CHAPTER V

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 cafes.

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 25th, 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 Greve, 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.