Chapter VIII: The Burning of Babylon--The Bitter End (2)

On the Friday evening, while Jean, having managed to get away from the Place du Carrousel, was on his way to the Rue des Orties, he witnessed, in the lower part of the Rue de Richelieu, a summary execution which filled him with horror. Two courts-martial had been sitting since the Wednesday, one at the Luxembourg palace, the other at the Châtelet theatre. The men condemned by the former tribunal were executed in the palace gardens, whilst those sentenced by the latter were dragged to the Lobau barracks, where firing parties, kept under arms throughout the day, shot them down almost at point-blank range, in the inner courtyard. And here especially did the butchery prove frightful: men, mere boys, condemned to death on the flimsiest evidence--because their hands were black with powder, or simply because they were wearing regulation shoes; innocent men, too, falsely denounced, victims of private malice shouting out explanations to which their military judges would not listen; droves of prisoners huddled together pell-mell in front of the gun-barrels, so many poor wretches brought in for execution at the same time, that the men of the firing-party had not bullets enough for all of them, and despatched those whom their discharge had merely wounded with the butt-ends of their guns. From morning till evening blood streamed and tumbrils carried away the corpses. And then, too, here and there through the conquered city, amid the frequent outbursts of vengeful fury, there were other executions in front of the barricades, against the blank walls of deserted streets, and on the steps of the public buildings.

It was under such circumstances that Jean saw some inhabitants of the neighbourhood dragging a woman and two men before the officers of a detachment of troops guarding the Théâtre Français. The civilian population indeed showed itself even more ferocious than the soldiers, and the newspapers that had resumed publication clamoured for extermination. The violent throng which Jean encountered was especially wrathful with the woman, a _pétroleuse_ it was said, one of those creatures the fear of whom now haunted the public imagination, who were accused of prowling about in the evening, slinking along past the houses of well-to-do people and flinging canfuls of flaming petroleum into the cellars. This one, so the crowd shouted, had been surprised whilst crouching before a vent-hole in the Rue St. Anne. And despite her protests and her sobs she was flung with the two men into the ditch of a barricade, which had not yet been filled up; and there, in that black hole, all three of them were shot like wolves caught in a trap. Promenaders stood by looking on; among them a lady leaning on her husband's arm, whilst a pastry-cook's boy, who was carrying a pie to some house in the neighbourhood, lingered whistling a hunting refrain.[63]

As Jean, with his heart frozen, was hastening on towards the Rue des Orties a sudden recollection dawned upon him. Was not that Chouteau, formerly of his squad in the 106th, whom he had seen watching that execution--clad in the honest white blouse of a workman and waving his arm in an approving fashion? Jean knew what part that bandit, traitor, robber, and murderer had played! For a moment he felt inclined to retrace his steps, denounce the scoundrel, and have him shot upon the corpses of the three others. How sad to think that the most guilty should ever escape punishment, and air their impunity in the sunlight, whilst thousands of innocents lie rotting in the ground!

Hearing his steps upon the stairs, Henriette came to meet him on the landing: 'Be prudent, he is in a state of terrible excitement to-day,' said she; 'the major has been again and gives me but little hope.' Bouroche indeed had shaken his head ominously, declaring that he was as yet unable to promise anything. Still, perhaps the sufferer's youth would triumph over the complications which he feared.

'Ah! it's you,' said Maurice feverishly as soon as he caught sight of Jean. 'I was waiting for you to come. What is going on? How do matters stand?' And sitting up in bed, with his back resting on the pillow, in front of the window which he had compelled his sister to re-open, he pointed to the city, which another furnace-like glow was now illumining: 'It's beginning again, eh? Paris is burning, and this time it will all burn.'

Since sunset, indeed, all the distant districts up the Seine had been illumined by the conflagration of the Grenier d'Abondance.[64] At the Tuileries and the Council of State, the roofs and ceilings must have been falling in, imparting fresh vigour to the braziers of smouldering beams, for here and there the fires burst forth again, and flakes and sparks arose. In this way, too, many houses where it was thought the fires had gone out suddenly began flaming again once more. For three days past, the night had no sooner gathered in, than the city kindled afresh; it seemed as though the darkness breathed upon the paling embers, fanning them again into flames, which it scattered to the four corners of the horizon. Ah! that hellish city, which began to redden as soon as the twilight came, burning and burning for seven days, illumining with its monstrous torches the nights of the Bloody Week! And on that Friday night, when the magazines of La Villette burned down, so intense was the light thrown over the immense city, that one might have thought it fired upon every side, invaded and submerged by the flames. Under the ensanguined sky, the lurid districts rolled their waves of shimmering roofs as far as the eye could see.

'The end has come,' repeated Maurice. 'Paris is burning!'

He excited himself with these words, repeating them a score of times in the febrile longing to talk that had come over him after the heavy somnolence which for three days had kept him almost mute. However, the sound of stifled sobbing made him turn his head.

'What! Is it you, little sister, you so brave? You are crying because I am about to die?'

She interrupted him, protesting: 'No, no, you will not die.'

'Yes, it is better so, it is necessary! Ah! nothing of much account will be lost in me. Before the war I caused you so much worry. I cost you dearly both in heart and purse. All those senseless things I was guilty of--all those acts of folly I committed and which would have brought me to a bad end, perhaps--who knows?--to imprisonment, the gutter----'

Again did she violently interrupt him: 'Be quiet, be quiet! You have atoned for it all!'

He became silent and reflected for a moment: 'Well, yes, I shall have atoned, perhaps--when I am dead. Ah! my old Jean, you all the same rendered us a first-rate service when you gave me that bayonet thrust----'

But Jean, whose eyes were swollen with tears, also protested: 'Don't say that. Do you want me to go and batter my brains out against a wall?'

In a burning voice, Maurice continued: 'Do you remember what you said to me after Sedan, that it sometimes benefited one to receive a good blow? And you added, too, that when there was any rottenness anywhere, when one had a diseased limb past healing, it was far better to lop it off with an axe than to die of it as one dies of the cholera. I have often thought of those words since then, since I have been alone, shut up in this mad, miserable Paris. And you see, it's I that am the rotten limb that you have lopped off----'

His excitement was increasing; he no longer listened to the entreaties of Henriette and Jean, whom he altogether terrified. Amid his fever he continued talking almost deliriously, with a profusion of symbolical terms and vivid imagery. It was the healthy portion of France, that which was endowed with common-sense and a well-balanced mind, the peasant portion, which had remained nearest to the soil, which was now suppressing the crazed, exasperated portion--that which the Empire had corrupted, which had been driven mad by enjoyment and senseless fancies; and it had been necessary that France should thus carve into her own flesh, thus mutilate herself, scarce knowing what she was doing. Yes, that bath of blood, of French blood, had been necessary; it was the abominable holocaust, the living sacrifice offered up amidst purifying fire. And now the Calvary was ascended, the most awful of agonies had been reached, the crucified nation was expiating its sins and was about to be born again.

'And you, my old friend Jean, you are the one with the simple mind and the stout heart. Go, go; take your pick and take your trowel, go and turn the soil over in the fields, and build the house anew! But as for me, you have done well to lop me off, since I was the ulcer clinging to your bones!'

He was again delirious, and wished to rise and lean out of the window. 'Paris is burning,' he gasped once more; 'nothing of it will remain. Ah! I desired it, longed for it; that flame which carries everything away, which heals everything--it is doing good work. Let me go down; let me help finish the work of humanity and liberty!'

Jean had the greatest difficulty in getting him back into bed again, whilst Henriette in tears spoke to him of their childhood, and entreated him, in the name of their affection, to be calm. And meantime the fiery glow above the vast city had spread even farther; the sea of flames was now gaining the dark, distant limits of the horizon, and the sky looked like the vaulted roof of some giant, red-hot oven. Meantime, athwart the lurid light of the fires, the dense smoke rising from the Ministry of Finances, which since two days previously had been stubbornly burning without a flame, still slowly travelled by like a sombre pall of mourning.

On the morrow, which was Saturday, a sudden improvement took place in Maurice's condition; he was much calmer, the fever had subsided, and Jean was greatly delighted to find Henriette smiling, and again dreaming of their intimacy in the happy future, which seemed still possible. Was Destiny indeed about to pardon? She spent her nights in watching; she did not stir from that room where her active Cinderella-like gentleness, her nimble, silent ministrations were like a continuous caress. And, that evening, Jean lingered in the company of his friends, with a pleasure that astonished him and made him tremble. The troops had captured Belleville and the Buttes-Chaumont during the day, so that the Père-Lachaise cemetery, transformed into an entrenched camp, was now the only point where the resistance continued. It seemed to Jean that the whole terrible business was now over, and he even asserted that no more prisoners were being shot. He merely alluded to the flocks of captives who were being despatched to Versailles. Passing along the quay that morning, he had met one of those convoys--men in blouses, men in coats, and men in their shirt-sleeves, with women of every age, some with the wrinkled, scraggy visages of furies, and others in the flower of their youth, girls barely fifteen, but all blended in a great, long, rolling wave of wretchedness and revolt, which the soldiers urged along in the bright sunlight, and which the good folks of Versailles, it was said, greeted with jeering and hooting, and belaboured with sticks and parasols.

On the Sunday, however, Jean was terrified. It was the last day of that hateful week. Since the triumphal rising of the sun on that warm, clear holiday morning he had felt the thrill of the supreme convulsion passing through the city. It was only now that people learned of the repeated massacres of the hostages--the archbishop, the priest of the Madeleine, and the others who had been shot at La Roquette on the Wednesday; the Dominican monks of Arcueil, who had been picked off on the run like hares on the Thursday; the other priests and the gendarmes, who, to the number of forty-seven, had been despatched on the ramparts near the Rue Haxo on the Friday; and now the fury of the reprisals had burst forth once more, and the troops were executing _en masse_ the last prisoners that they made. Throughout that beautiful Sunday, the sound of platoon firing rang out without cessation from the courtyard of the Lobau barracks, where all was blood and smoke and groaning. At La Roquette two hundred and twenty-seven poor wretches, captured here and there, were shot down in a heap. At the Père-Lachaise cemetery, bombarded for four days and at last conquered tomb by tomb, one hundred and forty-eight captives were flung against a wall, the plaster of which was bespattered with big tears of blood; and three of these men, who had been merely wounded by the discharge were promptly recaptured and finished off, when they endeavoured to escape. Among those twelve thousand unhappy beings who lost their lives through the Commune, how many innocents there were for each rogue who met his deserts! It was said that orders to stop the executions had come from Versailles; but the butchery still continued, and Thiers, amid all the pure glory he achieved by the Liberation of the Territory, was to become, for many, the legendary Assassin of Paris; whilst Marshal MacMahon, the beaten general of Frœschweiler, whose proclamation of victory was to be seen on every wall, was to pass into history as the Conqueror of Père-Lachaise. And Paris, strolling forth into the bright sunshine in its Sunday best, put on that day a festive air; dense crowds obstructed the reconquered streets, promenaders strolled cheerfully to view the smoking ruins, and mothers, holding their little children by the hand, stopped for a moment and listened with an expression of interest to the deadened reports of the firing at the Lobau barracks.

When, on the Sunday evening, just as daylight was waning, Jean climbed the dark staircase of the house in the Rue des Orties, a frightful presentiment was oppressing his heart.

He entered the room and at once saw that the inevitable end had come. Maurice lay dead upon the little bed, killed by hæmorrhage, as Major Bouroche had feared. The red farewell of the setting sun was stealing in by the open window, and two candles were already burning on the table near the head of the bed. And Henriette, on her knees, in her widow's robe which she had not quitted, was weeping there in silence.

Hearing the door open, she raised her head and shuddered as she saw Jean come in. He, in his despair, darted forward to take her hands that he might in a loving grasp mingle his own grief with hers. But he felt that the little hands were trembling, that all her quivering form was recoiling from him in revolt, that she was tearing herself away from him for ever. Was it not indeed all over between them now? Maurice's grave parted them like a bottomless abyss. And then he also could only fall upon his knees at the bedside, sobbing softly.

However, after a brief silence, Henriette spoke: 'I had turned my back,' she said, 'and was holding a bowl of broth, when all at once he gave a cry--I only had time to rush up to him and he died, calling me and calling you amid a stream of blood.'

Her brother, O God! Her fondly loved Maurice, adored prior to birth even, her second self, whom she had reared, saved, her sole affection since she had seen her poor Weiss fall riddled with bullets against that wall at Bazeilles! So War was taking her whole heart; she was to remain alone in the world, a widow, brotherless, with none to love her!

'Ah! good Lord!' cried Jean sobbing, 'it's my fault. My dear little fellow, for whom I would have laid down my life, and whom I killed like the brute I am! What will become of us? Can you _ever_ forgive me?'

And at that moment their eyes met and they were overwhelmed by that which they now, at last, could clearly read in them. All the past arose: the secluded little room at Remilly where they had spent such sad and yet such pleasant days. He bethought himself of that dream of his, that dream which had stolen upon him quite unconsciously, which even later had been barely outlined--life together over yonder, marriage, a little house, a field to till, which would suffice for the needs of a couple of modest, simple tastes. And now the dream had become an ardent desire, a penetrating conviction that with such a woman as she was, so loving and so industrious, life would have proved an earthly Paradise. And she who had had no inkling of this dream in the chaste, unconscious bestowal of her heart, could now clearly see and understand everything. That remote marriage, she herself had unknowingly desired it. The germinating seed had covertly sprouted, and now it was love that she felt for that man by the side of whom she had at first merely felt comforted. And their eyes told it to them, and they now loved openly, at the moment when they must part for ever! That frightful sacrifice had yet to be accomplished, the last rending, their happiness--still possible the day before--now crumbling to ashes like everything else, swept away by the stream of blood which had just carried off their brother.

With a long and painful effort of the knees Jean raised himself to his feet again. 'Farewell!' Henriette remained motionless on the tiled floor. 'Farewell!'

However, Jean had drawn near to Maurice, that he might look upon him for the last time. He gazed upon his lofty forehead, which seemed loftier still in death, his long thin face and his sightless eyes, once rather wild but whence all the madness had now departed. Jean longed to embrace his dear little fellow, as he had so often called him, but dared not. He beheld himself covered with his brother's blood, and recoiled before the horror of Destiny. Ah! what a death amid the Downfall of a world! On that last day, when nothing but a few shreds was left of the expiring Commune, this additional victim had been required! Thirsting for Justice, the poor fellow had departed amid the supreme convulsion of his great black dream: that grandiose, monstrous conception of the destruction of the old social system, of Paris burnt, of the soil turned up and purified so that there might spring from it the idyll of another Golden Age!

With his heart full of anguish Jean turned to the window and looked out on Paris. The beautiful day was serenely drawing to its close, and the sun, now on a level with the horizon, was illumining the city with a bright red glow. It looked not unlike a sun of blood poised upon a boundless sea. The panes of thousands of windows were scintillating as though on fire, inflamed by invisible bellows; the roofs glowed like beds of live coals; yellow walls, lofty rust-coloured monuments flared and sparkled in the evening air like brisk faggot fires. And was not this the final pyrotechnical sheaf, the gigantic purple 'bouquet'--all Paris burning like a giant hurdle, like some ancient forest of dead, dry trees, fleeting away into the heavens in soaring flames and sparks. The fires were burning still, volumes of ruddy smoke continued to rise, and a loud confused clamour could be heard, perhaps the last groans of the men shot down at the Lobau barracks, or perhaps the gay chatter of the women and the laughter of the children dining in the open air outside the wine-shops, after their pleasant promenade. From the pillaged houses and public buildings, from the torn-up streets, from the depths of all the havoc and suffering, the buzz and stir of life still sounded amidst the blaze of that regal sunset, whilst Paris was dwindling into embers.

And Jean then experienced an extraordinary sensation. It seemed to him even in the slowly declining light as though another aurora were already rising above the flaming city. And yet this was apparently the end of all, for Destiny had proved implacable, accumulating disaster upon disaster, such as no nation had ever before experienced: the continual defeats; the lost provinces; the milliards to be paid; the most frightful of civil wars drowned in a flood of gore; street after street in ruins and littered with corpses; no money left, no honour left, a whole world to be built afresh. And in it all he, for his own part, was losing his lacerated heart--no Maurice left, no Henriette, all the happy life that might have been swept away in the storm. And yet beyond the furnace, roaring still, in the depths of the great tranquil heavens so supremely limpid, perennial hope was rising once more. 'Twas the certainty of rejuvenescence, the rejuvenescence of eternal nature and of eternal humanity, the renewal promised unto those who hope and toil; the tree which throws out a new and powerful stem when the rotten branch, whose poisonous sap was blighting the leaves, has been lopped away.

'Farewell!' Jean repeated in a sob.

Henriette did not raise her head; her face was hidden by her joined hands: 'Farewell!'

The ravaged field was lying waste, the burnt house was level with the ground; and Jean, the most humble and the most woeful, went off marching towards the future--to the great and laborious task of building up a new France.

THE END

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

The foregoing translation of 'La Débâcle' has been subjected to some revision since its first issue in book form, many verbal alterations having been made throughout. Exception has been taken, however, to certain passages and expressions which I have not thought fit to modify. For instance, an English officer has pointed out to me that the description of the artillery practice on p. 261 can hardly be correct, as the French guns must have been fired by friction-tubes, and not by matches. If there be any error here, it is, however, M. Zola's and not mine, so that I have allowed the passage to remain as it originally stood. Objection has also been taken to the description of the execution of the captured Communists at the Lobau barracks (p. 526), and the expression 'shot down almost at point-blank range' has been severely criticised. It is certainly awkward, but the meaning I wished to convey was that a space of no more than seven or eight feet intervened between the rifles of the firing party and the men summarily sentenced to be shot. I may add that I personally witnessed some of these executions.

I should further like to say that I am extremely grateful to my critics and correspondents for their suggestions, several of which I have utilised in revising the translation for this new edition. The judgment passed by the Press on my work was on the whole extremely flattering, and no doubt largely conduced to the success of the book in this country. 'The Downfall' in its French and English forms has, I believe, become the most popular of all M. Zola's novels. No fewer than 176,000 copies of the original have been sold in the space of one year, yielding the author the handsome sum of 4,200_l._ in addition to the 1,600_l._ paid to him for the serial rights in France, and about 2,000_l._ derived from the rights of translation.

E. A. V.

_November_ 1893.

NOTES.

[1] Commanded by Marshal MacMahon.--_Trans._

[2] The hero of M. Zola's novel 'La Terre,' son of Antoine Macquart and brother of Gervaise, the heroine of 'L'Assommoir.'--_Trans._

[3] Weissenburg was stormed by the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia on August 4, when General Abel Douay was killed, and 800 of his troops were taken prisoners.--_Trans._

[4] This was Madame Marie Sass, the prima donna.--_Trans._

[5] It was stationed at Rome and Civita Vecchia for the defence of Pius IX.--_Trans._

[6] Commanded by the notorious General de Failly who had slaughtered the Garibaldians at Mentana three years previously, and who, as aide-de-camp to Napoleon III., had rendered the latter certain services of an equivocal character. This was proved by the secret papers found at the Tuileries after the Revolution and published by the Government of National Defence. To reward M. de Failly, the Emperor appointed him to the command of an army corps that he might have an opportunity of winning the _bâton_ of Marshal of France.--_Trans._

[7] The Plebiscitum of May 1870, when the policy of Napoleon III. was ratified by 7,350,000 votes against 1,500,000.--_Trans._

[8] August 6, 1870. The French, under MacMahon, defeated at Wœrth by the Crown Prince of Prussia with the loss of two eagles, six mitrailleuses, thirty cannon, and 6,000 prisoners. The French also defeated and driven back at Speichern by General Steinmetz on the same day.--_Trans._

[9] Under the military law then in force in France, a young man drawn at the conscription was not compelled to serve provided he could pay for a substitute. Loubet was one of the latter. A similar regulation obtains in our militia.--_Trans._

[10] See note 5.

[11] A nickname given to Napoleon III.; properly the name of the workman whose clothes he wore in escaping from the fort of Ham in 1846.--_Trans._

[12] Presided over by the renegade Emile Ollivier, who declared war with 'a light heart.'--_Trans._

[13] Formed by the mendacious Count de Palikao.--_Trans._

[14] A nickname given to Rouher on account of the large share of authority he exercised during many years of the Empire.--_Trans._

[15] The Guides were a regiment of light cavalry wearing a hussar style of uniform, but armed with carbines as well as sabres. The Cent-Gardes were the imperial bodyguard, picked men of the heavy cavalry, 100 strong as their name implied.--_Trans._

[16] Abel, not Félix Douay.--_Trans._

[17] The Germans brought about 40,000 men into action to overcome these 5,000 Frenchmen.--_Trans._

[18] The Chasseurs d'Afrique thus designate their squads, in imitation of the Arabs.--_Trans._

[19] On August 14 the Emperor left Metz, Bazaine's army commenced its retreat, and an indecisive action took place at Courcelles and Pange; on the 16th Prince Frederick Charles attacked Bazaine at Mars-la-Tour, and stopped his retreat; and on the 18th the French were again attacked at Gravelotte, and, after nine hours' fighting, driven back towards Metz.--_Trans._

[20] The mendacious War Minister, Count de Palikao, had the effrontery to assert before the Corps Législatif that this engagement had really taken place, whereas it had no existence, save in the imagination of some unscrupulous French journalist.--_Trans._

[21] The marching powers of the German infantry are well known. Before a Prussian recruit is entered in a foot regiment he is carefully examined in order to see whether his feet will bear the strain of long marches, and the greatest attention is paid to the fit of the excellent boots with which he is provided. In war time, moreover, whenever practicable, the knapsacks are conveyed in a cart attached to each company, in order to facilitate rapid motion. Such care is sure to reap its reward.--_Trans._

[22] Meaning the surgeon. French army surgeons are commonly designated by their military rank, without reference to their medical qualifications.--_Trans._

[23] In point of fact the Royal Prussian head quarters were at Bar-le-Duc on August 25, and it was there that the Crown Prince heard that MacMahon had made at first for Rheims, and then had struck off in a northerly direction. Count Moltke immediately decided that the army of the Crown Prince of Saxony, which on August 22 had started on its westward march from before Metz by Verdun and St. Menehould, should advance to meet MacMahon, and hold him in the Argonne; whilst the Crown Prince of Prussia's forces hastened northward by forced marches in view of sweeping round the right flank of the French, and hemming them in against the Belgian frontier. On August 26 the Saxons were marching for Stenay on the Meuse and the Prussians to Clermont-en-Argonne and Grand-Pré.--_Trans._

[24] In the engagements fought this day (August 30) between the Germans and De Failly's corps and other portions of MacMahon's army, 7,000 of the French were taken prisoners, and a quantity of their camp equipage and twenty guns were captured.--_Trans._

[25] Equivalent to our Charlie.

[26] Napoleon III. had very short legs, and on foot he looked comparatively insignificant. But the length of his trunk gave him a commanding presence when he was on horseback, and he then appeared taller than the majority of his officers.--_Trans._

[27] In order that the reader may form some idea of Bazeilles, it may be mentioned that in 1870 it was a large village of over 2,000 inhabitants. The great majority of these were weavers. There were a few cloth manufactories and fulleries there, together with some ironworks with furnaces, plate-rolling mills, etc. Balan, between Bazeilles and Sedan, had a population of 1,500; whilst Sedan itself counted over 13,000 inhabitants, but nearly half of these had fled to Belgium prior to the battle.--_Trans._

[28] This incident will not surprise those who remember how, during the bombardment of Paris, the urchins used to lie about waiting for the shells, and, after each explosion, pounce upon the splinters with the view of selling them as 'souvenirs of the siege.'--_Trans._

[29] The sergeants of the French Artillery are usually styled quartermasters. This was Honoré's rank. We have quartermaster sergeants in our own service.--_Trans._

[30] For enlightenment on this point and many others we must wait for the publication of Marshal MacMahon's memoirs, the portion of which dealing with the Franco-German war was written some years ago, three copies of it being then printed for private use.--_Trans._

[31] A celebrated French surgeon of the first half of the present century.--_Trans._

[32] Literally the Hollow of Givonne. It should not be confounded with Givonne proper, which lies some miles to the north.--_Trans._

[33] Licorice-root water, a favourite drink among Parisian children.--_Trans._

[34] The shooting of the civilian inhabitants who took part in defending the village was in accordance with the cruel, but recognised, usages of war; but for the deliberate burning of their bodies there can be no excuse. However, some English newspaper correspondents, on the German side, asserted at the time that the occurrence was accidental, both French and Bavarian corpses being burnt by the falling houses.--_Trans._

[35] M. Zola has omitted to mention that, whilst Count von Bismarck and the Emperor were together, they came out of the house and sat talking for a couple of hours in the open air, on chairs that were placed there for them. Meantime, the staff officers present remained lying on a patch of grass not far off. When Count von Bismarck had left him, the Emperor returned into the house, which curiously enough was tenanted not by a French family, but by that of a Luxemburg weaver, speaking both French and German. After considerable delay Napoleon was escorted to the château of Bellevue by a detachment of Prussian Cuirassiers.--_Trans._

[36] When we remember that the Marseillaise is typical of the French Revolution, which was the origin of the power of the Bonapartes, the significance of both these engravings, in the circumstances in which the Emperor found himself, was truly remarkable. He stood there, as it were, betwixt Alpha and Omega.--_Trans._

[37] The length of the French league is about 2 miles 6 furlongs.

[38] In time of peace a bottle of the common wine, here priced at seven francs, had cost about twelve sous, whilst the usual charge for a liqueur glass of so-called brandy was no more than three sous.--_Trans._

[39] It may be explained that M. Zola borrows this simile from the Roman ritual, and refers to the Stations of the Cross.--_Trans._

[40] M. Zola, as was to be expected, invariably alludes to these battles by the names adopted in France. In England, however, we generally employ the names which the Germans gave to these engagements. It should therefore be explained that the battle of Borny is also that of Courcelles; that Rézonville is also Mars-la-Tour; and St. Privât, Gravelotte. These battles have been referred to in the notes to chap. III., Part I (note 19).--_Trans._

[41] The 'combined army,' so the Germans called it.--_Trans._

[42] M. Zola's assertion that Bazaine made no attempt to break through the German lines (subsequent, of course, to Sept. 1) is not correct, for after a delay of five weeks he made one apparently serious effort--in the direction of Thionville, on Oct. 7. Then, however, he remained idle for twenty days and had to capitulate. The translator, who was present at the marshal's trial as an English newspaper correspondent, and heard and sifted all the evidence, has never entertained a doubt as to the justice of the court's finding. We shot Admiral Byng for dereliction of duty insignificant in comparison with the charges brought home to Bazaine. Certainly the latter had ability as a soldier; he had, partly by merit, but also considerably by favour, risen from the ranks to be a marshal of France; however, his private character was execrable, his greed well-nigh as insatiable as that of Marlborough, and his instinctive cruelty of disposition, as exemplified in Mexico, notorious. Like Marshals Magnan and St. Arnaud, he was a type of the unscrupulous military adventurer.--_Trans._

[43] The leaders of this rising (most of the phases of which were witnessed by the translator, who was then in Paris) were Gustave Flourens, Blanqui, and various officers of the National Guard who afterwards became members of the Commune. During the afternoon and evening M. Ernest Picard, General Trochu, and M. Jules Ferry managed to escape from the Hôtel-de-Ville and succeeded in delivering their colleagues of the Government at 3 a.m. on Nov. 1.--_Trans._

[44] The eleven fortified places here enumerated were garrisoned by over 45,000 men of the regular army, all of whom became prisoners of war.--_Trans._

[45] An allusion of course to Beaumarchais' immortal creation of the boy-lover.--_Trans._

[46] Gambetta was called a furious madman by Thiers.--_Trans._

[47] The engagement fought on Nov. 9 when D'Aurelle de Paladines with the army of the Loire defeated Von der Tann's Bavarians, with the result that the French for a brief period again secured possession of Orleans.--_Trans._

[48] Fought on December 22-23.--_Trans._

[49] One hundred and twenty millions sterling.

[50] Equivalent to rather more than 10½ ozs.--_Trans._

[51] During the last week in December the number of deaths from natural causes alone was already 3,280, and during the week ending January 21 it had risen to 4,465, an average of 115 per thousand! And at the same time the wounded were dying off 'like rotten sheep' in the ambulances.--_Trans._

[52] Neither the Rue des Orties nor the hill known as the Butte des Moulins now exists, both having been swept away to make room for the Avenue de l'Opéra, the lower portion of which runs across the spot where the Butte, with its few dingy, narrow streets formerly rose.--_Trans._

[53] Thiers did try to spare it, and Count von Bismarck in the Emperor William's name offered to forego the triumphal entry if Belfort were surrendered to Germany. But this proposal was rejected by Thiers, to his everlasting credit.--_Trans._

[54] This appellation was for brevity's sake bestowed on the Federated National Guards serving the Commune, whilst the Government troops were habitually called the Versaillese.--_Trans._

[55] The translator enabled several French friends to get out of Paris at this time by lending them, in turn, his English passport.--_Trans._

[56] This is not quite accurate. The excessive prudence of the French commanders at the outset was mainly due to the fear that their men might fraternise with the National Guards. This fear was altogether unfounded, as the troops, most of whom had gone through the war, were enraged with the Communists, whose rising had delayed their discharge. Nevertheless, the officers remembered what had happened at the outset of the insurrection, and in the earlier stages of the street-fighting seldom allowed their men to come within speaking distance of the National Guards. Officers of high rank admitted this to the translator at the time.--_Trans._

[57] The Magenta and Solferino campaign of 1859.--_Trans._

[58] Containing the throne-room and the Prince Imperial's apartments.--_Trans._

[59] The place of revelry where Napoleon III. and his wife, his mistresses, his sycophants, his corrupt ministers and his incompetent commanders, had danced and made merry for well-nigh twenty years.--_Trans._

[60] The State depository for the crown jewels, plate, works of art, valuable articles of furniture, &c., not used in the palaces.--_Trans._

[61] Hand-pumps were then used by the French firemen. I do not think there was a single steam fire-engine in Paris at that time. I well remember assisting in the pumping both in the Rue Royale and at the Palais de Justice, during those terrible last days of the Commune which M. Zola here so forcibly and accurately describes.--_Trans._

[62] I remember that both the Place de la Concorde and the Esplanade des Invalides were littered with these papers, some in fragments quite charred and black, and others but slightly burnt at the corners. Among the less damaged documents I noticed were some curious petitions of the old _émigrés_ of the Revolution beseeching Louis XVIII. to give them back their ancestral estates.--_Trans._

[63] Among those who witnessed this scene, or at all events one very similar on the same spot, were the translator's father and brother, Mr. Henry and Mr. Arthur Vizetelly.

[64] A vast magazine where cereals and oil, especially the latter, were stored in considerable quantities.--_Trans._