Other People's Money 18 – Gaboriau · Verses Across
Literature · Detective Fiction
Other People's Money 18Part 1 · Chapter 18
18
Literature · Detective Fiction
Other People's Money 18
Part 1 · Chapter 18
GaboriauEnglish
In fact, the news had just come, that the Western Railroad, the last one that had remained open, was now cut off.
Paris was invested; and so rapid had been the investment, that it could hardly be believed.
People went in crowds on all the culminating points, the hills of Montmartre, and the heights of the Trocadero. Telescopes had been erected there; and every one was anxious to scan the horizon, and look for the Prussians.
But nothing could be discovered. The distant fields retained their quiet and smiling aspect under the mild rays of the autumn sun.
So that it really required quite an effort of imagination to realize the sinister fact, to understand that Paris, with its two millions of inhabitants, was indeed cut off from the world and separated from the rest of France, by an insurmountable circle of steel.
Doubt, and something like a vague hope, could be traced in the tone of the people who met on the streets, saying,
“Well, it’s all over: we can’t leave any more. Letters, even, cannot pass. No more news, eh?”
But the next day, which was the 19th of September, the most incredulous were convinced.
For the first time Paris shuddered at the hoarse voice of the cannon, thundering on the heights of Chatillon. The siege of Paris, that siege without example in history, had commenced.
The life of the Favorals during these interminable days of anguish and suffering, was that of a hundred thousand other families.
Incorporated in the battalion of his ward, the cashier of the Mutual Credit went off two or three times a week, as well as all his neighbors, to mount guard on the ramparts,--a useless service perhaps, but which those that performed it did not look upon as such, --a very arduous service, at any rate, for poor merchants, accustomed to the comforts of their shops, or the quiet of their offices.
To be sure, there was nothing heroic in tramping through the mud, in receiving the rain or the snow upon the back, in sleeping on the ground or on dirty straw, in remaining on guard with the thermometer twenty degrees below the freezing-point. But people die of pleurisy quite as certainly as of a Prussian bullet; and many died of it.
Maxence showed himself but rarely at Rue St. Gilles: enlisted in a battalion of sharpshooters, he did duty at the advanced posts. And, as to Mme. Favoral and Mlle. Gilberte, they spent the day trying to get something to live on. Rising before daylight, through rain or snow, they took their stand before the butcher’s stall, and, after waiting for hours, received a small slice of horse-meat.
Alone in the evening, by the side of the hearth where a few pieces of green wood smoked without burning, they started at each of the distant reports of the cannon. At each detonation that shook the window-panes, Mme. Favoral thought that it was, perhaps, the one that had killed her son.
And Mlle. Gilberte was thinking of Marius de Tregars. The accursed days of November and December had come. There were constant rumors of bloody battles around Orleans. She imagined Marius, mortally wounded, expiring on the snow, alone, without help, and without a friend to receive his supreme will and his last breath.
One evening the vision was so clear, and the impression so strong, that she started up with a loud cry.
“What is it?” asked Mme. Favoral, alarmed. “What is the matter?”
With a little perspicacity, the worthy woman could easily have obtained her daughter’s secret; for Mlle. Gilberte was not in condition to deny anything. But she contented herself with an explanation which meant nothing, and had not a suspicion, when the girl answered with a forced smile,
“It’s nothing, dear mother, nothing but an absurd idea that crossed my mind.”
Strange to say, never had the cashier of the Mutual Credit been for his family what he was during these months of trials.
During the first weeks of the siege he had been anxious, agitated, nervous; he wandered through the house like a soul in trouble; he had moments of inconceivable prostration, during which tears could be seen rolling down upon his cheeks, and then fits of anger without motive.
But each day that elapsed had seemed to bring calm to his soul. Little by little, he had become to his wife so indulgent and so affectionate, that the poor helot felt her heart touched. He had for his daughter attentions which caused her to wonder.
Often, when the weather was fine, he took them out walking, leading them along the quays towards a part of the walls occupied by the battalion of their ward. Twice he took them to St. Onen, where the sharp-shooters were encamped to which Maxence belonged.
Another day he wished to take them to visit M. de Thaller’s house, of which he had charge. They refused, and instead of getting angry, as he certainly would have done formerly, he commenced describing to them the splendors of the apartments, the magnificent furniture, the carpets and the hangings, the paintings by the great masters, the objects of arts, the bronzes, in a word, all that dazzling luxury of which financiers make use, somewhat as hunters do of the mirror with which larks are caught.
Of business, nothing was ever said.
He went every morning as far as the office of the Mutual Credit; but, as he said, it was solely as a matter of form. Once in a long while, M. Saint Pavin and the younger Jottras paid a visit to the Rue St. Gilles. They had suspended,--the one the payments of his banking house; the other, the publication of “The Financial Pilot.”
But they were not idle for all that; and, in the midst of the public distress, they still managed to speculate upon something, no one knew what, and to realize profits.
They rallied pleasantly the fools who had faith in the defence, and imitated in the most laughable manner the appearance, under their soldier’s coat, of three or four of their friends who had joined the marching battalions. They boasted that they had no privations to endure, and always knew where to find the fresh butter wherewith to dress the large slices of beef which they possessed the art of finding. Mme. Favoral heard them laugh; and M. Saint Pavin, the manager of “The Financial Pilot,” exclaimed,
“Come, come! we would be fools to complain. It is a general liquidation, without risks and without costs.” Their mirth had something revolting in it; for it was now the last and most acute period of the siege.
At the beginning, the greatest optimists hardly thought that Paris could hold out longer than six weeks. And now the investment had lasted over four months. The population was reduced to nameless articles of food. The supply of bread had failed; the wounded, for lack of a little soup, died in the ambulances; old people and children perished by the hundred; on the left bank the shells came down thick and fast, the weather was intensely cold, and there was no more fuel.
And yet no one complained. From the midst of that population of two millions of inhabitants, not one voice rose to beg for their comfort, their health, their life even, at the cost of a capitulation.
Clear-sighted men had never hoped that Paris alone could compel the raising of the siege; but they thought, that by holding out, and keeping the Prussians under its walls, Paris would give to France time to rise, to organize armies, and to rush upon the enemy. There was the duty of Paris; and Paris was toiling to fulfil it to the utmost limits of possibility, reckoning as a victory each day that it gained.
Unfortunately, all this suffering was to be in vain. The fatal hour struck, when, supplies being exhausted, it became necessary to surrender. During three days the Prussians camped in the Champs Elysees, gazing with longing eyes upon that city, object of their most eager desires,--that Paris within which, victorious though they were, they had not dared to venture. Then, soon after, communications were reopened; and one morning, as he received a letter from Switzerland,
“It is from the Baron de Thaller!” exclaimed M. Favoral.
Exactly so. The manager of the Mutual Credit was a prudent man. Pleasantly situated in Switzerland, he was in nowise anxious to return to Paris before being quite certain that he had no risks to run.
Upon receiving M. Favoral’s assurances to that effect, he started; and, almost at the same time the elder Jottras and M. Costeclar made their appearance.
