some actor, naturally
comic, says or does something funny, the audience laughs, and then
suddenly leaves off and looks more serious than before. Laughter seems
out of place. One does not know how to bear it; so one walks up and down
the corridors, then instead of returning to the play, wanders out again
on to the Boulevard. It is ten o'clock--dreadfully late. Many of the
cafes are already closed for the night. At Tortoni's and the Cafe
Anglais, not a glimmer is visible. The crowd has nearly disappeared.
Only a few officers remain, who have been drinking all the evening in an
_estaminet_. They call to each other to hurry on; perhaps one of them is
drunk, but even he is not amusing. Let us go home. Scarcely anyone is
left in the street. A bell is rung here and there, as the last of us
reach our respective homes.

That, Commune de Paris, is what you have made of Paris! The Prussians
came, Paris awaited them quietly with a smile; the shells fell on its
houses, it ate black bread, it waited hours in the cold to obtain an
ounce of horse-flesh or thirty pounds of green wood; it fought, but was
vanquished; it was told to surrender, and "it was given up," as they say
at the Hotel de Ville; and yet through all, Paris had not ceased to
smile. And this, they say, constitutes its greatness; it was the last
protestation against unmerited misfortunes; it was the remembrance of
having once been proud and happy, and the hope of becoming so again; it
was, in a word, Paris declaring it was Paris still. Well, what neither
defeats, nor famine, nor capitulation could do, thou hast done! And
accursed be thou, O Commune; for, as Macbeth murdered sleep, thou hast
murdered our smiles!

XC.

The roaring of cannon close at hand, the whizzing of shells, volleys of
musketry! I hear this in my sleep, and awake with a start. I dress and
go out. I am told the troops have come in. "How? where? when?" I ask of
the National Guards who come rushing down the street, crying out, "We
are betrayed!" They, however, know but very little. They have come from
the Trocadero, and have seen the red trousers of the soldiers in the
distance. Fighting is going on near the viaduct of Auteuil, at the Champ
de Mars. Did the assault take place last night or this morning? It is
quite impossible to obtain any reliable information. Some talk of a
civil engineer having made signals to the Versaillais; others say a
captain in the navy was the first to enter Paris.[98]