FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161  
162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   >>   >|  
d by some affrighted women behind a door, was shut in with one of the soldiers who had just taken the barricade. A moment afterwards the soldier and the Representative went out together. The Representatives could freely leave this first field of battle. At this solemn moment of the struggle a last glimmer of Justice and of Right still flickered, and military honesty recoiled with a sort of dread anxiety before the outrage upon which they were entering. There is the intoxication of good, and there is an intoxication of evil: this intoxication later on drowned the conscience of the Army. The French Army is not made to commit crimes. When the struggle became prolonged, and ferocious orders of the day had to be executed, the soldiers must have been maddened. They obeyed not coldly, which would have been monstrous, but with anger, and this History will invoke as their excuse; and with many, perhaps, despair was at the root of their anger. The fallen soldier had remained on the ground. It was Schoelcher who raised him. A few women, weeping, but brave, came out of a house. Some soldiers came up. They carried him, Schoelcher holding his head, first to a fruiterer's shop, then to the Ste. Marguerite Hospital, where they had already taken Baudin. He was a conscript. The ball had entered his side. Through his gray overcoat buttoned to the collar, could be seen a hole stained with blood. His head had sunk on his shoulder, his pale countenance, encircled by the chinstrap of his shako, had no longer any expression, the blood oozed out of his mouth. He seemed barely eighteen years old. Already a soldier and still a boy. He was dead. This poor soldier was the first victim of the _coup d'etat_. Baudin was the second. Before being a Republican Baudin had been a tutor. He came from that intelligent and brave race of schoolmasters ever persecuted, who have fallen from the Guizot Law into the Falloux Law, and from the Falloux Law into the Dupanloup Law. The crime of the schoolmaster is to hold a book open; that suffices, the Church condemns him. There is now, in France, in each village, a lighted torch--the schoolmaster--and a mouth which blows upon it--the cure. The schoolmasters of France, who knew how to die of hunger for Truth and for Science, were worthy that one of their race should be killed for Liberty. The first time that I saw Baudin was at the Assembly on January 13, 1850. I wished to speak against the Law of Instr
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161  
162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   171   172   173   174   175   176   177   178   179   180   181   182   183   184   185   186   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Baudin
 

soldier

 

intoxication

 

soldiers

 

Falloux

 
Schoelcher
 
France
 

fallen

 
schoolmaster
 

moment


struggle

 

schoolmasters

 
Before
 

victim

 
shoulder
 

countenance

 
encircled
 
stained
 

buttoned

 

collar


chinstrap

 

eighteen

 

barely

 

Already

 

Republican

 

longer

 

expression

 

Guizot

 

Science

 

worthy


killed

 
hunger
 

Liberty

 

wished

 

Assembly

 
January
 

overcoat

 
Dupanloup
 

persecuted

 
affrighted

intelligent
 

village

 
lighted
 
suffices
 

Church

 

condemns

 
barricade
 

drowned

 
conscience
 

entering