Ludovic Halévy

The Insurgent

 

 

"Prisoner," said the President of the Council of War, "have you anything to add in your defence?"

 

"Yes, colonel," replied the prisoner. "The little lawyer you assigned me defended me according to his idea; I want to defend myself according to mine.

 

"My name is Martin (Lewis Joseph). I am fifty-five years old. My father was a locksmith. He had a little shop in the upper part of the Saint-Martin Quarter, and had a fair business. We just existed. I learned to read in the National, which was, I believe, the paper of M. Thiers.

 

"On the 27th of July, 1830, my father went out very early. That evening, at ten o'clock, he was brought back to us on a litter, dying. He had received a bullet in the chest. Beside him on the litter was his musket.

 

"'Take it,' he said to me. 'I give it to you; and every time there is a riot, be against the Government—always, always, always!'

 

"An hour later he was dead. I went out in the night. At the first barricade I stopped and offered myself; a man examined me by the light of a lantern. 'A child!' he exclaimed. I was not fifteen. I was very slight and undersized. I answered: 'A child, maybe, but my father was killed two hours ago. He gave me his musket. Teach me how to use it.'

 

"From that moment I became what I have always been for forty years, an insurgent! If I fought during the Commune, it was not because I was forced, nor for the thirty sous; it was from taste, from pleasure, from habit, from routine.

 

"In 1830 I behaved rather bravely at the attack on the Louvre. The urchin who first scaled the gate beneath the bullets of the Swiss was I. I received the Medal of July. But the shopkeepers gave us a king. It had all to be done over. I joined a secret society; I learned to melt bullets, to make powder—in short, I completed my education, and I waited.

 

"I had to wait nearly two years. On June 5, 1832, at noon, in front of the Madeleine, I was the first to unharness one of the horses of the hearse of General Lamarque. I passed the day in shouting, 'Long live Lafayette!' and I passed the night in making barricades. The next morning we were attacked by the regulars. In the evening, towards four o'clock, we were blocked, cannonaded, swept with grape-shot, and crushed back into the Church of Saint-Méry. I had a bullet and three bayonet-stabs in my body when I was picked up by the soldiers from the stone floor of a little chapel to the left—the Chapel of St. John. I have often gone back to that little chapel—not to pray, I wasn't brought up with such ideas—but to see the stains of my blood which still remain on the stones.

 

"On account of my youth I received a ten-year sentence. I was sent to Mont Saint-Michel. That was why I didn't take part in the riots of 1834. If I had been free I should have fought in Rue Transnonian as I had fought in Rue Saint-Méry—'against the Government—always, always, always!' It was my father's last word; it was my gospel, my religion. I call that my catechism in six words. I came out of prison in 1842, and I again began to wait.

 

"The revolution of '48 was made without effort. The shopkeepers were stupid and cowardly. They were neither for nor against us. The municipal guards alone defended themselves. We had a little trouble in taking the guard-house of the Château d'Eau. On the evening of February 24th I remained three or four hours on the square before the Hôtel de Ville. The members of the Provisional Government, one after another, made speeches to us—said that we were heroes, great citizens, the foremost nation in the world, that we had broken the bonds of tyranny. After having fed us on these fine speeches, they gave us a republic which wasn't any better than the monarchy we had overthrown.

 

"In June I took up my musket again, but on that occasion we were not successful. I was arrested, sentenced, and sent to Cayenne. It seems that I behaved well there. One day I saved a captain of marines from drowning. Observe that I should most certainly have shot at that captain if he had been on one side of a barricade and I on the other; but a man who is drowning, dying—in short, I received my pardon, I came back to France in 1852, after the Coup d'État; I had missed the insurrection of 1851.

 

"At Cayenne I had made friends with a tailor named Barnard. Six months after my departure for France, Barnard died. I went to see his widow. She was in want. I married her. We had a son in 1854—you will understand presently why I speak to you of my wife and my son. But you must already suspect that an insurgent who marries the widow of an insurgent does not have royalist children.

 

"Under the Empire there was nothing to do. The police were very strict. We were dispersed, disarmed. I worked, I brought up my son with the ideas that my father had given me. The wait was long. Rochefort, Gambetta, public reunions—all that put us in motion again.

 

"On the first important occasion I showed myself. I was one of that little band who assaulted the barracks of the firemen of Villette. Only there we made a mistake. We killed a fireman, unnecessarily, I was caught and thrown into prison, but the Government of the Fourth of September liberated us, from which I concluded that we did right to attack those barracks and kill the fireman, even unnecessarily.

 

"The siege began. I immediately opposed the Government, on the side of the Commune. I marched against the Hôtel de Ville on the 31st of October and on the 22d of January. I liked revolt for revolt's sake. An insurgent—I told you in the beginning I am an insurgent. I cannot hear a discussion without taking part, nor see a riot without running to it, nor a barricade without bringing my paving-stone. It's in the blood.

 

"And then, besides, I wasn't quite ignorant, and I said to myself, It is only necessary to succeed thoroughly some day, and then, in our turn, we shall be the Government, and it will be better than with all these lawyers, who place themselves behind us during the battle, and pass ahead after the victory.'

 

"The 18th of March came, and naturally I was in it. I shouted 'Hurrah for the regulars!' I fraternized with the army. I went to the Hôtel de Ville. I found a government already at work. It was absolutely the same as on the 24th of February.

 

"Now you tell me that that insurrection was not lawful. That is possible, but I don't quite see why not. I begin to get muddled—about these insurrections which are a duty and those which are a crime! I do not clearly see the difference.

 

"I shot at the Versailles troops in 1871, as I had shot at the royal guard in 1830 and on the municipals in 1848. After 1830 I received the Medal of July; after 1848 the compliments of M. de Lamartine. This time I am going to get transportation or death.

 

"There are insurrections which please you. You raise columns to them, you give their names to streets, you give yourselves the offices, the promotions, and the big salaries, and we folks, who made the revolution, you call us great citizens, heroes, a nation of brave men, etc. That's the coin we are paid with.

 

"And then there are other insurrections which displease you. As a result, transportation, death. Well, you see, if you hadn't complimented us so after the first ones, perhaps we wouldn't have made the last. If you hadn't raised the Column of July at the entrance of our neighborhood, we wouldn't perhaps have gone and demolished the Vendôme Column in your neighborhood. Those two penny trumpets didn't agree. One had to upset the other, and that is what happened.

 

"Now, why I threw away my captain's uniform on the 26th of May, why I was in a blouse when I was arrested, I will tell you. When I learned that the gentlemen of the Commune, instead of coming to shoot with us behind the barricades, were at the Hôtel de Ville distributing among themselves thousand-franc notes, were shaving their beards, dyeing their hair, and hiding themselves in caves, I did not wish to keep the shoulder-straps they had given me.

 

"Besides, shoulder-straps embarrassed me. 'Captain Martin' sounded idiotic. 'Insurgent Martin'—why, that's well and good. I wanted to end as I had begun, die as my father had died, as a rioter in a riot, as a barricader behind a barricade.

 

"I could not get killed. I got caught. I belong to you. But I wish to beg a favor of you. I have a son, a child of seventeen; he is at Cherbourg, on the hulks. He fought, it is true, and he does not deny it; but it is I who put a musket in his hand, it is I who told him that his duty was there. He listened to me. He obeyed me. That is all his crime. Do not sentence him too harshly.

 

"As for me, you have got me; do not let me go, that's the advice I give you. I am too old to mend; and then, what can you expect? Nothing can change it. I was born on the wrong side of the barricade."