The Parisians, Book 12.

the 30th of November, to be followed by the terrible engagemen

's proclamation of the 4th, to explain the recrossing of the Marne, and the abandonment of the positions conquered, but not altogether dispelled till von Moltke's letter to Trochu on the 5th announcing the defeat of the army of the Loire and the recapture of Or

ens with the last

n freely opened, whether to the families exiled from the suburbs, or in supplement to the hospitals. The amount of relief they afforded unostentatiously, out of means that shared the general failure of accustomed resource, when the famine commenced, would be scarcely credible if stated. Admirable, too, were the fortitude and resignation of the genuine Parisian bourgeoisie,-the thrifty tradesfolk and small rentiers,-that class in which, to judge of its timidity when opposed to a mob, courage is not the most conspicuous virtue. Courage became so now-courage to bear hourly increasing privation, and to suppress every murmur of suffering that would discredit their patriotism, and invoke "peace at any price." It was on this class that t

human nature were most touchingly manifest- the women and the priesthood, including in the lat

stments being in the hands of Duplessis, the most trustworthy of friends, the most upright of men, but who was in Bretagne, and could not be got at. And the time had come at Paris when you could not get trust for a pound of horse-flesh, or a daily supply of fuel. And Frederic Lemercier, who had long since spent the 2000 francs borrowed from Alain (not ignobly, but somewhat ostentatiously, in feasting any acquaintance who wanted a feast), and who had sold to any one who could afford to speculate on such dainty luxuries,-clocks, bronzes, amber-mounted pipes,-all that had made the envied garniture of his bachelor's apartment-Frederic Lemercier was, so far as the task of keeping body and soul together, worse off than any English pauper who can apply to the Union. Of course he might have claimed his half-pay of thirty sous as a National Guard. But he little

we are! Under the present Government we are never warned of anything disagreeable that can happen; we are only told of it when it has happened, and then as rather pleasant than otherwise. I get up. I meet a civil gendarme. 'What is that firing? which of ou

of Avron would not fall on the pavements of Paris, laughed and joked. But in front, with no sign of terror, no sound of laughter, s

ide Lemercier. "Look at those women, a

turn a defiant crest upon the rebuker. He was rather startled to see the tall martial form at his side, and to recognise Victor de Mauleon. "Don't you think, M. Le

self with glory on the great days of Villiers and Champigny,-you in whose praise even th

ngled remains of life in the ambulances. And the new recruits with which I took the field on the 21s

blicly shamed some of these recruits, and declared that

front of a large cafe, from the interior of which came the sound of loud bravos and clappings of hands. Lemercier's curiosity was excited. "For what can be that applause?" he sai

ust my eyes? Surely that is the once su

sidering it is not her vocation. She has given us extracts from Victor Hugo and De Musset: and crowned all with a patriotic hymn by Gustave Rameau,-her old lover, if gossip be true." Meanwhile De Ma

say that poor fair cre

hereditary right to be a good dancer, as the daughter of a once more famous orn

e married a M. Survil

the hatred of Paris by t

I see no likeness to h

call hersel

ic, "a melancholy

a rich protector, who had influence to get her an appointment in the ballet: and there she di

quitted the platform, and is coming this way, evidently to speak

cy as the girl now approached him. "Bonjour, M. Frederic!

we insisted on destroying under the Empire which we destroyed for listening to us! But

e replied, "Do you rea

sincerely if I lived i

as

arm, and said in suppr

tav

have no idea. Do yo

o recite them. I am engaged at this cafe-you will find me here the same hour every day, in case-in case-You are good and kind, and will come and tell me that Gustave is well and happy even

tears. Famished though he was, he could not,

oodness, Mademoiselle!

't want aid. I am

see Gustave, you

t girl repeat the sort of bombast the poets indite nowadays. It is fustia

incomprehensible thing is a woman! how more incomprehensible still is a woman's love! Ah, p

e bakery-a child clinging to her robe. A pale grief- worn woman, still young, bu

ame Monnier," said

ar ago, she would have blushed if addressed

llow accents broken by

sie

on, while the eyes of other women in the procession stared at h

re are but few children alive in my street now. God

or. The mortality among the little ones, especially in the quartier occupied by the working classes, had of late b

No doubt he is a Nationa

d. She was stifling a sob. Till then her eyes s

inued Victor, pityingl

health; thank you

debt for work, and I am ashamed to say that it quite escaped my memory in these terrible events. Allow me, Madame, to pay it to you," and he thrust

y when the woman c

ink of any one who owed him money. It must have been before that dreadful strike, the beginning of

or the master who did not f

o all that has changed the best workman, the kind

man?" asked De Mau

f you were a poor man,

mean the same person, Monnier cannot have met him

him again, tell him-tell him not to complete his wrong-not to bring murder on Armand's soul. For Armand isn't what he was-and has become, oh, so violent! I dare not take this mone

mong such ones his name stood very high. Not only his bravery in the recent sorties had been signal, but a strong belief in his military talents had become prevalent; and conjoined with the name he had before established as a political writer, and the remembrance of the vigour and sagacity with which he had opposed the war, he seemed certain

ok his way alone towards the ramparts. The day was

Victor had shamed and dismissed for mutiny and cowardice. He made a drunken plunge at his former chief, shouting, "A bas Pai-isto! Comrades, this is the coquin De Mauleon who is paid by the Prussians for getting us killed: a la lanterne!" "A la lanterne!" stammered and hiccupped others of the group; but they did not stir to execute their threat. Dimly seen as the stern face and sinewy form of the threatened man was by their drowsied eyes, the name of De Mauleon, the man without fear of a foe, and without ruth for a mutineer, sufficed to protect him

er his breath,-in that sort of stage whisper which is the natural utterance

I am Victor

any of the National Guard on the 30th

w

an officer belonging to another c

and seemed a ringleader of other runaways; and in so doi

officers that he was to be led to an idle slaughter. Idle-I say idle. What was France the better, how was Paris the safer, fo

would argue with you that question. But you no doubt a

him: my brother-the sagest head in Paris. If I had liste

brother; but if he had been mi

im in the face with wild stony eyes. "I recollect that voice! Yet- yet-you

wine still clouded his mind, but rays of intelligence broke through

st me as Armand Monnier-pra

oler moments, you will see that if patriots excuse Brutus for first dishonouring and then executing his own son, an officer charged to defend his country may be surely pardoned for

now it. Every sound be

d

gainst the wall,-had you known the man two years ago, you would have been a brute if you felt disgust. You could only have felt that profound compassion with which we gaze on a great royalty fallen. For the grandest of all royalties is that which takes its crown from Nature, needing no accident of birth. And Nature made the mi

faults. It falls when, ceasing to be royal, it becomes subservient to bad advisers. And what bad advis

a dangerous thing," say

had picked up out of books that warred with the great foundations of existing society, had originated in ill advices. A man stored with much knowledge would never have let Madame de Grantmesnil's denunciations of marriage rites, or Louis Blane's vindication of Robespierre as the representative of the working against the middle class, influence his practical life. He would have assessed such opinions at their real worth; and whatever that worth might seem to him, would not to such opinions have committed the conduct of his life. Opinion is not fateful: cond

sts on being dupe and victim. He, this great king of labour, crowned by Nature, and cursed with that degree of little knowledge which does not comprehend how much more is required before a schoolboy would admit it to be knowledge at all,-he rushes into the maddest of all speculations-that of the artisan with little knowledge and enormous faith-that which intrusts the safety and repose and dignity of life to some ambitious adventurer, who uses his warm heart for the adventurer's frigid purpose, much as the lawyer-government of September used the Communists,-much as, in ev