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By Root 2061 0

excitement of this decisive struggle Maurice had not thought of Jean for two whole days. Similarly Jean, since he had entered Paris with his regiment to reinforce the Bruat division, had never remembered Maurice for a single moment. On the previous day he had been fighting on the Champ de Mars and on the Esplanade des Invalides. But today he had only left the Place du Palais-Bourbon at about noon to storm the barricades in that part of Paris as far as the rue des Saints-Pères. Placid though he was by nature, he had grown more and more angry in this fratricidal war, surrounded by comrades whose one great desire was to have a rest at last after so many months of fatigue. Prisoners sent back from Germany to be put into the army were in a constant state of fury with Paris, and on top of that there were the reports of the foul crimes of the Commune which incensed him by outraging his respect for property and desire for order. He had remained typical of the very heart of the nation, the sensible peasant, longing for peace so as to get back to work, earn some money and recover health and strength. In this increasing anger, which carried away even his most tender feelings, it was the fires more than anything else which had infuriated him. Burn down houses and public buildings just because you weren’t the strongest, no, that really was the end! Only criminals could be capable of such a thing. This man, whose heart had been sickened only the day before by the summary executions, was now beside himself, wild-eyed, yelling and laying about him.

Jean rushed madly out into the rue du Bac with the handful of men in his squad. At first he didn’t see anybody and thought the barricade had been abandoned. Then, between two sandbags, he saw a Communard still moving, rifle to shoulder and still firing into the rue de Lille. Carried on by the inexorable fury of destiny, he ran and pinned him to the barricade with a thrust of his bayonet.

Maurice had not had time to turn round. He screamed and looked up. The fires lit them both up with blinding light.

‘Oh Jean, Jean my dearest friend, is it you?’

Death was what he had wanted and sought with desperate impatience. But to die at the hand of his brother was too much – it spoiled death for him, poisoned it with unspeakable bitterness.

‘So it’s you, Jean, dear old Jean!’

Jean looked at him, horrified and suddenly sobered. They were alone together, the other soldiers having already gone off in pursuit of the runaways. Round them the fires flared up still more fiercely, windows belched forth great red flames and from inside came the noise of blazing ceilings coming down. Jean collapsed beside Maurice, sobbing, feeling him and trying to lift him and see if he could yet save him.

‘Oh, my dearest boy, my poor dear boy!’

8

WHEN at long last, after endless delays, the train from Sedan pulled up at the station of Saint-Denis about nine, the sky to the south was lit up by a great red glow, as though all Paris was on fire. As night had come on this glow had brightened until it filled the whole horizon, flecking with blood a flight of little clouds that lost themselves to the east in the deepening night.

Henriette was the first to jump down, for she was worried by these signs of a conflagration that the passengers had seen out of the windows of the train as it sped across the dark fields. In any case Prussian soldiers had taken over the station and were making everybody get out, while two of them on the arrival platform were calling out in guttural French:

‘Paris on fire… Train stops here, everybody out… Paris on fire, Paris on fire…’

It was a terrible shock for Henriette. Oh God, had she got here too late? As Maurice had not answered her last two letters she had been so mortally scared by the more and more alarming news from Paris that she had suddenly made up her mind to leave Remilly. For months she had been getting more miserable at Uncle Fouchard’s, the army of occupation had become more harsh and exacting as Paris prolonged its resistance; and now that the regiments were returning one by