The Memoirs of Victor Hugo - Victor Hugo (free reads .txt) 📗

going.”

I authorise another issue of 3,000 copies of Les Ch�timents, which will bring the total for Paris up to 22,000.

 

December 20.—Captain Breton, of the Garde Mobile, who has been cashiered on the charge of being a coward, brought against him by his lieutenant-colonel, demands a court-martial, but first of all to be sent to the firing line. His company leaves tomorrow morning. He begs me to obtain for him from the Minister of War permission to go and get himself killed. I have written to General Le Fl� about him. It is likely that he will take part in tomorrow’s battle.

 

December 21.—At 3 o’clock this morning I heard the bugles of the troops marching to battle. When will my turn come?

 

December 22.—Yesterday was a good day. The action continues. The thunder of cannon can be heard to the east and west.

Little Jeanne begins to talk at length and very expressively. But it is impossible to understand a word she says. She laughs.

Leopold has sent me thirteen fresh eggs, which I will reserve for little Georges and little Jeanne.

Louis Blanc came to dine with me. He came on behalf of Edmond Adam, Louis Jourdan, Cernuschi and others to tell me that he and I must go to Trochu and summon him to save Paris or resign. I refused. I should be posing as an arbiter of the situation and at the same time hamper a battle begun and which may be a successful one. Louis Blanc was of my way of thinking, as were also Meurice, Vacquerie and my sons, who dined with us.

 

December 23.—Henri Rochefort came to dine with me. I had not seen him since August of last year, when we were in Brussels. Georges did not recognise his godfather. I was very cordial. I like him very much. He has great talent and great courage. The dinner was a very merry one, although we are all threatened with incarceration in a Prussian fortress if Paris is captured. After Guernsey, Spandau. So be it.

I bought for 19 francs at the Magasins du Louvre a soldier’s cape with hood, to wear on the ramparts.

My house continues to be crowded with visitors. To-day a painter named Le Genissel called. He reminded me that I saved him from the galleys in 1848. He was one of the insurgents of June.

Heavy cannonade during the night. A battle is in preparation.

 

December 24.—It is freezing. Ice floes are floating down the Seine.

Paris only eats brown bread now.

 

December 25.—Heavy cannonade all night.

An item of news of present-day Paris: A basket of oysters has just reached the city. It sold for 750 francs.

At a bazar in aid of the poor at which Alice and Mme. Meurice acted as vendors, a young turkey fetched 250 francs.

The Seine is freezing over.

 

December 26.—Louis Blanc called, then M. Floquet. They urge me to summon the Government to do something or resign. Again I refuse.

M. Louis Koch paid 25 francs for a copy of the Rappel at the bazar in aid of the poor. The copy of Les Ch�timents was purchased by M. Cernuschi for 300 francs.

 

December 27.—Violent cannonade this morning. The firing of this morning was an attack by the Prussians. A good sign. Waiting annoys them. Us, too. They threw nineteen shells, which killed nobody, into the Fort of Montrouge.

Mme. Ugalde dined with us and sang “Patria.” I escorted Mme. Ugalde to her home in the Rue de Chabanais, then returned to bed.

The concierge said to me:

“Monsieur, they say that bombs will fall in this neighbourhood tonight.”

“That is all right,” I replied. “I am expecting one.”

 

December 29.—Heavy firing all night. The Prussians continue their attack.

Th�ophile Gautier has a horse. This horse was requisitioned. It was wanted for food. Gautier wrote me begging me save the animal. I asked the Minister to grant his request.

I saved the horse.

It is unfortunately true that Dumas is dead. This has been ascertained through the German newspapers. He died on December 5 at the home of his son at Puys, near Dieppe.

I am being urged more strongly than ever, to enter the Government. The Minister of Justice, M. Emmanuel Arago, called and stopped to dinner. We talked. Louis Blanc dropped in after dinner. I persist in my refusal.

Besides Emmanuel Arago and the friends who usually dine with me on Thursdays, Rochefort and Blum came. I invited them to come every Thursday if we have many more Thursdays to live. At desert I drank Rochefort’s health.

The cannonade is increasing. The plateau of Avron had to be evacuated.

 

December 31.—D’Alton-Sh�e paid a visit to me this morning. It appears that General Ducros wants to see me.

Within three days the Prussians have sent us 12,000 shells.

Yesterday I ate some rat, and then hiccoughed the following quatrain:

 

O mesdames les h�taires Dans vos greniers, je me nourris: Moi qui mourais de vos sourires, Je vais vivre de vos souris.

 

After next week there will be no more washing done in Paris, because there is no more coal.

Lieutenant Farcy, commander of the gunboat, dined with me.

It is bitterly cold. For three days I have worn my cloak and hood whenever I have had to go out.

A doll for little Jeanne. A basketful of toys for Georges.

Shells have begun to demolish the Fort of Rosny. The first shell has fallen in the city itself. The Prussians to-day fired 6,000 shells at us.

In the Fort of Rosny a sailor working at the gabions was carrying a sack of earth. A shell knocked it off his shoulder. “Much obliged,” commented the sailor, “but I wasn’t tired.”

Alexandre Dumas died on December 5. On looking over my notebook I see that it was on December 5 that a large hearse with an “H” on it passed before me in the Rue Frochot.

We have no longer even horse to eat. *Perhaps* it is dog? Maybe it is rat? I am beginning to suffer from pains in the stomach. We are eating the unknown!

M. Valois, representing the Soci�t� des Gens de Lettres, came to ask me what was to be done with the 3,000 francs remaining from the proceeds of the three readings of Les Ch�timents, the guns having been delivered and paid for. I told him that I wanted the whole amount turned over to Mme. Jules Simon for the fund for the victims of the war.

 

January 1, 1871.—Louis Blanc has addressed to me through the newspapers a letter upon the situation.

Stupor and amazement of little Georges and little Jeanne at their basketful of New Year presents. The toys, when unpacked from the basket, covered a large table. The children touched all of them and did not know which to take. Georges was nearly furious with joy. Charles remarked: “It is the despair of joy!”

I am hungry. I am cold. So much the better. I suffer what the people are suffering.

Decidedly horse is not good for me. Yet I ate some. It gives me the gripes. I avenged myself at dessert with the following distich:

Mon diner m’inquiete et m�me me harc�le, J’ai mange du cheval et je songe a la selle.

The Prussians are bombarding Saint Denis.

 

January 2.—Daumier and Louis Blanc lunched with us.

Louis Koch gave to his aunt as a New Year gift a couple of cabbages and a brace of living partridges!

This morning we lunched on wine soup. The elephant at the Jardin des Plantes has been slaughtered. He wept. He will be eaten..

The Prussians continue to send us 6,000 bombs a day.

 

January 3.—The heating of two rooms at the Pavillon de Rohan now costs 10 francs a day.

The Mountaineers’ club again demands that Louis Blanc and I be added to the Government in order to direct it. I continue to refuse.

There are at present twelve members of the French Academy in Paris, among them S�gur, Mignet, Dufaure, d’Haussonville, Legouv�, Cuvillier-Fleury, Barbier and Vitet.

Moon. Intense cold. The Prussians bombarded Saint Denis all night.

From Tuesday to Sunday the Prussians hurled 25,000 projectiles at us. It required 220 railway trucks to transport them. Each shot costs 60 francs; total, 1,500,000 francs. The damage to the forts is estimated at 1,400 francs. About ten men have been killed. Each of our dead cost the Prussians 150,000 francs.

 

January 5.—The bombardment is becoming heavier. Issy and Vanves are being shelled.

There is no coal. Clothes cannot be washed because they cannot be dried. My washerwoman sent this message to me through Mariette:

“If M. Victor Hugo, who is so powerful, would ask the Government to give me a little coal-dust, I could wash his shirts.”

Besides my usual Thursday guests I had Louis Blanc, Rochefort and Paul de Saint Victor to dinner. Mme. Jules Simon sent me a Gruy�re cheese. An extraordinary luxury, this. We were thirteen at table.

 

January 6.—At dessert yesterday I offered some bonbons to the ladies, saying as I did so:

 

Grace a Boissier, ch�re colombes, Heureux, a vos pieds nous tombons. Car on prend les forts par les bombes Et les faibles par les bonbons.

 

The Parisians out of curiosity visit the bombarded districts. They go to see the shells fall as they would go to a fireworks display. National Guards have to keep the people back. The Prussians are firing on the hospitals. They are bombarding Val-de-Gr�ce. Their shells set fire to the wooden booths in the Luxembourg, which were full of sick and wounded men, who had to be transported, undressed and wrapped up as well as they could be, to the Charit� Hospital. Barbieux saw them arrive there about 1 o’clock in the morning.

Sixteen streets have already been hit by shells.

 

January 7.—The Rue des Feuillantines, which runs through the place where the garden of my boyhood used to be, is heavily bombarded. I was nearly struck by a shell there.

My washerwoman having nothing to make a fire with, and being obliged to refuse work in consequence, addressed a demand to M. Cl�menceau, Mayor of the Ninth Arrondissement, for some coal, which she said she was prepared to pay for. I endorsed it thus:

“I am resigned to everything for the defence of Paris, to die of hunger and cold, and even to forego a change of shirt. However, I commend my laundress to the Mayor of the Ninth Arrondissement.”

And I signed my name. The Mayor gave her the coal.

 

January 8.—Camille Pelletan brought us good news from the Government. Rouen and Dijon retaken, Garibaldi victorious at Nuits, and Fraidherbe at Bapaume. All goes well.

We had brown bread, now we have black bread. Everybody fares alike. It is well.

The news of yesterday was brought by two pigeons.

A shell killed five children in a school in the Rue de Vaugirard.

The performances and readings of Les Ch�timents have had to be stopped, the theatres being without gas or coal, therefore without light or heat.

Prim is dead. He was shot and killed at Madrid the day the king after his own heart, Amedeus, Duke of Genoa, entered Spain.

The bombardment was a furious one to-day. A shell crashed through the chapel of the Virgin at Saint Sulpice, where my mother’s funeral took place and where I was married.

 

January 10.—Bombs on the Od�on Theatre.

Chifflard sent me a piece of a shell. This shell, which fell at Auteuil, is marked with an “H.” I will have an inkstand made out of it.

 

January 12.—The Pavilion de Rohan demands of me from to-day on 8 francs a head for dinner, which with wine, coffee, fire,