460 



LITERATURE, CONTINENTAL, IN 1871. 



timental Journey " style. Fine touches, happy 

 hits, faithful pictures, some mannerism, neat 

 and rapid portraits of our uppermost men, give 

 to the book a peculiar flavor, an odd charac- 

 ter and some value. A "subjective" book 

 it is, as the Germans say; it does not deal 

 with philosophy proceeds by fits and starts, 

 obedient to the whim of the hour Communist 

 at the beginning, Thiersist in April, almost 

 Veuillotist in May, when half Paris is in 

 flames, when the deadly missiles are whizzing 

 about. Mendes writes cleverly and off-hand. 

 He affects no system and waves no banner. 

 He saunters through Paris, jumps over the 

 barricades, talks with countesses and petro- 

 leuses, weeps over little urchins killed in their 

 cradles by the bombs of the besieging army, 

 makes pithy remarks and takes sundry notes 

 about the many Bacchus and Venus worship- 

 pers sitting and carousing in the coffee and 

 wine shops. Ludovic Hans's book carries 

 more weight. Written in the same discursive 

 style, it bears the matter-of-fact stamp of a 

 more serious and earnestly satirical mind. The 

 steel of his irony is more piercing and the 

 arrow sharper. If you put together Hans's and 

 Mendes's two curious diaries, you will get at 

 the core of the late events ; not systematically 

 put together or marshalled in a regular order, 

 but illustrated and explained by two sensible 

 witnesses, of different temper and undeniable 

 veracity. 



In several other works, of no great merit, 

 some of them carelessly and ill written, some 

 others with malice and ill-will, you may find 

 lights, uncertain and flickering indeed, curious 

 however, and historically precious, concern- 

 ing the principal chiefs, actors, and composers 

 of the Communistic drama; such are "Les 

 Hommes de la Commune," "Le Pilori des 

 Communeux," "Raoul Rigault," "Les Chefs 

 de la Commune." 



A batch of other little books or pamphlets 

 written either by citizens or priests, arrested 

 comme otages, or by their jailers and captors, 

 shows what were the feelings of the whole 

 population, "bourgeois, savetiers, et gentils- 

 hommes." The book of Abbot Delmas, "La 

 Terreur dans 1'Eglise sous la Commune," is 

 the best among those documents. It has wit, 

 and even humor and good-nature. The author 

 narrates his peripeties without bitterness or 

 anger, and echoes with perfect faithfulness 

 and composure the speeches of the gamins 

 who had made themselves magistrates and 

 judges. He paints well and without com- 

 ment the general indifference, universal gid- 

 diness, strange torpor of the best and most 

 enlightened. Boys of sixteen were Tcepys 

 galonnes and arrest priests. They act a part 

 in a play which rather amuses them. They 

 are polite, well-spoken; sometimes well-be- 

 haved. They are players ; this one plays Ro- 

 bespierre, and this other Chaumette. As to 

 the lower persons ragamuffins, cobblers, nav- 

 vies, errand-boys, they do what the leaders 



bid them do; " Moutons de Panurge" "I 

 don't hate curates," says a sturdy grocer; 

 " my uncle is one, a very jolly good fellow " 

 and the grocer wields his chassepot, and fires 

 it, and kills two curates. "I will tell you," 

 says a little tailor, "I do not see any good 

 reason for maltreating the clergy; but the 

 people is master, the people is reasonable. 

 Public opinion is against the priests " and 

 saying so, he strikes a prisoner down. The 

 priest was not dead, but stunned; he rose 

 meekly, and said : " Citizen ! you did a bad 

 action; had every one of my captors struck 

 me so, I would be dead!" and the tailor: 

 " Why, you are right. What I did was not 

 well. But, upon my word, I thought it was 

 right ! " 



Another book, by Francis Wey, a man of 

 wit and erudition, an imperialist, deserves to 

 be especially mentioned. The title is " Chro- 

 nique du Siege (1870-'71)." No writer yet 

 saw so deeply and sharply through the Paris- 

 ian mind of our days. The book is almost un- 

 translatable ; Parisian to the core, essentially 

 French, with a tint of mannerism and pre~ 

 juges, of course. Whoever has not read the 

 "Chronicle" of Francis Wey is ignorant of 

 the profound diagnostics and the true causes 

 of the late political disease how the siege 

 by the Prussians, their shells and bombs, the 

 want of bread, the immense and unheard-of 

 exertion, the lassitude and disconsolate sense 

 of national shame, paved the way for the 

 deeds of the Commune. 



Veuillot's book "On the Two Sieges" is 

 the book of a Catholic Juvenal, caustic, un- 

 sparing, admirably unjust, cruelly true, merci- 

 less, lawless, epigrammatic, hyperbolic, some- 

 thing between Prophet Esdras and Martial, 

 between Juvenal, Junius, Churchill, and Ra- 

 belais. The style is terse, the fine old idiom 

 of the Satyre Menippee marvellously wielded 

 and violently hurled at the enemy's heads. 

 Veuillot is much read and much feared. 



For a compact, connected, and clear narra- 

 tive of the military movements and strategy 

 of Cluseret against Gallifet, and Dombrowsky 

 against MacMahon, you must turn to the 

 " Guerre des Communeux," by an officer of 

 the staff. It gives an interesting insight into 

 the moral and intellectual state of the army, 

 the tipsy bravery of its assailants, and the 

 whole plan happily combined by MacMahon 

 and Thiers. A vast semicircle was formed, 

 gradually narrowing, and from Bicetre to Nen- 

 illy slowly crushing, in the deadly embrace of 

 its closing curve, all the hamlets, villas, vil- 

 lages, and forts occupied by the Paris army. 

 The central point to be reached was the Place 

 de la Concorde, and thence to the Tuileries 

 and H6tel-de-Ville. Resistance was most vio- 

 lent and obstinate, at Asnieres and Neuilly on 

 one side of the half-curve, at Issy and Clamart 

 on the other. Hatred and fury raged more 

 intensely in the Parisian camp. Cold resolve 

 and a settled contempt, not charitable indeed, 



