Paris under the Commune - The Seventy-Three Days of the Second Siege; with Numerous Illustrations, Sketches Taken on the Spot, and Portraits (from the Original Photographs) by John Leighton
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page 50 of 495 (10%)
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I. Listen! What does that mean? Is it a transient squall or the first gust of a tempest? Is it due to nature or to man's agency; is it an émeute or the advent of a revolution that is to overturn everything? Such were my reflections when awakened, on the 18th of March, 1871, at about four in the morning, by a noise due to the tramp of many feet. From my window, in the gloomy white fog, I could see detachments of soldiers walking under the walls, proceeding slowly, wrapped in their grey capotes; a soft drizzling rain falling at the time. Half awake, I descended to the street in time to interrogate two soldiers passing in the rear. "Where are you going?" asked I.--"We do not know," says one; "Report says we are going to Montmartre," adds the other.[5] They were really going to Montmartre. At five o'clock in the morning the 88th Regiment of the line occupied the top of the hill and the little streets leading to it, a place doubtless familiar to some of them, who on Sundays and fête days had clambered up the hill-sides in company with apple-faced rustics from the outskirts, and middle-class people of the quarter; taking part in the crowd on the Place Saint-Pierre, with its games and amusements, and "assisting," as they would say, at shooting in a barrel, admiring the ability of some, whilst reviling the stupidity of others; when they had a few sous in their pockets they would try their own skill at throwing big balls into the mouths of fantastic monsters, painted upon a square board, while their country friends nibbled at spice-nuts, and thought them delicious. But on this 18th of March morning there are no |
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