บทที่ บทที่ 271 · ORIGINALITY OF PARIS
During the last two years, as we have said, Paris had witnessed more
than one insurrection. Nothing is, generally, more singularly calm than
the physiognomy of Paris during an uprising beyond the bounds of the
rebellious quarters. Paris very speedily accustoms herself to
anything,—it is only a riot,—and Paris has so many affairs on hand,
that she does not put herself out for so small a matter. These colossal
cities alone can offer such spectacles. These immense enclosures alone
can contain at the same time civil war and an odd and indescribable
tranquillity. Ordinarily, when an insurrection commences, when the
shop-keeper hears the drum, the call to arms, the general alarm, he
contents himself with the remark:—
“There appears to be a squabble in the Rue Saint-Martin.”
Or:—
“In the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.”
Often he adds carelessly:—
“Or somewhere in that direction.”
Later on, when the heart-rending and mournful hubbub of musketry and
firing by platoons becomes audible, the shopkeeper says:—
“It’s getting hot! Hullo, it’s getting hot!”
A moment later, the riot approaches and gains in force, he shuts up his
shop precipitately, hastily dons his uniform, that is to say, he places
his merchandise in safety and risks his own person.
Men fire in a square, in a passage, in a blind alley; they take and
re-take the barricade; blood flows, the grape-shot riddles the fronts
of the houses, the balls kill people in their beds, corpses encumber
the streets. A few streets away, the shock of billiard-balls can be
heard in the cafés.
The theatres open their doors and present vaudevilles; the curious
laugh and chat a couple of paces distant from these streets filled with
war. Hackney-carriages go their way; passers-by are going to a dinner
somewhere in town. Sometimes in the very quarter where the fighting is
going on.
In 1831, a fusillade was stopped to allow a wedding party to pass.
At the time of the insurrection of 1839, in the Rue Saint-Martin a
little, infirm old man, pushing a hand-cart surmounted by a tricolored
rag, in which he had carafes filled with some sort of liquid, went and
came from barricade to troops and from troops to the barricade,
offering his glasses of cocoa impartially,—now to the Government, now
to anarchy.
Nothing can be stranger; and this is the peculiar character of
uprisings in Paris, which cannot be found in any other capital. To this
end, two things are requisite, the size of Paris and its gayety. The
city of Voltaire and Napoleon is necessary.
On this occasion, however, in the resort to arms of June 5th, 1832, the
great city felt something which was, perhaps, stronger than itself. It
was afraid.
Closed doors, windows, and shutters were to be seen everywhere, in the
most distant and most “disinterested” quarters. The courageous took to
arms, the poltroons hid. The busy and heedless passer-by disappeared.
Many streets were empty at four o’clock in the morning.
Alarming details were hawked about, fatal news was disseminated,—that
_they_ were masters of the Bank;—that there were six hundred of them in
the Cloister of Saint-Merry alone, entrenched and embattled in the
church; that the line was not to be depended on; that Armand Carrel had
been to see Marshal Clausel and that the Marshal had said: “Get a
regiment first”; that Lafayette was ill, but that he had said to them,
nevertheless: “I am with you. I will follow you wherever there is room
for a chair”; that one must be on one’s guard; that at night there
would be people pillaging isolated dwellings in the deserted corners of
Paris (there the imagination of the police, that Anne Radcliffe mixed
up with the Government was recognizable); that a battery had been
established in the Rue Aubry le Boucher; that Lobau and Bugeaud were
putting their heads together, and that, at midnight, or at daybreak at
latest, four columns would march simultaneously on the centre of the
uprising, the first coming from the Bastille, the second from the Porte
Saint-Martin, the third from the Grève, the fourth from the Halles;
that perhaps, also, the troops would evacuate Paris and withdraw to the
Champ-de-Mars; that no one knew what would happen, but that this time,
it certainly was serious.
People busied themselves over Marshal Soult’s hesitations. Why did not
he attack at once? It is certain that he was profoundly absorbed. The
old lion seemed to scent an unknown monster in that gloom.
Evening came, the theatres did not open; the patrols circulated with an
air of irritation; passers-by were searched; suspicious persons were
arrested. By nine o’clock, more than eight hundred persons had been
arrested, the Prefecture of Police was encumbered with them, so was the
Conciergerie, so was La Force.
At the Conciergerie in particular, the long vault which is called the
Rue de Paris was littered with trusses of straw upon which lay a heap
of prisoners, whom the man of Lyons, Lagrange, harangued valiantly. All
that straw rustled by all these men, produced the sound of a heavy
shower. Elsewhere prisoners slept in the open air in the meadows, piled
on top of each other.
Anxiety reigned everywhere, and a certain tremor which was not habitual
with Paris.
People barricaded themselves in their houses; wives and mothers were
uneasy; nothing was to be heard but this: “Ah! my God! He has not come
home!” There was hardly even the distant rumble of a vehicle to be
heard.
People listened on their thresholds, to the rumors, the shouts, the
tumult, the dull and indistinct sounds, to the things that were said:
“It is cavalry,” or: “Those are the caissons galloping,” to the
trumpets, the drums, the firing, and, above all, to that lamentable
alarm peal from Saint-Merry.
They waited for the first cannon-shot. Men sprang up at the corners of
the streets and disappeared, shouting: “Go home!” And people made haste
to bolt their doors. They said: “How will all this end?” From moment to
moment, in proportion as the darkness descended, Paris seemed to take
on a more mournful hue from the formidable flaming of the revolt.
BOOK ELEVENTH—THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE