Aline was forced to remain indoors. Barricades were thrown up in every direction, and made the circulation a dangerous and almost impracticable feat to members of the party of order. The Rue Royale, which had been safe during the first siege, was now a threatened centre of accumulated danger. It was armed to the teeth. The Faubourg end of it was barred by a stone barricade that might have passed for a fortress—a wall of heavy masonry weighted with cannon, two black giants that lay couched like monster slugs peeping through a hedge. But after those terrible weeks there came at last the final tug, the troops came in, and Greek met Greek. Shell and shot rained on the city like hailstones. The great black slugs gave tongue, bellowing with unintermitting fury; all round them came responsive roars from barricades and batteries; it was the discord of hell broke upward through the earth, and echoing through the streets of Paris.

Aline de Lemaque and her sister sat in the little saloon at No. 13, listening to the war‐dogs without, and straining their ears to catch every sound that shot up with any significant distinctness from the chaos of noise. Mme. Cléry was with them; she stayed altogether at No. 13 now, sleeping on the sofa at night. It would have been impossible for her to come and go twice a day while the city was in this state of commotion. To‐ day the old woman could not keep quiet; she was constantly up and down to the _concierge’s_ lodge to pick up any stray report that came through the chinks of the _porte‐cochère_. Once she went down and remained so long that the sisters were uneasy. An explosion had reverberated through the street, shaking the house from cellar to garret, and, like an electric shock, flinging both the sisters on their knees simultaneously. Mme. de Chanoir’s spine had recovered itself within the last week as if by magic. She had abandoned her usual recumbent position, and came and went about the house like the rest of them. If the Commune did nothing else, it did this. We must give the devil his due.

“Félicité, I must go and see what it is. I hear groans close under the window; perhaps a shell has fallen in the court and killed her,” said Aline. And, rising, she turned to go.

“Don’t leave me! For the love of heaven, don’t leave me alone, Aline!” implored her sister. “I’ll die with terror if that comes again while I’m here by myself.”

“Come with me, then,” said Aline. And, taking her sister’s hand, they went down together.

Mme. Cléry was not killed. This fact was made clear to them at once by the spectacle of the old woman standing in the _porte‐cochère_, and shaking her fist vehemently at somebody or something at the further end of it.

“Stay here,” said Aline to Mme. de Chanoir, motioning her back into the house. “I will see what it is; and if you can do anything I’ll call you.”

It was the _concierge_ that Mme. Cléry was apostrophizing. And this was why: a shell had burst, not in the yard, as the sisters fancied, but in the street just outside, and the explosion was followed by a shriek and a loud blow at the door, while something like a body fell heavily against it.

“_Cordon!_” cried Mme. Cléry; “it is some unfortunate hit by the shell.”

“More likely a communist coming to pillage and burn. I’ll _cordon_ to none of ’em!” declared the _concierge_. “The door is locked; if they want to get in, they may blow it open.” But Mme. Cléry flew at her throat, and swore, if she didn’t give up the key, she, Mme. Cléry, would know the reason why. The _concierge_ groaned, and felt, in bitterness of spirit, what a difficult task the _cordon_ was. But she opened the door; under it lay two wounded men, both of them young; one was evidently dying; he had been mortally struck by a fragment of the shell that had burst over the thick oaken door and dealt death around and in front of it. The other was wounded, too, but much less seriously; he had been flung down by his companion, and the shock of the fall, more than his wound, had stunned him. Mme. Cléry dragged them in under the shelter of the _porte‐cochère_, and proposed laying them on the floor of the lodge. But the _concierge_ had no mind to take in a dead and a dying man, and vowed she would not have her lodge turned into a coffin. The dispute was waxing warm, Mme. Cléry threatening muscular argument, when Aline made her appearance. Her training in the Ambulance stood her in good stead now.

“Poor fellow! He will give no more trouble to any one,” she said, after feeling the pulse of the first, and laying her hand for a moment on his heart; “bring a cloth, and cover his face; he must lie here till he can be removed.”

The _concierge_ obeyed her. They composed the features, and laid the body under cover of the gateway.

Aline then examined the other. His arm was badly wounded. While she was still probing the wound, the man opened his eyes, stared round him for a moment with a speculative gaze of returning consciousness, made a spasmodic effort to rise, but fell back at once. “You are wounded—not severely, I hope,” said Aline; “but you must not attempt to move till we have dressed your arm.”

She despatched Mme. Cléry for the box containing her ambulance appliances, lint, bandages, etc., and then, with an expertness that would have done credit to a medical student, she washed and dressed the shattered limb, while Mme. de Chanoir watched the operation in shuddering excitement through the glass door at the foot of the stairs. What to do next was the puzzle. The _concierge_ resolutely refused to let him into her lodge; there was no knowing who or what he was, and she was a lone woman, and had no mind to compromise herself by taking in bad characters. The poor fellow was so much exhausted from loss of blood that he certainly could not help himself, and it would have been cruel to leave him down in the courtyard, where his unfortunate comrade was lying dead within sight of him. Aline saw there was nothing for it but to take him up to their own apartment. How to get him there was the difficulty. He looked about six feet long, and might have weighed any number of stone. She and Mme. Cléry could never succeed in carrying him. He had not spoken while she was dressing his arm, but lay so still with his eyes closed that they thought he had fainted.

“We must carry him,” said Aline in a determined voice, and beckoned the _concierge_ to come and help.

But before proceeding to the gigantic enterprise, Mme. Cléry poured out a tumbler of wine, which she had had the wit to bring down with the lint‐ box, and held it to the sufferer’s lips, while Aline supported his head against her knee. He drank it with avidity, and the draught seemed to revive him instantaneously; he sat up leaning on his right arm.

“We are going to carry you up‐stairs, _mon petit_,” said Mme. Cléry, patting him on the shoulder with the patronizing manner an amazon might have assumed towards a dwarf.

“_You_ carry me!” said the young man, measuring the short, trim figure of the charwoman with a sceptical twinkle in his eyes: they were dark‐gray eyes, particularly clear, and piercing.

“Me and Mlle. Aline,” said Mme. Cléry, in a tone that testified against the supercilious way in which her measure was being taken.

Aline was behind him. He turned to look at her with a jest on his lips, but, changing his mind apparently, he bowed; then, with a resolute effort, he bent forward, and, before either she or Mme. Cléry could interfere, he was on his feet. It was well, however, they were both within reach of him, for he staggered, and must have fallen but for their prompt assistance.

“La!” said Mme. Cléry, “what it is to be proud! Lean on Mlle. Aline and me, and try and get up‐stairs without breaking your neck.”

“It is the fortune of war,” said the gentleman laughing, and accepting the shoulder that Aline turned towards him.

They accomplished the ascent in safety, and then, in spite of his assertion that he was all right now, Mme. de Chanoir insisted on their guest lying down on her sofa while the charwoman prepared some food for him. But safety, in truth, was nowhere. The fighting grew brisker from minute to minute. The troops were in possession of the neighboring streets; they had taken the Federals in the rear, and were mowing them down like corn. The struggle could not last much longer, but it was desperate, and the loss of life, already appalling, must be still greater before it ended. The stranger who had introduced himself so unexpectedly to No. 13 had formed one of the party of order, he told his good Samaritans, who had gone unarmed, with a flag of truce, to the Federals in the Rue de la Paix; he had seen the ghastly butchery that followed, and only escaped as if by miracle himself; he had fought as a _mobile_ against the Prussians, and received a sabre‐cut in the head, which had kept him in the hospital for weeks; he had, of course, refused to join the Federals, and it was at the risk of his life that he showed himself abroad in Paris; just now he had been making an attempt to join the troops, when that shell burst, and stopped him in his venturesome career. All day and all night the four inmates of the little _entresol_ waited and watched in breathless anxiety for the close of the battle that was raging around them. It never flagged for an instant, and as it went on the noise grew louder and more bewildering, the tocsin rang from every belfry in the city, the drum beat to arms in every direction, the chassepots hissed, the cannon boomed, and yells and shrieks of fratricidal murder filled the air, mingling with the smell and smoke of blood and powder. It was a night that drove hundreds mad who lived through it. Yet the worst was still to come. Late the next afternoon, Aline, who was constantly at the window, peeping from behind the mattress stuffed into it to protect them from the shells, thought she discovered something in the atmosphere indicative of a change of some sort. She said nothing, but slipped out of the room, and ran up to a bull’s‐eye at the top of the house that served as a sort of observatory to those who had the courage of their curiosity, as the French put it, and ventured their heads for a moment to the mercy of the missiles flying amongst the chimney‐pots. It was an awful sight that met her. A fire was raging close to the house. Where it began and ended it was impossible to say, but clearly it was of immense magnitude, and blazed with a fury that threatened to spread the flames far and wide. She stood rooted to the spot, literally paralyzed with horror. Were they to be burnt to death, after living through such miseries, and escaping death in so many shapes? Yet how could they escape it? There were barricades on every side of them; if they were not shot down like dogs, which was the most likely event, they would never be allowed to pass. All this rushed through her mind as she gazed in blank despair out of the little bull’s‐eye, that embraced the whole area of the Rue Royale and the adjacent streets. As yet, there was a space between the fire and No. 13. Mercifully, there was no wind, and she saw by the swaying of the flames that they drew rather towards the Madeleine than in the direction of the Rue de Rivoli. Flight was a forlorn hope, but still they must try it. She turned abruptly from the window, and was crossing the room, when a loud crash made her heart leap. She looked back. The roof of another house, one nearer to No. 13, had fallen in, and the flames, leaping through like rattlesnakes out of a bag, sprang at the sky, writhing and hissing as they licked it with their long red tongues.

“O God, have pity on us!”

Aline fell on her knees for one moment, and then hurried down to the _salon_.

“We must leave this at once,” she said, speaking calmly, but with white lips; “the street is on fire.”

M. Varlay, _citoyen_ Varlay, as he gave his name, started to his feet, and, pulling the mattress from the window, looked out. He saw the flames above the house‐top.

“Let us go, with the help of God!” he exclaimed. “We must make for the Rue de Rivoli!”

Mme. de Chanoir and the charwoman, as soon as they caught sight of the fire, shrieked in chorus, and made a headlong rush at the stairs.

“You must be quiet, madame!” cried M. Varlay in a tone that arrested both the women; “if we lose our presence of mind, we had better stay where we are. Have you any valuables, papers or money, that you can take in your pocket?” he said, turning to Aline. She alone had not lost her head.

Yes; there were a few letters of her parents, and some trinkets, valuable only as souvenirs, which she had had the forethought to put together. She took them quickly, and the four went down the stairs. There was no one in the lodge. The _concierge_ had taken refuge in her cellar, and her husband was supposed to be saving France somewhere else. Mme. Cléry pulled the string, and the little band sallied forth into the street. The air was so thick they could hardly see their way, except for the fiery forks of flame that shot up successively through the fog, illuminating dark spots with a momentary lurid brightness, while now and then the crash of a roof or a heavy beam was followed by a pillar of sparks that went rattling up into the sky like a fountain of rockets. The Babel of drums, and bells, and artillery added to the confusion of the scene as the fugitives hurried on singly under the shadow of the houses. They fared safely out of the Rue Royale and turned to the left. The Tuileries was enveloped in smoke, but the flames were nearly spent, only here and there a tongue of fire crept out of a crevice, licked the wall, twisted and twirled, and drew in again. A crowd was gathered under the portico of the Rue de Rivoli, watching the last throes of the conflagration, and discussing many questions in excited tones. Our travellers pushed on, and came unmolested to the corner of the Rue St. Florentine, where a sentry levelled his bayonet before them, and cried “Halt!” Mme. de Chanoir, who walked first, answered by a scream. _Citoyen_ Varlay, laying his hand on her shoulder, drew her quickly behind him. “Stand here while I speak to him,” he said, and he advanced to parley with the Federal, at the same time putting his hand into his pocket. They had not exchanged half a dozen words when the sentinel shouldered his chassepot, and said:

“Quick, then, pass along!”

Varlay stood for the women to pass first. Mme. de Chanoir and the charwoman rushed on, but no sooner had they stepped into the street than, clasping their hands, they fell upon their knees with a cry of agonized terror. The sight that met them was indeed enough to make a brave heart quail. To the left, extending right across the street, rose a barricade, a fortress rather, surmounted at either end by two warriors of the Commune, bending over a cannon as if in the very act of firing; in the centre two amazon _pétroleuses_ stood with chassepots slung _en baudelière_ and red rags in their hands that they waved aloft proudly like women who felt that the eyes of Europe were upon them; the intermediate space on either side of them was filled up with soldiers planted singly or in groups, and _poséd_ in the attitudes of men whom forty centuries look down upon. Just as Mme. de Chanoir and her _bonne_ came in front of the terrible _mise‐en‐ scêne_, and before they could go backward or forward, the word _Fire!_ rang out from the fortress, two matches flashed in the hands of the gunners, and the women dropped to the ground with a shriek that would have waked the dead.

“What’s the matter now?” cried the sentinel.

“They are going to fire!”

“Imbeciles! No, they are going to be photographed!”(112)

And so they were. A photographic battery was set up against the railings opposite. Aline and _citoyen_ Varlay seized the two half‐fainting women by the arm, and dragged them across and out of the range of the formidable _tableau vivant_. Meanwhile, the fire was gaining on No. 13. The house three doors down from it was _flambée_. It had been deserted the day before by all its occupants, save one family composed of a husband and wife, who had obstinately refused to believe in the danger till it was too late to evade it. They were friends of M. Dalibouze’s and the professor turned in to see them this morning on his way to No. 13. “The situation was a difficult one,” he said; “it were foolhardy to defy it, and the time was come when good citizens should save themselves.” He convinced M. and Mme. X—— that this was the only reasonable thing to do. So casting a last look at their belongings, they sallied forth from their home accompanied by their servant, an _ex‐sapeur_, too old for military service, but as hale and hearty as a youth of twenty. The professor had got in by a backway from the Faubourg St. Honoré, and thither he led his friends now; but, though less than fifteen minutes had elapsed since he had entered, the passage was already blocked: part of the wall had fallen and stopped it up. There was nothing for it but to go boldly out by the front door, and trust to Providence. But they reckoned without the _pétroleuses_. Those zealous daughters of the Commune, braving the shot, and the shell, and the vengeful flames of their own creation, sped from door to door, pouring the terrible fluid into holes and corners, through the gratings of cellars, under the doors, through the chinks of the windows, everywhere, dancing, and singing, and laughing all the time like tigers in human shape—tigers gone mad with fire and blood. When the _sapeur_ opened the door, he beheld a group of them on the _trottoir_; one was rolling a barrel of petroleum on to the next house, another was steeping rags in a barrel already half empty, and handing them as fast as she could to others, who stuffed them into appropriate places, and set a light to them; every flame that rose was hailed by a shout of demoniacal exultation. The _sapeur_ banged the door in their faces.

“We must set to work, and cut a hole through the wall,” he said; “it’s the last chance left us.”

No sooner said than done. He knew where to lay his hands on a couple of crowbars and a pickaxe; the professor fired the contents of his chassepot at the wall, and then the three men went at it, and worked as men do when death is behind them and life before. It was an old house, built chiefly of stone and mortar, very little iron, and it yielded quickly to the hammering blows of the workmen. A breach was made—a small one, but big enough to let a man crawl through. M. X—— passed out first, and then helped out his wife. M. Dalibouze and the _sapeur_ followed. They hurried through the next apartment. M. Dalibouze reloaded his gun; whiz! whiz! went the bullets; bang! bang! went the crowbars; down rattled the stones; another breach was made, and again they were saved. Three times they fought their way through the walls, while the fire like a lava torrent rolled after them, and then they found themselves at No. 13. M. Dalibouze’s first thought was for the little apartment on the _entresol_ at the other side. They made for it; but as they were crossing the court a blow, or rather a succession of blows, struck the great oak door; it opened like a nut, and fell in with a crash like thunder. The burglars beheld M. Dalibouze in his National Guard costume scudding across the yard, and greeted him with howls like a troop of jackals. Whiz! went the grape‐shot. M. Dalibouze fell.

Mme. X—— and her husband had fallen back before the door gave way, and thus escaped observation. No one was left but the old _sapeur_.

“What sort of work is this?” he said, walking defiantly up to the men—there were five of them—“what do you mean by breaking into the houses of honest citizens?”

“You had better break out of this one if you don’t want to grill,” answered one of the ruffians; “we are going to fire it, _par ordre de le Commune_.”

The women had disappeared, and left their implements in the hands of the men.

“Oh! _par ordre de le Commune!_” echoed the _sapeur_; “then I’ve nothing to say; I hope they pay you well for the work?”

“Not over and above for such work as it is,” said one of the incendiaries, rolling a barrel into the concierge’s lodge.

“How much?”

“Ten francs apiece.”

“Ten francs for burning a house down! Pshaw! you’re fools for your pains!”

The _sapeur_ shrugged his shoulders, and, turning on his heels, walked off. Suddenly, as if a bright thought struck him, he turned back, and faced them with his hands in his pockets.

“Suppose you got twenty for leaving it alone?”

“Twenty apiece?”

“Twenty apiece, every man of you!”

They stopped their work, and looked from one to another.

“_Ma foi_, I’d take it, and leave it alone!” said one.

“_Pardie!_ we’ve had enough of it, and, as the _citoyen_ says, it’s beggarly pay for the work,” said another.

“Done!” said the _sapeur_.(113)

He pulled out a leathern purse from his breast‐pocket, and counted out one hundred francs in five gold pieces to the five communists.

“_Une poignée de main, citoyen!_” said the first spokesmen. The others followed suit, and the _sapeur_, after heartily wringing the five rascally hands, sent them on their way rejoicing to the cabaret round the corner. This is how No. 13 was saved. No. 11 was burnt to the ground, and then the fire stopped.

But to return to Aline and her friends. They got on well till they came to the Rue d’Alger, where they were caught in a panic, men, and women, and children struggling to get out of reach of the flames, and threatening to crush each other to death in their terror. Our friends got clear of it, but, on coming out of the _mélée_ at separate points, the sisters found they had lost each other. Mme. de Chanoir had held fast by Mme. Cléry, and was satisfied that Aline was safe under the wing of _citoyen_ Varlay. But she was mistaken. He had indeed lifted her off the ground, holding her like a child above the heads of the crowd, and so saved her from being trampled under foot, most likely; but when he set her down, and Aline turned to speak to him, he was gone. It would have been madness to attempt to look for him in the _mélée_, so she determined to wait at the nearest point of shelter, and then when the crowd dispersed they would be sure to meet. She made for the door‐way of a mourning house at the corner of the Rue St. Honoré. But she had not been many minutes there when she heard a hue and cry from the Tuileries end of the street, and a troop of men and women came flying along, driving some people before them, and firing at random as they went. The sensible thing for Aline to do was, of course, to flatten herself against the wall, and stay where she was, and of course she did not do it. She saw a flock of people running, and she started from her hiding‐place, and turned and ran with them. They tore along the Rue St. Honoré till they came to the Rue Rohan; here the band broke up, and many disappeared at opposite points; but one little group unluckily kept together, and, though diminished to a third its size at the starting point, it still held in view, and gave chase to the pursuers. Mlle. de Lemaque kept with this. On they flew like hares before the hounds, till, turning the corner of the Place du Palais Royal, they were stopped by two Federals, who levelled their chassepots and bade them stand. The fugitives turned, not like hares at bay to face the hunters and die, but to rush into an open shop, and fall on their knees, and cry, “Mercy!”

The Federals were after them in a second. Instead of shooting them right off, however, they set to discussing the propriety of taking them out and standing them in regulation order, with their backs to the wall, and doing the thing in a proper business‐like manner. While this parley was going on, Aline de Lemaque cast a glance round her, and saw that her fellow‐ victims were two young lads and half a dozen women, all of them of the lower class apparently; most of them wore caps. The men who were making ready to shoot them without rhyme or reason, as if they were so many rats, were evidently of the very dregs of the Commune, and looked half‐drunk with blood or wine, or both—it was hard to say—but there was no trace of manhood left upon the faces that gave a hope that mercy had still a lurking‐place in their hearts. One of the women suddenly started to her feet. “What!” she cried, “you call yourselves men, and you are going in cold blood to shoot unarmed women and boys? Shame on you for cowards! There is not a man amongst you!”

She snapped her fingers right into their faces with an impudence that was positively sublime. The cowards were taken aback. They looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

“_Sapristi!_ She’s right,” exclaimed one of them; “they’re not worth wasting our powder on!”

Like lightning, the women were on their feet, fraternizing with the men, embracing, shaking hands, and swearing fraternity in true communistic fashion. Mlle. de Lemaque alone stood aloof, a silent, terror‐stricken spectator of the scene.

“What have we here? _Une canaille d’aristocrate_, I’ll be bound! It’s written on her face,” said one of the ruffians, seizing her by the arm; “let us make away with her, comrades! It will be a good job for the Republic to rid it of one more of the lazy aristos that live by the _ouvrier’s_ meat.” There was a lull in the kissing and hand‐shaking, and they turned to stare at Aline. Her life hung by a thread. A timid word, a guilty look, and she was lost. But the soldier’s blood rose up in her; she bethought her of her _abus_, and _lancéd_ it.

“Lazy!” she cried; “I am a soldier’s daughter; my father fought for France, and left his children nothing but his sword; I work for my bread as hard as any of you!”

The effect was galvanic; they gathered around her, shouting, “Bravo! Give us your hand, citoyenne!”

And Aline gave it, and, like the statesman who thanked God he had a country to sell, she blessed him that she had a hand to give.

—Blood ran like water in the sewers of Paris for a few days, and then the troops were masters of the field, and order was restored—restored so far as to enable honest men to sleep in their beds at night.

Mme. de Chanoir was back again in the little saloon at No. 13, and diligently reading the newspaper aloud to a gentleman who was lying on the sofa near her; the _générale’s_ spine complaint had been radically cured by the Commune, and she sat erect in a chair now like other people. The invalid’s face and head were so elaborately bandaged that it was impossible to see what either were like, while his bodily proportions disappeared altogether under a voluminous travelling‐rug. He listened for some time without comment to the political tirade which Mme. de Chanoir was reading to him, an invective against France, and her soldiers, and her generals, and the nation at large—a sweeping anathema, in fact, of everything and everybody, till he could bear it no longer, and, sitting bolt upright, he exclaimed:

“Madame, the man who wrote that article is a traitor. France is greater to‐day in her unmerited misfortunes than she was in the apotheosis of her glory; she is more sublime in her widowed grief than her ignoble foe in his barbarous successes! She is, in fact, still France. The situation is compromised for a moment, but—”

“_Lâ, lâ, voyons!_” broke in Mme. Cléry, putting her head in at the door, and shaking the lid of a sauce‐pan at the invalid. “How is the _tisane_ to take effect if you will talk politics and put yourself into a rage about _la situation_! Mme. _la Générale_, make ’um keep still!”

The _générale_ thus adjured laid down the newspaper, and gently insisted on M. Dalibouze’s resuming his horizontal position on the couch. Aline was not there; she was off at her old work at the Ambulance again. The hospitals had been replenished to overflowing by the street‐fighting of the last week of the Commune, _la dénouement de la situation_, as M. Dalibouze called it, and nurses were in great demand. _Citoyen_ Varlay had not turned up since the night they had lost him in the crowd. The excitement and confusion which had reigned in the city ever since had made it difficult to set effective inquiries on foot, even if the sisters had been accurately informed regarding their quondam guest’s identity and circumstances, which they were not. All they knew of him was his appearance, his name, and his wound. This was too vague to assist much in the search. Mme. de Chanoir was sincerely sorry for it; she had been attracted at once by the frank bearing and courteous manners of the young _citoyen_; but his cool courage, his forgetfulness of himself for others, and the stoical contempt for bodily pain which he had displayed on the occasion of their flight, had kindled sympathy into admiration, and she spoke of him now as a hero. She spoke of him constantly at first, loudly lamenting his loss; for lost she believed him. He had, no doubt, been overpowered by the crowd; his disabled arm deprived him of half his strength, and, exhausted as he was by previous pain, and the violent effort to protect Aline in the struggle, he had probably fainted and been suffocated or crushed to death. This was the conclusion Mme. de Chanoir arrived at; but when she mentioned it to Aline, the deadly paleness that suddenly overspread the young girl’s features made her wish to recall her words, and from that out the name of the young soldier was never pronounced between the sisters.

Mme. Cléry had formed on her side an enthusiastic affection for him, and sincerely regretted his fate, but with a woman’s instinct she guessed that the one who regretted it most said least about it. She never mentioned _citoyen_ Varlay to Aline, but made up for the self‐denial by pouring out his praises and her own grief into the sympathizing ear of the _générale_.

“What a pretty couple they would have made!” said the old woman one morning, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron; “he was such a fine fellow, and so merry; he only wanted the _particule_ to make him perfect; but, after all, who knows? He may not have been as good as he looked. One can never trust those _parvenus_.”

A month passed. Mme. de Chanoir was alone one afternoon, when Mme. Cléry rushed into the room in a state of breathless excitement, her eyes literally dancing out of her head.

“Madame! madame! I guessed it! I was sure of it! I’m not that woman not to know a gentleman when I see him. I told madame he was! Let madame never say but I did!”

And having explained herself thus coherently between laughing and crying, she held out a card to her mistress.

Mme. de Chanoir read aloud:

LE BARON DE VARLAY,
_Avocat à la Cour de Cassation_.

Another month elapsed, and the great door of the Madeleine was opened for a double marriage. The first bridegroom was a tall, slight man, on whose face and figure the word _distingué_ was unmistakably stamped. The second was a plump, dapper little man, who, as he walked up the carpeted aisle of the church, seemed hardly to touch the ground, so elastic was his step; his countenance beamed, he was radiant, and it is hardly a figure of speech to say that he was buoyant with satisfaction. If he could have given utterance to his feelings, he would have said that “the situation was perfect, and absolutely nothing more could be desired.”

Mme. Cléry was present in her monumental cap, trimmed with Valenciennes lace brand‐new for the occasion, and a chintz gown with a peacock pattern on a pea‐green ground that would have lighted up a room without candles. She, too, looked the very personification of content. The first couple was all her heart could wish, and more than her wildest ambition had ever dreamed of for her favorite Aline. The second she had grown philosophically reconciled to. The marriage had one drawback, a grievous one, but the charwoman consoled herself with the reflection that Mme. de Chanoir might condone the _bourgeoisie_ of her new name, by signing herself:

FELICITE DALIBOUZE,
_Née_ de Lemaque.

Use And Abuse Of The Novel.

If the question were put to us—What class of books, viewed merely as reading, without tutelage or commentary of any kind, had the greatest influence in moulding and training the thoughts, aspirations, mode of life, of the mass of readers in these days?—we should, notwithstanding the slur and sneer which it is fashionable for clever writers to cast upon them, answer unhesitatingly—Novels.

This answer, we have no doubt, might shock the sensibilities of some of our readers, as it might very cordially agree with those of a not insignificant body of others. Without going into a dry analytical discussion of the _pros_ and _cons_ of the question, we will adopt the easier course of taking at the outset everything we want for granted, and allowing the truth of it to emanate from the body of our article; merely premising that, if it be true, Catholics have too much neglected, are far too weak in, this very important collateral branch of modern education.

Every age, every cycle, every period in the history of the world has its distinctive features, its proper individualities, its representative men, systems, or facts, strongly and clearly marked. Ours is the iron age. Our province is matter. Our tastes are material. The world seems, strangely enough, to be working backwards. We began with intellect: we finish with matter. The signs of the past are stamped with intellect or the intellectual. The development of the present is steam and electricity. If we ask the ages, What have you given us? the answer comes rolling down out of the dim mountain of the past: Homer, Phidias, Apelles; the alphabet, the geometrical figure, the science of numbers; Plato and Aristotle; Virgil and the historians; the practical greatness of Rome; the great faith of the new‐born middle ages; the Crusades, the Gothic order, the great masters, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton. We have our distinctive mark; the one indicated: the mastery over the material world. In the intellectual order, if we look for one, we must set it in the daily newspaper and the novel. These are the peculiar intellectual development of the XIXth century. Against the names of Homer, Plato, Æschylus, Virgil, Horace, Dante, Shakespeare, we pit those of Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Eugene Sue, George Sand, Victor Hugo, Dumas, Bulwer, Wilkie Collins, Miss Braddon, and her kin.

Surely this is rank heresy. Is not this the age of the rationalists, the free‐thinkers, “the swallowers of formula,” of Hegel, Cousin, Comte, Mill, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Thomas Carlyle? All these are nothing to the purpose. Thinkers, dreamers, idealists, doubters, belong to all ages. The novelists belong to ours alone, as surely as do the steamboat, the railway, the electric telegraph, the daily press, the penny post.

In saying this, we are not blind to the fact that novels and romances were written long before our century dawned. Cervantes and Le Sage are old enough; the Romaunts are older still. De Foe, Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, Richardson, are names of a bygone century. But novelism, to use the word in a new sense, considered as a science—for such it has practically become—as the most popular branch of literature known in these days, with men and women of genius devoted to its pursuit, with an ever‐increasing progeny spreading and growing, and stifling each other out of life, is an intellectual phase proper of to‐day.

Philosophic historians trace the decline of peoples and periods in the decline of their literature; in its tone, its style, its subjects, and manner of treatment. If this test be applied to us, what a show should we make! But happily the test, though in the main a true one, is not an infallible one. The facility opened up by the invention of printing for writers of every shade of opinion to express their thoughts upon any given subject at any length and in any quantity, provided only they pay the printer, must weaken to some extent the theory that writers are the exact reflex of the times and peoples for and among whom they write. Still there rests the significant fact that to‐day the novel, and particularly the worst form of it, is the _book of the period_; the most popular, widely read, best paid class of literature that we possess—a fact which tells its own tale of our intellectual and moral advance.