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)Leighton, John
History
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)
Leighton, John
Paris (France) -- History -- Commune, 1871
man of military experience—who does not know what profound experience
M. Lullier has acquired in his numerous campaigns—and yet you put him,
or rather throw him, into the Prefecture! This is bad, very bad. “The
Prefecture is transformed into a state prison, and the most rigorous
discipline is maintained.” It appears then that the Communal prison is
anything but a fool’s paradise. “However, in spite of everything, I and
my secretary managed to make our escape calmly ...”—the calm of the
high-minded—“from a cell where I was strictly guarded, to pass two
court-yards and a dozen or two of soldiers, to have three doors opened
for me while the sentinels presented arms as I passed ...” What a
wonderful escape: the adventures of Baron Munchausen are nothing to it.
What a fine chapter poor old Dumas might have made of it. The door of
the cell is passed under the very nose of the jailer, who has doubtless
been drugged with some narcotic, of which M. Lullier has learnt the
secret during his travels in the East Indies; the twelve guards in the
court-yards are seized one after another by the throat, thrown on the
ground, bound with cords, and prevented from giving the alarm by twelve
gags thrust into their twelve mouths; the three doors are opened by
three enormous false keys, the work of a member of the Commune,
locksmith by trade, who has remained faithful to the cause of M.
Lullier; and last, but not least, the sentinels, plunged in ecstasy at
the sight of the glorious fugitive, present arms. What a scene for a
melodrama! The most interesting figure, however, in my opinion, is the
secretary. I have the greatest respect for that secretary, who never
dreamt one instant of abandoning his master, and I can see him, while
Lullier is accomplishing his miracles, calmly writing in the midst of
the danger, with a firm hand, the faithful account of these immortal
adventures. “I have now,” continues the ex-prisoner of the
ex-Prefecture, “two hundred determined men, who serve me as a guard,
and three excellent revolvers, loaded, in my pocket. I had foolishly
remained too long without arms and without friends; now I am resolved
to blow the brains out of the first man who tries to arrest me!” I
heard a bourgeois who had read this exclaim, that he wished to Heaven
each member of the Commune would come to arrest him in turn. Oh!
blood-thirsty bourgeois! Then Lullier finishes up by declaring that he
scorns to hide, but continues to show himself freely and openly on the
boulevards. What a proud, what a noble nature! Oh, ye marionettes, ye
fantoccini! Yet let me not be unjust; I will try and believe in you
once more, in spite of armed requisitions, in spite of arrests, of
robberies—for there have been robberies in spite of your decrees—I will
try and believe that you have not only taken possession of the Hôtel de
Ville for the purpose of setting up a Punch and Judy show and playing
your sinister farces; I want to believe that you had and still have
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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