The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-WitnessHugo, Victor
History
The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-Witness
Hugo, Victor
France -- History -- 1789-1900
Must we continue? We hesitate. Dr. Piquet, a man of seventy, was killed
in his drawing-room by a ball in his stomach; the painter Jollivart, by
a ball in the forehead, before his easel, his brains bespattered his
painting. The English captain, William Jesse, narrowly escaped a ball
which pierced the ceiling above his head; in the library adjoining the
Magasins du Prophète, a father, mother, and two daughters were sabred.
Lefilleul, another bookseller, was shot in his shop on the Boulevard
Poissonnière; in the Rue Lepelletier, Boyer, a chemist, seated at his
counter, was "spitted" by the Lancers. A captain, killing all before
him, took by storm the house of the Grand Balcon. A servant was killed
in the shop of Brandus. Reybell through the volleys said to Sax, "And I
also am discoursing sweet music." The Café Leblond was given over to
pillage. Billecoq's establishment was bombarded to such a degree that it
had to be pulled down the next day. Before Jouvain's house lay a heap of
corpses, amongst them an old man with his umbrella, and a young man with
his eye-glass. The Hôtel de Castille, the Maison Dorée, the Petite
Jeannette, the Café de Paris, the Café Anglais became for three hours
the targets of the cannonade. Raquenault's house crumbled beneath the
shells; the bullets demolished the Montmartre Bazaar.
None escaped. The guns and pistols were fired at close quarters.
New Year's-day was not far off, some shops were full of New Year's
gifts. In the passage du Saumon, a child of thirteen, flying before the
platoon-firing, hid himself in one of these shops, beneath a heap of
toys. He was captured and killed. Those who killed him laughingly
widened his wounds with their swords. A woman told me, "The cries of the
poor little fellow could be heard all through the passage." Four men
were shot before the same shop. The officer said to them, "This will
teach you to loaf about." A fifth named Mailleret, who was left for dead,
was carried the next day with eleven wounds to the Charité. There he
died.
They fired into the cellars by the air-holes.
A workman, a currier, named Moulins, who had taken refuge in one of
these shot-riddled cellars, saw through the cellar air-hole a passer-by,
who had been wounded in the thigh by a bullet, sit down on the pavement
with the death rattle in his throat, and lean against a shop. Some
soldiers who heard this rattle ran up and finished off the wounded man
with bayonet thrusts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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