Part 30 (1/2)
Of course they could not but prevail in the end: France had had no time to prepare anew, to arm, and to recover herself after this disgraceful capitulation of the _honest man_ and his friend Bazaine; but still she resisted with terrible energy, and the Prussians at last became anxious for peace too, and wished for it, perhaps, even more than ourselves.
The proof of this is the numberless pet.i.tions of the Germans entreating King William to bombard Paris.
Humane Germans, fathers of families, pious men, seated quietly by their counters at Hamburg, Cologne, or Berlin, in every town and village of Germany, eating and drinking heartily, warming their fat legs before the fire during this winter of unexampled severity, cried to their king at Christmas time to bombard Paris, and set fire to the houses--to kill and burn fathers and mothers of families like themselves, but reduced to famine in their own dwellings!
Have any but the Germans ever done the like?
We too have besieged German towns, but never have pet.i.tions been sent up like this under the Republic, or under the Empire, to ask our soldiers to do more injury than war between brave men requires. And since that period we have never uselessly sh.e.l.led houses inhabited by inoffensive persons; and even when we have had to bombard walled towns, warning was given, as at Odessa and everywhere else, to give helpless people time to depart for the interior, if they did not want to run the risk of meeting with stray bullets; and permission was given to old men, women, and children to come out--a privilege never granted by the Prussians.
Ah! the French may not be so pious, so learned, and so good as the _good German people_, but they have better hearts and feelings of compa.s.sion; they have less of the Gospel upon their lips, but they have it in the bottoms of their souls. They are not hypocrites, and therefore we Alsacians and Lorrainers had rather remain French than belong to the _good German people_, and be like them.
Indignities without a precedent have been committed by them: ”Sh.e.l.l--bombard--burn, in the name of Heaven! Set fire everywhere with petroleum bombs!--You are too gracious a king!--Your scruples betray too much weakness for this Babylon: Bombard quick: Bombardments have succeeded better than anything else. Sire, your good and faithful people entreat you to bombard everything--leave nothing standing!”
Oh! scoundrels!--rascals!--if you have so often played the saint for fifty years; if you have talked so edifyingly about friends.h.i.+p, brotherhood, and the alliance of nations, it was because you did not then think yourselves the strongest; now that you think you are, you piously bombard women, old men, and children, in the name of the Saviour! Faugh! it is simply disgusting!
Every time that Cousin George read these a.s.sa.s.sins' pet.i.tions, he would spring off his chair and cry: ”Now I know what to think of fanatics of every religion. These men have no need to play the hypocrite: their religion does not oblige them to it. Well, they play the Jesuit for the love of it, better than we do by profession. May they be execrated and despised perpetually.”
Then he dilated with much warmth of feeling upon the kind reception which the Parisians, in former days, used to accord to the Germans, for forty years and more. Men who came to seek a livelihood among us, without a penny, lean, humble, half-clad, with a little bundle of old rags under their arms, asking for credit, even in George's and Marie Anne's little inn, for a basin of broth, a bit of meat, and a gla.s.s of wine, were kindly received; they were cheered up, and situations found for them: everybody was anxious to put them in the right way, to explain to them what they did not know. Soon they grew fat and flouris.h.i.+ng, and gained a.s.surance; by servility they would win the confidence of the head-clerk, who showed them all about the business; and then some fine morning it was noised about that the head-clerk was discharged and the German was in his place. He had had a private interview with the head partner, and had proposed to do the work for half the salary. Of course the partners are always glad to have good workmen, humble and obsequious, and, above all, cheap. George had witnessed this fifty times.
But people did not get angry; they would say,
”The poor fellow must earn a living somehow. The other is a Frenchman: he will very soon secure another place.”
And it was thus that the Germans slipped quietly into the shoes of those who had received them kindly and taught them their trade.
A few old clerks used to get angry; but they were always held to be in the wrong. ”_That good German_” was justified! He had not meddled; everything had gone on simply and naturally.
And twenty, thirty, fifty thousand Germans used thus to come and prosper in Paris; and then they would get a holiday to take a turn home and exhibit the flesh and fat they had gained, and their gold trinkets.
If they happened to be professors of languages or newspaper correspondents, they were sure to break out down there against the corruption of manners in this ”modern Babylon.” Great hulking fellows they were, with long hooded cloaks, and gold or silver spectacles, who had scandalized even their doorkeepers by bringing home night after night ”princesses” of Mabile and elsewhere, singing, drinking like a sponge, shaking all the house, and preventing people from sleeping; bringing, besides, other colleagues of the same stamp, and leading disgraceful lives!
But it is the fas.h.i.+on in Germany to cry out against ”modern Babylon.”
It flatters the secret envy of the Germans, and establishes the character of the speaker for seriousness, gravity, and influence; as a man worthy of every consideration, and who may hope--if his situation in Paris is permanent--for the hand of ”Herr Rector's” or ”Herr Doctor's” fair daughter: for in that country they are all doctors in something or other. He had gone off as cold and comfortless as the stones in the street; he would have become a school-master, or a small clerk at a couple of hundred thalers all his life, in old Germany. He weighed heavily upon his poor father, enc.u.mbered with a dozen children; but he had grown fat, well-feathered, and well-trained in Paris; and there he is now virtuously indignant against our own townswomen: against the degenerate race which has given him his daily bread, and pulled him out of the mire, instead of kicking him downstairs.
This German fellow used to be republican, socialist, communist, etc.
He had fled from Cologne, or elsewhere, in consequence of the events of 1848. Nothing in our opinion was sufficiently strong, decided, or advanced for him. He spouted about his sacrifices for the universal Republic, his terrible campaign in the Duchy of Baden against the Prussians, the loss of his place, of his property. We thought, what sufferings he has endured! Surely, the Germans are the first Democrats in the world!
But now this very same gentleman is the most faithful servant of his Majesty William, King of Prussia, Emperor of Germany. No doubt he talks at Berlin of the sacrifices which he has made to the n.o.ble cause of Germany, the battles he has fought in the public-houses amongst the broken bottles of beer which he has been swallowing by the dozen, to reclaim old Alsace, where lie deep the roots of the Germanic tongue.
He abounds in indignation against the ”modern Babylon;” his name stands at the head of the earliest pet.i.tions that Babylon should be burned, till nothing but ashes were left: that that race of madmen should be exterminated; and as during his residence in France he has rendered police services to Bismarck, he is pretty sure to obtain a post in Alsace-Lorraine, where all these old German spies are swooping down to Germanize us.
Thus spoke George, in his indignation; and Marie Anne, after listening to him, said: ”Ah, it is too true! Those men did deceive us; and they did not even pay their debts. Some fine morning, when their bill had run up, three-fourths of them would make a start, and they were never heard of again. I have never had any confidence in any of them, except the crossing-sweepers and the shoe-blacks: one knew where to find them; but as for the professors, the newspaper correspondents, the inventors, the book-worms--they have done us too many bad turns; and they were too overbearing. They were filled with hatred and envy of our nation.”
Since the departure of the Landwehr, we were able to speak more freely: those sulky eavesdroppers were no longer spying upon us, and we felt the relief.
Paris, as we saw in the _Independance_, was making sorties. The Gardes Mobiles and the National Guards were being drilled and becoming better skilled in the use of arms. Our sailors, in the forts, were admirable.
But the Germans grew stronger from day to day; they had brought such enormous guns--called Krupp's--that the railways were unable to bear them, the tunnels were not high enough to give them pa.s.sage, and the bridges gave way under their ponderous ma.s.s. This proves that if the bombardment had not yet commenced, in spite of the innumerable pet.i.tions of _the good Germans_, it was not for want of will on the part of his Majesty King William, Messieurs Moltke, Bismarck, and all those good men. Oh, no! our forts and our sorties hampered them a good deal in gaining their positions!