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Title: The Red Virgin
Subtitle: Memoirs of Louise Michel
Date: 1981
Source: Retrieved from [[https://archive.org/details/MichelRedVirginMemoirsOfLouiseMichel][https://archive.org]]
Notes: Edited and translated by Bullitt Lowry and Elizabeth Ellington Gunter
Authors: Louise Michel
Topics: trial, anarcho-communism, anarcha-feminism, feminism, Louise Michel, Paris Commune, memoir, Revolutionary Socialism
Published: 2021-01-10 21:33:03Z

[[l-m-louise-michel-the-red-virgin-2.png 50 f][Louise Michel, drawn from life, 1880. (Photo. Bibl. nat. Paris)]]

Translators’ Introduction

Even today, Louise Michel, who won fame as the “Red Virgin” during

the Paris Commune of 1871, remains a heroine to the French Left.

While Karl Marx sat in the British Museum writing tracts, Michel was

facing French government troops across the barricades of Paris. While

her contemporaries were just beginning to decry colonialism, she, as a

convict in New Caledonia, was involved in the Kanaka uprising of 1878.

Freed by the amnesty of 1880 from her exile at the other end of the

earth, she returned to France and the speaker’s platform, and except for

several periods in prison she continued her revolutionary exhortations

until her death in 1905.

Born illegitimately on 29 May 1830, Louise Michel was brought up by

her mother and paternal grandparents in a half-ruined, fortified manor

house in the Haute-Marne. Her paternal grandfather, Etienne-Charles

Demahis, was descended from nobility and had changed his name from

De Mahis to the less grand Demahis in republican sympathy with the

French Revolution of 1789. Although impoverished, he was serving as

mayor of the village of Vroncourt when Louise was born to a servant of

the household, Marie Anne (or Marianne) Michel, and his son Laurent,

of whom no further record exists. Louise was raised as if she had been a

legitimate Demahis granddaughter, and after her paternal grandparents died,

she became a schoolmistress, teaching first in the Haute-Marne and later in Paris. She turned to revolutionary dreams and

became deeply involved in radical affairs during the twilight of France’s

Second Empire, the gaslit Paris of Louis Napoleon. During the Franco-

Prussian War of 1870 and the Prussian siege of Paris, she was a leading

member of the revolutionary groups controlling Montmartre, that

squalid and colorful district which has been inhabited by the disaffected

poor for centuries. During the Paris Commune of March to May 1871,

when the citizens of Paris rebelled against the government because they

believed it was trying to steal their republic, Michel became even more

deeply involved in events, emerging as one of the leaders of the

insurrection.

When the forces of the Versailles Government crushed the Commune

in May 1871, Michel was captured, tried, and sentenced to exile. She was

transported to New Caledonia on a prison ship in 1873. For six years she

lived under harsh conditions in the prison colony near the capital,

Nouméa, and later she lived in the capital itself, with a limited amount of

freedom. Following the general amnesty of 1880, which the government

gave to the Communards in response to public pressure, she returned to

France and public acclaim.

Though massive public gatherings greeted Michel upon her return, it

was difficult for her to find a place in revolutionary circles. She was

ignorant of events that had taken place in France during the preceding

decade, and the persons who had risen to power and influence in radical

circles had no great interest in relinquishing their position to any legend.

But her popular support from the working people of France remained

immense, and her speeches in Paris, the provinces, and abroad during

the next few years were heavily and tumultuously attended.

In 1882 Michel was arrested for disturbing the peace and spent two

weeks in jail. Then, in the spring of 1883, after a demonstration at les

Invalides, she led a crowd across Paris under the black flag of anarchism.

She was arrested and tried for rioting and for inciting her followers to

loot bakeries. Offering no real defense at her trial, she was sentenced to

six years in prison. Pardoned three years later, she resolutely continued

her speeches and writing, the radical public honoring her as “la grande

citoyenne.” From 1890 to 1905 she spent the greater part of her time in

England in self-imposed exile, although she made a number of speaking

tours in France and elsewhere. She was engaged in one of those

speaking tours in 1905 when she died, her funeral becoming an occasion

for a massive outpouring of sentiment from three generations of revolutionaries.

Louise Michel declares in her memoirs that she was an anarchist,

having come to the faith after she passed through her youthful, vague

sympathy for the downtrodden and her later ill-defined devotion to a

Utopian revolution. She claimed later that her transformation to anarchism

came on her voyage to New Caledonia aboard the prison ship

<em>Virginie</em>, during which time she was caged for four months with Natalie

Lemel, who converted her. In her memoirs Michel states that the

anarchist “Manifesto of Lyon” of January 1883 precisely expressed her

political beliefs. “I share **all** of the ideas written there,” she writes in her

memoirs, and she quotes the complete text of that document.

But Michel’s anarchism was emotional, not theoretical. In fact, she was

surprisingly ill read in contemporary and historical revolutionary writings.

That she had read Lamennais is certain; that she had read

Proudhon is likely. It is less probable that she had read either Blanqui or

Bakunin, although she certainly knew of their ideas, which were in the

air at the time. Marxism dismayed her, but played little part in her

memoirs because her full exposure to Marxism did not come until the

1890s, several years after her memoirs were published. What is remarkable

are her omissions. For example, she never mentions Babeuf and his

“Manifesto of the Equals.” She writes about close friends and associates

who made theoretical and practical contributions to radical doctrine—Kropotkin, Guesde, and Pouget, who was her codefendant in 1883—but

she never mentions their writings.

That her commitment to anarchism was emotional did not produce

intellectual inconsistency. Indeed, after her Utopian phase she was

entirely consistent in her view of property, her perception of exploitation,

her claims for the role of science, and her vision of the basic good in

mankind. Similarly, in her encomiums to the Social Revolution she was

consistent regarding its form and nature: It would be a spontaneous

rising of the people against injustice and exploitation.

That emphasis on the spontaneous uprising of the people kept her,

indirectly, from demanding the use of terror, a step many anarchists

took. Michel mentions assassination as a tool only occasionally. Once, she

discusses murdering Louis Napoleon Bonaparte; another time, she talks

about assassinating Adolphe Thiers. Yet she never made any concrete

preparations to carry out plans to murder the two. Similarly, her only

use of explosives was an abortive attempt to blow up a statue. “Tyrannicide,”

she writes, “is practical only when tyranny has a single head, or

at most a small number of heads. When it is a hydra, only the Revolution

can kill it.”

She was vague about what would happen the day after the Social

Revolution, other than offering images of dawns and fireworks. She

does comment that it would be better if all the leaders of the Revolution

should perish in achieving it, for then the people would not have to

contend with a surviving general staff. But somehow the anarchist

dream would be fulfilled.

Anarchism, “the logical conclusion of the romantic doctrine,” to use

E. H. Carr’s felicitous phrase,[1] is perilously difficult to define. Yet its

core—an insistence on the importance of the individual, a hatred of all

forms of political organization, a belief in the innate goodness of

man—fitted so providentially with Michel’s thinking that it is hard to

decide whether Michel found anarchism or anarchism found Michel. At

the time when she wrote her memoirs she believed implacably that

progress was inevitable, that people were innately good, and that governments,

any governments, were evil. Her statement that “power is

evil” forms the nucleus of every anarchist system, but neither she nor

any other anarchist ever found a ready answer to George Bernard

Shaw’s irritating question. If man is so good, he asked, “how did the

corruption and oppression under which he groans ever arise?”[2]

Michel avoided the question. She saw history as the story of free

people being somehow enslaved; the details were vague. But her interest

in the past was as great as her hope for the future. Romantic though her

vision of the past may have been, full of myth and monster, yet it was in

easy accord with her romantic dream for the future. To her, past and

future were indissolubly linked.

Unfortunately for Michel’s hopes—and historical reputation—the romantic

dream of anarchism was a waning force not the wave of the

future. While it is true that anarchism’s greatest influence in France,

numerically at least, followed the outrages of the 1890s and lasted until

the outbreak of the Great War, in those decades the simple and direct

force of anarchism was absorbed into the Bourses de Travail, the

protean Confédération Générale du Travail, and factional infighting.

The anarchism that Louise Michel dreamed of, the formless uprising

leading to the Social Revolution and the end of exploitation, disappeared

into irreconcilable bickering over detail and method. The dream

diffused, then disappeared like a wisp of smoke.

Michel was no more an organizer than she was a theorist. Not for

Michel the shabby, ill-lit rooms where intriguers and plotters put together

demonstrations and organizations. “All revolutions have been

insufficient because they have been political,” she said in a speech in

1882. She believed organization unnecessary because she was adamantly

of the opinion that at some near moment the poor and exploited would

rise up spontaneously, and through sheer numbers, force of will, and

the decency of their cause, they would force the old order to shrivel up

before them. In this vein, Michel’s most typical act was in 1883, when,

with no particular objective, she led the crowd of self-proclaimed anarchists

across Paris.

Neither theorist nor organizer, Michel filled another role for the

French radicals. “Nearly Joan of Arc,” Verlaine called her.[3] And Victor

Hugo, no anarchist, although surely a romantic, had named the first

draft of a poem “Louise Michel”; in this lengthy poem, retitled “More

Than a Man,” Hugo wrote,

Those who know . . .
Your days, your nights, your cares, your tears, given to everyone,

Your forgetfulness of yourself in helping others,

Your words like the flames of apostles,

Your long look of hatred to all those who are inhuman,

And the feet of children which you warm between your hands, . . .

He would realize Michel was incapable of anything not heroic or

virtuous. Michel had, Hugo concluded:

. . . two spirits intermingled

. . . the divine chaos of starlike things

Seen at the bottom of a great and stormy heart

... a radiance seen in a flame.[4]

Every movement needs prophets and lawgivers, sinners and apostates,

martyrs and saints. For French anarchists, Michel was martyr and

saint—the Red Virgin.

Michel’s intellectual curiosity was immense, her thirst for knowledge

unquenchable. Throughout her memoirs runs an amazing assortment

of subjects: music, musical instruments, teaching techniques, cruelty to

animals, the status of women, the money used in the Canary Islands,

insects, Kanakan anthropology, the weather, botany—the list is endless.

As a child she collected animal skeletons in her tower; as a schoolmistress

in Paris, in spite of her busy teaching schedule, she attended classes on

physics, chemistry, history, and even law; in prison she wrote books and

poetry; in New Caledonia she catalogued flora and fauna and experimented

with vaccinating papaya trees against jaundice.

The inner life she reveals in her memoirs was surely a remarkable one.

Legends, beasts, and folk heroes mingled in her fantasies, and she never

distinguished between her fantasies and reality. Her early life, she says,

was “made up of dreams and study,” a preparation for the second part

of her life, “the period of struggle.” But according to her account, she

acted during the waking world of the Siege and Commune as she had

seen herself act in her dreams. Dream and action were the same, and, in

her mind, apparently indistinguishable. The gallows speeches she invented

in her childhood she delivered to her judges in 1871.

People make their own dramas and then star in them, and Michel gave

the impression of playing herself. She saw herself as druidess, valkyrie,

vestal virgin, moving through a life that contained far more—strange

demons and mystic visions—than the eye could see. On one occasion in

the 1860s she walked with her friend Victorine through the deep woods

near her childhood home. Near the pair, padding along almost silently

through the forest, a wolf paced their steps, she claims. Was the wolf

really there? Probably not. In the 1860s the number of wolves, even in

the Haute-Marne, was small, but the beast existed in Michel’s mind

certainly and truly.

When Michel is narrating events of public record she is surprisingly

accurate, considering that the main preparation of the text took place in

prison cells. After her return from New Caledonia she was followed

daily by police agents when she was not in jail. Their reports have

survived, so her life from 1881 to 1883 and from 1886 to 1889 has a

corroborative record, if not an objective one.[5] But for her childhood and

her years as a schoolmistress almost the only record is her memory, and

some of the attitudes she describes do not ring true. Perhaps Michel

constructed her fantasy and then lived it out; it seems more likely that

she lived her life and then superimposed her fantasy onto it retrospectively. Few people other than memoirists have the chance to live their

lives over again.

Michel is astonishingly free of the self-aggrandizement memoirs are

prone to, even to the point of neglecting her own importance. She was,

after all, the chairman of the Women’s Vigilance Committee during the

Commune. During the Siege she had been responsible for the day-to-day welfare of some two hundred children, a task which she did very

well, thanks to the assistance of Georges Clemenceau; no mention of her

effort appears in her memoirs, although it is obliquely referred to at one

of her trials. After her return from exile in New Caledonia, she represented France at Kropotkin’s international gathering in London; she

mentions the trip, but says nothing of her role there.

From time to time misdirection, whether conscious or unconscious,

appears in her memoirs. She points with a grand gesture to an inviting

vision that is simply not true. Still, the misdirections of 1886 indicate

either the way that Louise Michel truly saw her own life or the way she

wanted others to see it. The effect is almost the same, and perhaps she

was unaware of the difference. The revolutionary, a fifty-six-year-old

woman, had sacrificed everything to the Revolution. Perhaps to justify

what she had become she had no choice other than to make her youthful

self into the revolutionary she was later.

Some of her misdirection is harmless. She subtracts five or six years

from her true age, and when she writes of her childhood adventures, she

paints herself as a mischievous hoyden. She was fifteen when her

grandfather died, and twenty when her paternal grandmother died and

the half-ruined manor house where she had grown up was sold. The

majority of the childhood stories concern the period while her grandfather was still living, and she says comparatively little that can be dated

with certainty to the period from his death until her grandmother’s,

although her stories of the **écrègnes**, the gatherings of village women,

probably belong to those years.

She was apparently a properly religious child, despite her attempt to

show herself as determinedly anticlerical from the first Voltairian teachings of her grandfather. Contradicting her attempts to don this mantle

are hints of her attraction to mystical Catholicism through the fervent

teachings of her devout aunt. Even Michel’s story of instructing her

pupils in Audeloncourt to boycott the mandated prayer for the Emperor

rings false in view of a strong recommendation by a local cure which

appears in her application to certify her school.[6] Even without that

document as proof, much of the verse she wrote in the 1850s—verse

which she does not quote in her memoirs—was ardently Christian.

Similarly, her memoirs would have the reader believe that she taught

in Audeloncourt for several years and then left for Paris. That is not

true. After a limited formal education she received her diploma in

September 1852, taught in Audeloncourt for a year, went to Paris for a

first and unmentioned period beginning in January 1854, and then

returned to the Haute-Marne the following fall because her mother was

ill. She tried to reopen her school at Audeloncourt, but failed because

her former pupils had gone elsewhere. Then she tried to open a school

at Clefmont; whether she succeeded is unclear, but in 1855 she and Julie

Longchamps opened a school at Millières, where Michel taught for two

years before going to Paris a second time. Possibly the reason for

Michel’s lack of clarity on this subject stems from embarrassment over

admitting a succession of failures or only partial successes.

Perhaps still fearing governmental reprisals, Michel lies about the

demonstration of 22 January 1871, suggesting that it was intended to be

a gentle and unarmed protest. In fact, it was planned as a direct

confrontation with the Government of National Defense. She also omits

the information that she was dressed in a National Guard uniform and

was carrying a rifle. Similarly, she minimizes her role in the councils of

the Commune and is a bit elliptical when she discusses what part she

played in military events. For example, she was a member of the 61st

Battalion of the National Guard, which was commanded by Eudes, the

husband of her friend, Victorine Louvet.

Her narrative of her arrest, confinement, and trial are straightforward, as is her account of the voyage to New Caledonia in 1873. The

captain of the prison ship, the **Virginie**, was deeply concerned, his reports

show, with the well-being of the deportees aboard; and the trip, while

certainly unpleasant, was not unnecessarily arduous.[7]

Michel makes light of the physical discomfort of the prison camps on

the Ducos Peninsula at Numbo and later at the Bay of the West.

Conditions there were far less easy than she suggests, but she reserves

her criticism for the jailers and their policy of repression, not the poor

food and inadequate medical facilities.

She was certainly involved peripherally in the Kanakan uprising of

1878 in New Caledonia, yet her comments on it are scanty. Indeed, her

account of these events, in which she hints broadly that she knows more

than she chooses to tell, is the only place in her memoirs where she is coy

with the reader. Certainly the authorities might have taken notice of an

open confession, but when she writes about the Siege and the Commune, she simply avoids indictable revelations.

Upon her return to France, Michel plunged into radical politics almost

without pausing. Her account of these events is anecdotal and episodic,

not systematic. Among the subjects on which she focuses is the incredible

effort of the Prefect of Police to establish a radical journal, his idea being

that such a publication would help him to keep track of revolutionaries

because they would congregate around it.[8] Michel also describes speaking

tours she made to Belgium and England.

During those years her friend Marie Ferré died, but the climax of

events, for Michel, was the Trial of the Sixty-eight at Lyon, where the

government tried to break the anarchist movement by destroying many

of its leaders, among them Kropotkin and Gauthier. Michel had been in

England during the earlier part of the trial, but she was present at the

last phase, and she identified herself with the prisoners, although she

was not among those indicted. After the conviction of the Sixty-eight,

she felt she had to do something: “I would have been an accessory to

cowardice if I did not use the liberty I was allowed—I don’t know

why—to call up a new and immense International which would stretch

from one end of the earth to the other.” She was searching for martyrdom

when she found it at les Invalides in April 1883; the government

reacted savagely and after a sham of a trial she was sentenced to six years

of solitary confinement, a sentence so incommensurate with the crime

that even conservative papers protested.

Her mother’s declining health worsened. Michel was given parole to

visit her while awaiting trial and at least twice after conviction. When she

was in the Centrale Prison at Clermont she was also allowed to go see her

mother, a most exceptional proceeding, although as Michel’s biographer

Edith Thomas notes when she discusses this episode, the nineteenth

century was “a much more humane epoch than ours.”[9] Michel gave

credit to the authorities for transferring her to a Paris prison at the

beginning of December 1884 so that she might be near her mother. Four

days later the Minister of the Interior gave permission for Michel,

guarded by two police inspectors, to stay at her mother’s bedside. From

Michel’s memoirs it is hard to tell that she stayed with her mother almost

a month, from 11 December 1884 until her mother’s death on 3 January

1885.

Michel’s emotions were always intense. The pages of her memoirs are

sprinkled throughout with affection for her mother, and when she

describes her childhood, she exhibits devotion to her older relatives.

Later, as a young woman, she formed a close friendship with Julie

Longchamps, who followed her to Paris. The two remained close into

the 1860s, drifting apart only when Longchamps failed to follow Michel

into radical politics.

Through the years Michel’s affection for her pupils remained undimmed. She is bitter when she rebuts the government’s claim, made at

her first trial, that she had no pupils, yet she let far greater falsehoods

stand unrefuted. She seems to have been a conscientious and imaginative

teacher, and outside evidence corroborates that judgment. For

example, her devotion to teaching the Kanakas in Nouméa earned a

letter of commendation, a letter she quotes with obvious pride.

Michel’s sympathies focused upon all who were helpless in society: the

poor, the elderly, prisoners, and women. She developed a protofeminism,

but it quickly merged into a more general radicalism. Michel saw

the problems of society clearly, and she saw that many groups, not just

women, were being exploited. Thus, a chapter in her memoirs concerning

women changes its tone until it becomes a plea for both women and

men “to move through life together as good companions” as they march

toward the Social Revolution. After it occurs, “men and women together

will gain the rights of all humanity.” They will not argue any longer

“about which sex is superior” any more than “races will argue about

which race is foremost.” Michel’s aversion to cruelty to animals is

connected with her sympathies for the helpless and exploited: “Everything fits together, from the bird whose brood is crushed to the humans

whose nests are destroyed by war.”

The most intense feelings in her memoirs, after those for her mother,

are reserved for Théophile Ferré. She frequently refers to him and his

execution, but it is hard to determine whether her feelings are for Ferre

as a person or as a symbol of what repression could lead to. Whether

Michel’s warm friendship for Ferré’s sister Marie was the product of her

feelings for Theophile or independent of them is unclear, but Michel’s

and Marie Ferry’s lives were permanently intertwined. Marie helped to

care for Michel’s mother while Michel was at meetings, exiled, traveling,

or in prison, and the two maintained a lively correspondence through

the years. It is to Marie that she owed her collection of poems and

clippings, many of which are included in the memoirs. Shortly after

Michel’s arrest for the demonstration following the anniversary of

Blanqui’s death Marie died, and in the memoirs Michel includes an

account of Marie’s funeral and a eulogistic letter from Henri Rochefort.

But Michel’s emotional life centered on her mother. Michel recognized

that she had caused the greater part of her mother’s sufferings,

caused them because of opinions which her mother “didn’t share.”

Throughout her life, her mother struggled to pay her daughter’s debts

and showered her with affection and little presents. In return, Louise

tried to hide her misfortunes from her mother and to ease her last

moments. “We revolutionaries bring so little happiness to our families,”

Michel laments. To pay tribute to her mother, Michel prints the account

of her mother’s funeral in full. What she failed to realize was that the

many thousands who followed her mother’s body through Paris to the

graveyard at Levallois-Perret were honoring not only her mother but

Louise herself.

For all practical purposes, Michel’s memoirs end at the time of her

mother’s death, and with her spirit bleak from the loss she had suffered,

she completed them for publication the following year. Reality is malleable,

and to recall the processes of one’s mind, which a memoirist must

do, is to see past events through whatever sun or shadow exists at the

moment when the recollection is called forth. Though Michel’s devotion

to the revolutionary cause and her optimism for the future remained

steadfast, even under the shadow of the mother’s death, it is possible that

she would have shown less nostalgia and less sorrow for a lost past if she

had not written her memoirs under the immediate impact of her grief.

It was sometime during Michel’s third prison term, which began in

1883, that she started to write these memoirs, although documents for

them had been collected earlier. She also had some earlier pieces, like a

history of the Haute-Marne that she had begun during her childhood,

and she makes one tantalizing reference to a “journal” she kept of the

voyage to New Caledonia, which has disappeared.

In 1885, after her mother died, Michel suffered some sort of nervous

collapse, which certainly was among the reasons for her memoirs’ being

fragmented and disjointed. Although a very rough chronological outline

runs through the two parts, stories and anecdotes appear more through

word association than from step-by-step narrative. Nor are the memoirs

limited to factual accounts. They are filled with emotional descriptions

of her dreams, stirring calls to action, and a number of poems. She flits

from one idea to another “as they come to mind.” Occasionally she seems

aware of the problems she might be causing the reader. “Before speaking about my third arrest,” she writes in the original text, “I ought to

relate the first two.” The memoirs oscillate wildly among nostalgia,

exaltation, narrative, and prophecy.

As a consequence, the original memoirs are most difficult to follow,

and we, as translators, decided that a direct rendering into English

would be incomprehensible to modern readers. Therefore, we translated

the original text completely, and then transposed Michel’s words

into a chronological narrative of her life, being careful to stay as true as

possible to the thought and tone of the original.

Very little material has been eliminated. Frequently, there were several

versions of one event, agreeing with each other in broad outline

always, which is unusual, but each adding new details. Those versions

were combined to make one account. Several poems were omitted

because they added nothing to the narrative; furthermore, Michel’s

poetry is mediocre—Edith Thomas noted that Michel’s “best poem is

surely her life”—and those poems that were retained were kept to add

information or color to the text. Parts of her long catalogue of the flora

and fauna of New Caledonia have also been excised; it is frequently

impossible to tell from her nonscientific descriptions which of several

species she was writing about. A digression about a literary lawsuit

brought by Grippa de Winter, in which Michel was not involved, was also

omitted.

In the original text almost every chapter ends with a paean to the

coming Revolution. Reducing the number of chapters from thirty-three

(plus three appendices) to twenty-four left several extra paeans, and in

any event, it seemed a bit monotonous to follow Michel’s example, so

they have been included only where they seemed most appropriate.

Moreover, she frequently inserts parenthetical exclamations of grief at

her mother’s death; their number has been reduced, although enough

of them have been retained to remind the reader of the emotional strain

under which Michel was writing.

In summary, the words of these translated memoirs are Louise

Michel’s; the organization of those words is ours. The loss of the original

texture and the feeling for how ideas were associated with each other in

Michel’s mind is compensated for, we believe, by having an orderly

memoir of her life to 1886.

We have added almost nothing to the narrative. In some places where

it was possible to establish definitely the identity of some person mentioned,

we have added a phrase identifying him, because persons who

were familiar to Michel’s readers in 1886 are now often obscure. We

have occasionally added dates established from documents like the

records of the prison ship that carried Michel to New Caledonia. On

matters which she could not check in prison, we felt accuracy served the

reader. Where she is inaccurate and we were uncertain whether that

inaccuracy was deliberate, we left the material as it was written, noting

major problems in italicized interpolations.

Michel clearly intended to write a continuation of these memoirs. A

decade after she published this volume she talked about doing so, but

nothing came of it. So, other than her poetry and letters, the volume

here, the **Mémoires de Louise Michel écrits par elle-même**, is the main

autobiographical offering of a fascinating woman, revolutionary, poet,

and dreamer.

When she published these memoirs in 1886 she was fifty-six years old

and still had nineteen years to live, one-third of her adult life. It is a pity

she never wrote the second volume she spoke of, but the memoirs that

she did write stand as a monument to human dreams. Motivated by

compassion, not doctrine, Michel testified in her memoirs and by her life

that an unattractive, illegitimate child from the fringe of nowhere could

so love freedom that she was ready to sacrifice her own. There have been

worse lives.

Chapter 1. Introduction

People have often asked me to write my memoirs, but whenever I have

tried to speak about myself I have felt the same repugnance I would feel

about undressing in public. Today, in spite of these feelings, I have

decided to put together a few of my memories. My life is full of poignant

memories, and I will expose some very personal feelings. I will tell them

randomly as they come to mind; if I give my pen the right to wander, I

have paid very dearly for this right.

My life has been composed of two very distinct parts that form a

complete contrast. The first was made up of dreams and study; the

second of events, as if the aspirations of the calm period came alive

during the period of struggle. I will go to some lengths to avoid

mentioning the names of persons whom I lost sight of long ago, to spare

them the disagreeable surprise of being accused of conniving with

revolutionaries. It might become a crime for them to have known me,

and my old acquaintances might be treated like anarchists when they

don’t know exactly what anarchism is.

I shall write boldly and frankly regarding everything that concerns me

personally, leaving in the shadows they loved those people who brought

me up in the old ruin of Vroncourt in the Haute-Marne. The Military

Tribunals of 1871 investigated the very bottom of my cradle and still

respected the privacy of my relatives, and I won’t disturb their ashes.

Moss has worn their names off their tombstones in the cemetery and the

old chateau has fallen down, but once again I see the nest of my infancy,

and I see those who brought me up brooding over me. Their images will

appear often in this book. Alas, of the memories of the dead, of the

fleeting thought, of the hour which has passed, nothing remains.

If a little bitterness drops onto these pages, no venom will ever fall.

The human race as a whole is blameless if individuals waste away like

animals in the struggle for existence. When the obstacles that fetter

humanity finally are forced aside, humanity will pass beyond this anguish.

In this unceasing battle the lone human being is not and cannot be

free. My life is not mine to live. I must fulfill my duty to the Revolution,

and lead my life harshly, without comfort, so that it will all be over more

quickly.

Perhaps these memoirs will have a great number of volumes. To tell

all, one would write without end. In any case, I would do well to sketch

the history of my prisons. Many brave hearts are found among those

unfortunate prisoners whom people despise. People must see things as

they are, and only someone who has lived through such experiences

knows.

Some of these pages would be difficult to send out the gates of

Saint-Lazare prison, which is where I am now writing. But to rescue

these words from oblivion I intend to take advantage of an article in the

regulations that states: “Attorneys can receive sealed letters from prisoners.”

One attorney understands that because these memoirs are, in a

sense, my last will and testament, I have the right to say whatever I want

in them and send them to him.

In these memoirs I want to include accounts of my three trials. I have

taken reports of my first and third trial from the **Gazette des tribunaux**,

which no one could suspect of being too favorable to me. The second

trial took place only in a lower court, and so was not reported in the

<em>Gazette</em>; I have included a newspaper account of it. For the masses, the

great masses, my loves, I will add some observations that I didn’t think it

was proper to make to the judges at the time. For us revolutionaries,

every trial is an act of war over which our flag is waving. May that flag

cover my book, as it has covered my life, as it will wave over my coffin.

[[l-m-louise-michel-the-red-virgin-3.png 80 f][Detail of Haute-Marne]]

Chapter 2. Vroncourt

My childhood nest was a tumbled-down château. At its corners, the same

height as the main building, were four square towers with roofs like

church steeples. The south side had no windows, only loopholes in the

towers, which made the building look like a tomb or a castle, depending

on the point of view. A long time ago, people called the place the

Fortress, but when I lived there it was usually called the Tomb.

To the east lay a vineyard, and we were separated from the little

village of Vroncourt by a grassy stretch as wide as a prairie. At the end of

it, a brook flowed down the only street in the village, and in the winter

the brook became so swollen that people in Vroncourt had to put

stepping stones in it to make it passable.

Further to the east there was a screen of poplars, and the wind

murmured sweetly as it blew through those trees; and then, rising

behind everything, were the blue mountains of Bourmont. Many years

later when I saw Sydney, Australia, surrounded by bluish peaks, I

recognized on a larger scale the crests of the mountains I had seen in my

childhood.

To the west were the hills and woods of Suzerin. When the snow was

deep, wolves would creep from the woods into the Tomb through gaps

in the wall, and they would howl in the courtyard. Our dogs would

answer them, and this concert would last until the frozen morning. All

was well at the Tomb, and I loved those nights.

I loved them especially when the north wind raged, and we read late,

the whole family gathered in the old Great Hall. I loved the wintry

setting and the frozen upper rooms. All of it—the white shroud of snow,

the chorus of the wind, the wolves and dogs—would have made me a

poet, even if all my family hadn’t been poets from the cradle.

It was glacially cold in the Tomb’s enormous rooms. Through that vast

ruin the wind whistled, as it does through the rigging of a sailing ship.

We huddled around the fire, my grandfather sitting in his easy chair

situated halfway between his bed and a stack of all kinds of guns. In

winter he threw a big cloak of white flannel over his clothes and wore

wooden shoes trimmed with fleece. Often I sat on those wooden shoes in

front of the fireplace, snuggling up to the cinders along with the dogs

and cats.

Depending on the circumstances, my grandfather appeared like many

different men to me. When he told me of the old, great days, the epic

fights of the First Republic, he was passionate, so that he could relate to

me the war of the giants, the war when “whites” and “blues,” brave men

fighting brave men, showed history how heroes died. Sometimes when

he explained to me the various books we read together, he was ironic,

like Voltaire, the master of his youth. At other times he was gay and

witty, like Molière. Still other times, when our minds traveled across

unknown worlds together, we spoke of things he saw stirring on the

horizon. We looked at past stages of human development, and we

discussed the future. Often I cried, touched in my heart by some quick

image of progress, art, or science, and my grandfather, with great tears

in his eyes, too, would put his hand on my head, which was more tousled

than one of our dogs.

Both my grandmothers lived with us, and how different they were!

One had a delicate, Gallic face framed by a headdress of white muslin

gathered into tiny pleats, under which her hair was arranged in a large

chignon on her neck. The other had eyes that were black like coal, and

short hair; she was enveloped in an eternal youth which made me think

of fairies in the old tales.

My mother was then a blonde, with soft and smiling blue eyes and

long, curly hair. She was so fresh and pretty that her friends used to say

to her laughingly, “It is impossible for this ugly child to be yours.” As for

me, I was tall, skinny, disheveled, wild, brazen, sunburned, and often

decorated with torn clothing held together with pins. I knew how I

looked, and I was amused at people finding me ugly, although my poor

mother sometimes took offense at it.

Many animals lived in the Tomb. We had a big Spanish hound with

long yellow hair, and two sheepdogs. All three dogs answered to the

name of Presta. We also had a black and white dog named Médor, and a

young bitch we named Doe in memory of an old mare named Doe that

had died just before we got the bitch. When I gave the old mare an

apronful of hay her manner would change remarkably. The thing I

remember best about her was her stealing my bouquets; she would take

them and then lick my face. When she died my grandfather and I

wrapped her head in a white cloth, so no dirt would touch it, and buried

her outside near the acacia.

We had legions of cats, too, especially male ones. We called all the

male cats Lion or Darling and all our female cats Galta. Sometimes the

cats would crowd us at the fire, and my grandfather would use the tongs

to pick a glowing coal from the fireplace and wave it at them. The whole

pack would run off, only to make a fresh assault soon after.

My mother, my aunt, and my grandmothers usually sat around the

table. One read aloud, and the other knitted or sewed. Beside me as I

write now is the sewing basket my mother kept her things in.

Friends often came to visit us. When Bertrand or M. Laumont, the old

teacher from Ozières, came, the family sat up later than usual, reading

aloud. They tried to send me to bed so they could finish reading the

chapters they didn’t want to read in front of me. Sometimes I obstinately

refused, nearly always winning eventually, and other times when I was in

a hurry to hear what they wanted to hide from me, I obeyed quickly, and

then tiptoed back and hid behind the door to listen.

We called the schoolteacher Little Laumont to distinguish him from

his relative, another Laumont, the doctor at Bourmont, whom we called

Big Laumont. Big Laumont, the doctor, enveloped in a vast black coat

that made him look like an Egyptian scarab, came on a stocky horse to

spend every Tuesday with us. Little Laumont was always dressed in a

short, gray frock coat and carried an enormously long cane. When he

moved, his feet never seemed to touch the ground, and he was as

intelligent as he was strange. He used to spend the winters with us. Long

ago Little Laumont had given lessons to my aunt Agathe and my

mother, and I think he had taught the whole countryside to read.

Those were the good days. My grandmother or I was at the piano, and

my grandfather played his bass viol. Big Laumont sometimes carried a

flute in his pocket, and when he played it, he played perfectly. All of us

together would play music until we tired of it. Then in the dusk of the

evening the doctor would leave swiftly, with his capacious black cloak

floating around him. He looked like the black horseman of the legends.

Big Laumont asked me once, very seriously, the way he always spoke

to me, why I didn’t write some prose works. Following his suggestion, I

began a story, **The Naughty Deeds of Helen**, which began, “Helen was very

naughty and stubborn.” It was a collection of my own wicked deeds, each

of which I ended with an exemplary punishment for the sake of

morality. For example, I described one episode in which Helen stole a

small encyclopedia from an old doctor’s house, a leather-bound volume

in which were found the names of everything that could be learned. For

punishment, Helen was condemned to spend a month with no book

other than a huge grammar, which she certainly wouldn’t have bothered

to steal. “Oh, you little monster,” said Big Laumont when he read this

piece, “I thought it was you who had taken my book!”

That wasn’t the only thing I took as a child. Each of us is capable of all

the good or evil in his being. Without remorse I used to take money

(when there was any), fruits, vegetables, and so on, and gave them away

in my relatives’ names. That caused some great scenes when the recipients

tried to thank them. Incorrigible as I was, I laughed about it.

Once my grandfather offered me twenty sous a week if I would

promise not to steal anything again, but I found I lost too much money

on that deal and I refused. I had filed some skeleton keys to open the

cupboards where pears and other fruits were kept, and I used to leave

little notes there in place of what I had taken. I remember one that read:

“You have the lock, but I have the key.”

In the summer the Tomb filled up with birds that flew in through the

broken windows. Swallows came back to their nests of former years,

sparrows flew in and out of the broken windows, occasionally knocking

on the unbroken panes, and the larks sang loudly with us. That is, they

sang with us when we sang in a major key; when we changed to a minor

key they would fall silent.

The birds weren’t the dogs’ and cats’ only fellow-boarders. We had

partridges, a tortoise, a roebuck, some wild boars, a wolf, barn-owls, bats,

several broods of orphaned hares that we had raised by spoon-feeding—a whole menagerie. And of course, there was also the colt, Zéphir, and

his grandmother Brouska. How old Brouska was I don’t know—she had

been with us so long that no one could remember her age. Brouska

walked in and out of the rooms in order to take bread and sugar from

the hands of people she liked. To people she didn’t like, she would pull

back her lips, showing all her huge yellow teeth as if she were laughing in

their faces. And there were cows, too, the great white Bioné and the

young Bella and Nèra. I went to their stable to chat with them, and they

answered me in their own way by looking at me with their soft eyes.

All these beasts lived on good terms with each other. The cats would

lie curled up, following with a negligent eye the birds toddling about on

the ground. Even more strange, I never saw a cat bother about a mouse,

and mice lived in all the walls. In the Great Hall, behind the green

tapestry that covered the walls, the mice ran around rapidly but unafraid,

uttering little shrill cries as they went. The mice behaved perfectly,

and never gnawed on papers or books and never placed a tooth on the

violins, cellos, and guitars which were scattered about.

What peace there was in this place, and what peace there was in my life

at this time! Maybe I didn’t deserve it. How I love to dream of this little

corner of the earth. If my mother had been able to survive my prison

term, I would have liked to have spent some peaceful days near her, days

such as she needed, with me working near her armchair, and the old

Caledonian cats purring at the hearth.

Every time something important happened in my family, my grandmother would write a verse account of it. My grandfather added some

pages of his own to that collection, which was kept in two large, looseleaf

books. I wrapped those books in black crepe when my grandmother

died.

The winds of adversity blow on things as well as people. Of all the

pages my grandfather wrote, I have only one left, “A des antiquaires,”

and I have only one piece my grandmother wrote, “La Mort,” which she

wrote after the death of her husband. They are all that remain to me.

Their sad tones are a feeble enough exhalation compared to the delicate

verses that I no longer have. All has faded away, even my grandfather’s

guitar, which crumbled while I was in New Caledonia. My mother cried

over it a long time.

In autumn, my mother, my aunts, and I used to go far into the forest.

It was good to hear through the deep silence in our woods the heavy

hammer of the smithy, and the sharp blows of the axe that made the

branches shiver. Then, too, there were the songs of birds and the

buzzing of insects under the fallen leaves. Often we would hear the little

branches breaking where some old woman was gathering a pile of

faggots. Sometimes we would hear the snort of a wild boar in the thickest

woods, and other times it was a few poor roebucks flashing across our

vision. Maybe they sensed the autumn hunts, when men cut the throats

of animals to the sound of the hunting horn. Animals kill to live; the

hunter destroys only to destroy.

On the road to Bourmont was Uncle Georges’s old mill, which stood at

the foot of a hill where there was an uncultivated vineyard. The grass

was thick and cool in the meadow bordered by the millpond. The

rosebushes rustled as the ducks moved through them or the wind

pushed them. In the mill, the first room was dark even at midday, and it

was there that Uncle Georges used to read every evening. How much he

learned reading that way!

All those people, living and dead, here they are in this place of time

gone by. Here are my grandmother Marguerite’s sisters with their white

headdresses, pins fastening scarves at their necks, the square bodices—

the complete outfits of peasant women, which they wore coquettishly

from their youth, when people called them beautiful girls, until their

deaths. Like themselves, their names were simple: Marguerite, Catherine, Apolline.

One of my mother’s sisters, Aunt Victoire, was with us later at

Audeloncourt. She was very tall, with a thin face that had fine, regular

features. My mother’s other sister, my Aunt Catherine, lived in the

Lagny area. Like my mother, both had an absolute cleanliness, a luxury

of neatness, which allowed neither the shadow of a spot, nor a speck of

dust, from their headdresses to the tips of their feet.

In the first flush of my Aunt Victoire’s youth, some missionary

preaching at Audeloncourt left behind a religious fanaticism that led

many young girls into the convent. My aunt was one of them. She

became a novice, or lay sister, at the hospice of Langres, but she broke

her health by fasting and was forced to return to secular life. She came to

live with us at Vroncourt, where she stayed until my grandparents died.

I never heard a more ardent missionary than my Aunt Victoire. From

Christianity she had absorbed everything that sweeps a person away:

somber hymns, evening visits to churches drowned in shadow, the lives

of virgins, which recall druidesses or vestal virgins or valkyries. All her

nieces were swept into this mysticism, me more easily than the others.

What a strange impression still remains with me. I used to listen at the

same time to my Voltairian grandparents and my exalted Catholic aunt.

Moved by strange dreams, I searched the way a bewildered compass-

needle looks for north in a fierce storm.

My north, where my compass finally pointed, was the Revolution. My

fanaticism changed from dream to reality; years later my friend Théophile Ferré

told me I was consecrated to the Revolution, and it was true.

All of us were its fanatics.

I read hungrily during those years, especially with Nanette and

Josephine, two remarkably intelligent young women who had never left

the district. We used to talk about everything. In good weather we

carried out magazines and books to read in the tall grass: <em>Magasins

pittoresques</em>, and **Musées des families**, Hugo, Lamartine, and others. I have

always wondered if Nanette and Josephine loved me better than their

own children. I certainly loved them. One day, when I was perhaps six

or seven years old, we drenched Lamennais’s **Paroles d’un croyant** with

our tears. From that day on, I belonged to the masses.

From that moment I climbed step by step from Lamennais to anarchy.

Is there further to go? Of course, because there is always more to come,

there is always further to go, always progress to make in light and liberty,

in the development of new sensitivities of which we now have only the

rudiments. There is a future which we imprisoned spirits cannot even

glimpse.

In front of me are a few handfuls of memorabilia from my childhood.

I take one at random, a description of Vroncourt my mother saved. How

many things this little piece of yellowed paper has survived!

**Vroncourt**
Vroncourt lies on the slope of a mountain between the forest and the
plain. You can hear the wolves howling, but you do not see the lambs’
throats being cut. At Vroncourt, you’re separated from the rest of the
world. The wind rattles the old church tower and the towers of the
chateau, and it bends the fields of ripe grain like ocean waves. All that you
can hear is the formidable noise of the storm. It is great and beautiful.

This work, as well as my **Legendary Haute-Marne**, was illustrated with

my own charcoal sketches. Responsible for a piece of that work was

Marie Verdet, who must have been more than a hundred years old.

“Say,” she said to me, “it won’t be worth the trouble to write your book

on Vroncourt if you don’t include the legend of the Three Washerwomen.”

So I drew the Fountain of the Ladies. The shadow of willows lies on

the water, and from this shadow the pale washerwomen emerge, three

phantoms under the trees. According to Marie Verdet, one cries about

the past, another moans for the days of the present, and the last mourns

for tomorrow. They remind me of the legends of the Norns.

Another charcoal sketch in the same work depicted another custom,

the Diableries of Chaumont, last held more than a century ago. My

sketches of the Diableries are impressionistic and try to reproduce the

feeling of the moonbeams, the forest, the snow, and the night.

Here is another fragment. It comes from my **Legendary Haute-Marne**

and describes these Diableries of Chaumont which took place every

seven years.

The Diableries of Chaumont are related to history, fancy, and legend.
The Diablerie is a dream which had a real existence, and traces of it were
still visible at the end of the eighteenth century. Many bizarre customs
disappeared at the end of the Middle Ages; the Diablerie of Chaumont was
one that survived. . . . Every seven years, say the chroniclers of Champagne,
twelve men would dress like devils, or as you would expect devils to
dress, in all the old torn-up clothes of hell, where there are all sorts of
disguises, even that of Jehovah. The devils of Chaumont got theirs at the
shop of old Anne Larousse, at the sign of Brae et Joie: an immense pair of
horns and a black hood. They accompanied the Palm Sunday procession to
honor heaven and to represent hell there. After they had danced in the
procession, for the love of God, our lords the devils spread out into the
countryside, which they had the right to pillage, for the love of the devil, to
their heart’s content.
Why did they choose the number twelve? The chroniclers say that it was
in honor of the twelve apostles, although this method of honoring them
wouldn’t have suited them. Some scholars claimed that they stood for the
twelve signs of the Zodiac, and others that they stood for the sons of Jacob.
None of these suppositions was generally accepted. At each Diablerie the
arguments arose anew among the scholars, clerks, and astrologers of the
good town of Chaumont, who exhausted themselves in writing tracts on
the question.

These men disguised as devils sang continuously “Quis ist iste rex

gloriae” with as much spirit as those whose costumes they were wearing,

but with less harmony, since the devil has an essentially musical ear.

The Diablerie of Chaumont lasted from Palm Sunday to the Nativity

of St. John, and it ended with a representation of the main acts of the life

of Saint John, presented on ten stages so that the faithful could watch.

The celebration was concluded with a ceremonial death by torture.

(There couldn’t be a good celebration without that, either in their time

or ours.) The torture and death were ordinarily just symbolic—an effigy

of Herod, representing his soul, was burned at the stake.

The last year these holy orgies took place, an event happened which

may have hastened their end. This event does not appear in the written

chronicles, but Marie Verdet did not have the slightest doubt that it

happened, for her grandfather had heard it from his grandfather, who

had heard it from his grandmother. At this particular torture and death,

the effigy of Herod had gestured so beautifully that the audience

enjoying themselves at the “torture” had filled the valley of the Ecoliers.

Suddenly the effigy began to moan and people went into ecstasy. The

miracle was believed all the more easily since the people later found

charred bones in the ashes of the stake. But, if they found charred

bones, they no longer found the handsome singer Nicias Guy; it was he

who had been so terribly murdered out of love’s vengeance.

Let me add here a few notes on my native region, the Haute-Marne.

Plows bring to light the stone coffins of our fathers, the Gauls; the knife

for slitting victims’ throats; Roman incense. The plowman, accustomed

to these finds, turns them aside, sometimes making a watering trough

from a coffin, or using the incense to scent the enormous stump which

burns beneath his great chimney. He continues to sing to his oxen, while

behind him the birds gather worms in the open furrows.

Formerly, near a ruined fortress, the **châté païot**, people used to go to

conjure the spirits of the ruins with a silver piece, a lighted candle, a

white shirt, and a sharpened knife.

“Why the piece of silver?” I asked Marie Verdet, and lowering her

voice, she answered, “For the devil!”

“And the lit candle?” “It’s for the good Lord!” “And the white shirt?”

“For the dead!” “And the knife with the sharpened blade?” “For the

person carrying out the ceremony if he betrays his fealty.”

“His fealty to whom?”

“To the unknown, to the Ghost-in-Flames.”

Enough of these stories found in the stones that I walked over as a

child. Let me return to the events of my own early life. I never learned to

write script properly. For a long time as a child I wrote my poems in

letters I had invented myself, modeled after those in books. Finally, my

family realized it was time to teach me to write like the rest of the world.

<em>The Naughty Deeds of Helen</em> was the last work I wrote with my own letters

instead of writing in proper script. Because no one at the Tomb could

write script properly, and also because they thought it would be better if

I had less free time in which to occupy myself as I pleased, I was sent to

the village school every day.

In spite of the five styles of writing taught at Vroncourt, and the

beautiful English script I learned in teacher-training courses at

Chaumont, I returned later to the style I used at home. I rolled my

letters, disheveled my words, and let my handwriting change as my

thought changed. It makes my handwriting very difficult to imitate.

People have tried anyway. Two years ago, my poor mother got a fairly

well-forged letter—the signature was a masterpiece—saying that I was

sick and asking for her at the prison of Saint-Lazare. That was a terrible

thing to do. Another time someone sent the authorities a well-counterfeited

request asking that I be allowed to see my mother; the forger

didn’t know that, at that very moment, I had been with my mother for

several days.

Anyway, I was sent every day to school at Vroncourt to improve my

script and occupy my time. The teacher was named Michel, but he was

not related to me.

The school at Vroncourt was a dark house with only two rooms. The

larger, which looked out onto the street, was the classroom. The other,

which was never brightly lit, was where the teacher and his wife lived. It

looked out on a grass-covered slope through a window at ground level

which was like a vent in a cave. This window, like the window of the

classroom, was made of many tiny panes and bordered by red cotton

curtains.

By the light of the classroom window the schoolteacher’s wife, Mme

Michel, sewed all winter long. Her profile, a little severe under her great

white headdress, seemed very beautiful to me. On the days when we

recited catechism, my Aunt Victorine used to come in and sit near her,

so that she could hear if I had learned it well.

The tables in the classroom were arranged around three sides of the

room, the fourth side, where the front door was, being left empty. There

were two or three benches for the little ones who couldn’t write yet. A

few of the older ones who had what was called beautiful hands also sat

on those benches writing on their knees. They didn’t need to polish their

style any more, and they were proud of their status.

I put my mind to figuring out ways to make mischief, and I soon

discovered one way. Monsieur the teacher, as we called him, sat on a

high wooden chair we called the pulpit. He dictated passages to us,

telling us to write down the dictation precisely as he said it. I went to

some pains to write down everything he said, not just what he was

dictating. It would come out something like this:

like a stick;—semicolon)—but Gaul resisted their domination for a long

time (You children from up on Queurot, you’re coming in very late;—a

period. Ferdinand, blow your nose.—You children from the mill, warm

your feet)—Caesar wrote the history of their resistance, etc.

Not losing a minute, I even added, scratching furiously, some things the

teacher didn’t say. He finally caught me. I would have been as unresponsive

to his anger as I was to ordinary reproaches, if he hadn’t said to me

dispassionately, “If the inspector of schools saw that, you would get me

fired.”

A great sadness fell over me. I could think of nothing to reply, even

when he forbade me to bring him any more rose petals. Those rose

petals, dry in winter and fresh in summer, he liked to add to his

cherrywood snuff box, which he opened and closed with a little leather

thong.

The next day my dictation was irreproachable. For more than a week,

under his severe eye, I kept twisting in the pocket of my pinafore a little

white paper full of dried roses that I had fixed for him without hope.

Finally, seeing that my heart was breaking, he asked me for them, and all

was well. After that, even though I played other tricks, they weren’t ones

the inspector could blame Monsieur the teacher for.

He earned so little that he did all sorts of odd jobs during the long

summers when the children in our village didn’t have classes, but the old

teacher was always cheerful. I never heard him say a bitter word.

Although books for children and even for grown-ups give the illusion

that merit is rewarded, merit is rarely recognized in this world. I first

realized that truth from observing the teacher, Michel. Like my hatred

of force, this perception comes from my earliest years. Since then I have

seen a thousand examples, so I was astonished only the first time I saw it.

Any mathematical calculation became easy when M. Michel explained

it. By nothing more than the way in which he asked the question,

Monsieur the teacher provoked the right answers. He put it under your

nose. When a student was at the blackboard working on some problem

under the eye of the outstanding old mathematician, the teacher showed

the position of the number with the end of his hazel rod. Your mind

kept the whole operation in view at the same time, and it seemed to me

that the questions he asked had a rhythm to them.

I told my grandfather about that. Monsieur the teacher was a frequent

visitor at the Tomb, and one evening I heard my grandfather and

Monsieur the teacher chatting about things far removed from my poor,

little problems. I could have stood listening to them forever. That

evening I discovered that Monsieur the teacher was simply a genius in

numbers, as well as a great astronomer and poet. I also found out that

algebra is easier than arithmetic.

“Why haven’t you written on mathematics?” my grandfather asked M.

Michel.

The old schoolteacher laughed sadly and ruefully. They exchanged

various remarks that I didn’t understand until I was much older, but the

teacher’s laugh stayed in my memory. Later, when I read in books about

merit being recognized and virtue being rewarded, I laughed the same

way.

In later years, I found artlessness like M. Michel’s in other people of

merit many times. I thought about him when the captain of the **Virginie**,

on which I was being sent to New Caledonia, told me about his trip to the

North Pole. The old seaman, keyed up by the day’s storm, the high seas

off the Cape, and the spume left after each wave crashed down on the

deck, relived for me his voyage to the North Pole and made it come alive,

“Why haven’t you written all that down?” I asked.

“I’m not a writer,” he answered. “Anyway, scholars have already

written about all those things.”

How many scholars are as scholarly as the captain of the **Virginie**?

Have they seen things for themselves? Knowledge must be presented in

a manner that enlarges the horizon instead of restricting it. As long as

poverty, which shackles people like my old schoolteacher, is combined

with prejudice, which makes the unknown fearful and fetters people like

the captain of the **Virginie**, ignorance will continue to imprison the

world.

The development of the human race and the development of new

sensitivities are thwarted because people take their point of view from

the part, not the whole. Only when totality, completeness, is seen can

each person rummage in his own little corner in harmony with wisdom

and the development of the human race.

Chapter 3. The End of Childhood

As the seed contains the full-grown tree, all life from its very beginning

contains whatever it will be—whatever, despite everything, it must

become. Thus, I am trying to go back to the sources of the events in my

life. One piece of verse I found in my old papers sketched out the

pattern my life would take.

**The Voyage**
At the rim of the desert how immense is the sky.

On your new unknown path, child, where do you go?

What do you hope for, now hid in deep mystery?

—If only I knew. Toward beauty and goodness!
Child, what’s your choice? Peace, calm, and surrender?

You could live like a bird and build up your nest.

Hear, while there’s time; shun the hard brutal path,

Where your fate will be damned, and your life will be tears.
I don’t want to cry, or look backwards too much.

If it weren’t for my mother, I would go far indeed

Through chance-controlled life, where the tempest is blowing,

Go, as one follows the faraway horn.
From deepest concealment, I hear a loud fanfare.

Others have gone there whom I would meet.

Heavy steps on the land! I hear them! I hear them!

It’s humanity marching. With them I would go.
I look at the sand and the heaped-up grain.

In profoundly blue skies I see endless cloud-worlds.

Does it make any difference? One world’s like another.

Where those clouds disappear, it is there I must go.

Those years, the years of the Tomb, when all those so dear to me

surrounded my being, those years of my grandfather, of my Aunt

Victoire, of Nanette and Josephine, of M. Michel and the schoolroom of

Vroncourt—those years live for me still, though the Tomb is now a ruin

and those who people these pages died long ago.

Deep down in the wellsprings of my life are the tales of old legends.

Today, I see those phantoms still: Corsican sorceresses, mermaids with

green eyes, medieval bandits, Jacques Bonhommes, red-haired Teutons,

tall, blue-eyed Gallic peasants. From Corsican bandit in his wild gorges

to judge of the High Court of Brittany, all of them are in love with the

unknown. All of them bequeath to their descendants, bastard or legitimate, the heritage of the bards.

My love lies in these atavistic legends. People are always taunting me

for never speaking of love. I have to go back to those hours when young

women are just learning to dream. From the pages of old books read in

the dawn of life many songs of love escape, and within those pages a

young woman can be in love with love as much as she wishes. I mean she

can look for an ideal person she could love if she were to meet him in

real life. Among the sons of Gaul, among the barbarians, she chooses the

bravest of the brave. She can look into the far past at men of the north,

the men of the Ghilde who fought for freedom and who used to pour

three cups of wine on the flagstones—one for the dead, another for their

ancestors, and a third for the brave. The Bagaudes, who died in their

flaming tower; the poets; the troubadors; the great leaders of robber

bands who stole from the rich bandit in the manor to give to the

miserable beggar in his thatched cottage—they are my loves.

I couldn’t be faithful to only one of those loves; there were too many

of them. From the devil to Mandrin, from Faust to Saint-Just, how many

phantoms made me dream when I was a child! I dreamed of the

Jacqueries and the peoples’ rebellions of the Middle Ages.

Many things float in children’s dreams. Some are red like blood and

some black like a night of mourning. Such were the banners of the rebels

who dwelt deep in my thoughts. The weddings of those who loved each

other were the red weddings of martyrs, and they signed their covenants

in blood.

I wasn’t the only young girl who loved stories of rebels. Often the

other girls of the village and I talked of the things which the old songs or

legends of the country spoke of. I remember part of one song:

He whom she loved,

Proud he was,

Helmet on head.

Hear the lark

That sings for him.

White she was;

Hands gathering

Mistletoe

From the dark oak,

And verbena

Deep in the woods.

I created poems from these old legends. Even if there hadn’t been a

little atavism in my blood helping me to write poetry, no one could have

escaped being a poet in this country of Champagne and Lorraine, where

the very winds sang Germanic war chants and songs of love and

rebellion. Through the great snows of winter, past the sunken paths full

of hawthorn in the spring, pushing through the deep black woods of

enormous oaks and poplars with trunks like columns, you can still follow

the paved roads of the conquering Romans, and in many places see

where the unconquered, long-haired Gauls ripped up those paving

stones.

Everyone is a bit of a poet. Nanette and Josephine, those daughters of

the fields, were poets naturally. After many years and across many seas

in New Caledonia, one of their songs, “The Black Bird of the Fallow

Field,” came back to my mind during a cyclone. In my version of it you

can hear the same black chord which vibrates in the heart of nature, but

their version in dialect is sweeter and more mysterious. In theirs you can

smell the wild rosebush of the hedges, and at the same moment hear the

bird of the fallow field, who lets his melancholy notes trickle down like

someone telling his beads, and a deeper note like a tide grinding against

a reef.

In the patois of the Haute-Marne their song goes like this:

L'Agé Na Deu Champ Fauvé
1.
Dans l'champ fanné c'etot

Un bel âgé chantot.

Teut na il étot

Il fo y brâchot.

Ka ki dijot l'âge,

L'âgé deu champ fauvé?
2.
C'étot pa les échos

Sous les àbres du bos,

Li bise pleurut

Deyen lu brâchot

L'âge deu champ fauvé?

My version, translated word for wored [from the patrois], is:

The Black Bird of the Fallow Field
1.
In the fallow field

A pretty bird sang.

Black, black it was,

And it sobbed strongly.

What was it saying,

The bird of the fallow field?
2.
Through its echoes

From under the trees,

The north wind was crying,

Sobbing with the bird,

What the black bird was saying,

The bird of the fallow field.

How many memories I have. Is it irrelevant to put down all this

foolishness? Yesterday, I had trouble getting used to writing about

myself; today, searching the days that have disappeared, I can’t stop. I

see everything again.

I can see the round stones at the far end of the yard near the knoll and

the thicket of hazel trees close by. There, thousands of young toads

peacefully underwent their metamorphosis, if we didn’t kidnap them

and throw them against the legs of nasty people. Poor toads!

In the courtyard, behind the well, we children put bunches of twigs,

bundles that let us erect a scaffold with steps, a platform, two tall wooden

poles, everything. Then we depicted historical epochs and characters we

liked. We put the Terror of 1793 into dramatic form, and we climbed

one after the other up the steps of the scaffold, where we made ready for

our executions, crying out “Long live the Republic!” The public was

represented by my cousin Mathilde, and sometimes by chickens and

roosters gobbling and pecking and spreading their tails wide. We

searched history books for human cruelties. Our scaffold became the

stake of John Hus, or still further back in the past, the burning of the

rebel Bagaudes in their tower in the year 280.

One day, as we were climbing our scaffold singing, my grandfather

suggested to us that it would be better to climb the steps to the platform

in silence, and at the top to affirm the principle for which we were dying.

Afterwards, we modified our dramas to follow his advice.

Our play wasn’t always so serious. Sometimes we had mock hunts. Pigs

served as boars, and we lit brooms to serve as torches. We ran with the

dogs to the dreadful noise of shepherds’ horns, which we called the

trumpets of the hunt. An old gamekeeper had taught us how to sound

something he called the “hallali.”

We observed all the rules of the art of venery in these disheveled

chases with our running dogs. They ended with our taking the pigs

home, whether they liked it or not, and several times the pigs fell in the

kitchen garden waterhole, where their fat supported them while they

made desperate “oufs” until someone pulled them out. Pulling them out

wasn’t easy. Men with ropes took charge of the operation, yelling at us.

They looked at me as if I were a runaway horse.

I have never met children who were, at the same time, as wild and as

serious, as naughty and as fearful of causing hurt, as lazy and as

industrious as my cousin Jules and me. Each year during vacation he

came to the Tomb with his mother, Agathe, whom I loved dearly and

who spoiled me very much.

The diversity of the questions that Jules and I discussed astonishes me

now. Sometimes we would stop to argue in the middle of a performance

of a drama by Victor Hugo, which we had arranged for two actors.

“They don’t respect anything,” people said. At other times we would

argue from the branches of apple trees, where we had chased our cats.

Why did we chat from one tree to another? I really don’t know. It was

pleasant up in the branches, and, too, we used to throw each other all the

apples we could reach, which gave Marie Verdet lots of good, fallen fruit

to pick up. Marie Verdet was the old, old woman who told me the story

of the Three Washerwomen; she always saw those things, and Jules and

I never did.

That we never saw the things she saw didn’t keep us from enjoying her

stories. Indeed, I enjoyed them so much that I fell in love with all that

was fantastic. Among haunted ruins I drew magical circles, and I

declared my love to Satan. Satan didn’t come, which led me to think he

didn’t exist.

One day, chatting from tree to tree with Jules, I told him of my

declaration of love to Satan and his failure to answer me. Jules confessed

to me that he had sent a declaration of love no less tender to the famous

woman of letters, George Sand, and she hadn’t answered any more than

the devil had.

After a performance of Hugo’s **Burgraves or Hernani** which we had

arranged for two actors, I gave Jules a lute, made like mine. In one

stormy discussion on the merits of the sexes, Jules maintained that if I

learned from the schoolbooks he had brought with him during the

vacation, and learned so that I was more or less on his level, it was only

because I was an anomaly. Our lutes served as projectiles, and broke our

discussion.

While still a child, I started writing a **Universal History** for inclusion in

the rows of redbound manuscript books my grandfather kept. I started

writing it because Bossuet’s **History** bored me and because Jules, one

vacation, brought me the history he used in school. I documented the

main facts as well as I could, and went about my studying as if I were a

male.

A long time ago I recognized the superiority of the course of study in

boys’ preparatory schools to the education of girls in the provinces.

Some years after I studied my cousin’s textbook, I had the opportunity

to verify the difference in emphasis given the same subject between the

two courses of study—one for “the ladies” and the other for the “strong

sex”—and to examine the result of that difference.

I’m convinced that my first impressions were correct; adults give girls

a pile of nonsense supported by childlike logic, while at the same time

they make “our lords and masters” swallow little balls of science until

they choke. For both of us, it is a ridiculous education. A few hundred

years from now people will see it all as a heap of trash—even the

education of men.

The **Universal History** I started to write must have contained some

extraordinary mistakes. I consulted enough infallible books to assure

their presence. But after I had worked on it for a long time, someone

gave me several volumes of Voltaire, and I left my historical masterpiece

for a poem.

Then I deserted my poem for a mammoth’s tooth, of which even Big

Laumont spoke with enthusiasm. At the top of the north tower I set up a

small cell full of everything that looked like geological findings. I added

modern skeletons of dogs and cats, skulls of horses, crucibles, a stove,

and a tripod. The devil, if he exists, knows everything I tried there:

alchemy, astrology, the summoning of spirits. Every legend, from the

alchemist Nicholas Flamel to Faust, had a home in my tower.

Also in my tower I had a lute, a horrible instrument I made myself out

of a fir board and old guitar strings. I wrote verses that I addressed to

Victor Hugo, and in them I spoke pompously of my barbaric instrument.

He never knew what this poet’s lute really looked like, this lyre

with which I sent him the sweetest greetings.

In my tower I also had a magnificent barn owl with phosphorescent

eyes, whom I called Olympe, and I had some darling bats who drank

milk like little cats. I stripped the grills out of the big winnowing basket

to make cages for them, because it was safer for them to be confined

during the day.

When I was twelve or thirteen I had two grown-up suitors. The

memory of those two ridiculous persons who followed each other like

geese and who asked my grandparents for my hand would have driven

me away from marriage even if I hadn’t already decided it was repulsive.

The first one, a true comic character, wished to “share his fortune”—he

made each word ring like a little bell—with a wife reared according to his

principles, that is to say, like Molière’s Agnes.

After all that I had read, it was too late to rear me this way. That

animal! He must have slept for a century or two, and when he woke up

he came to my grandparents to recite this nonsense.

My grandparents let me make up my own mind and answer for

myself. The very day that fool appeared my grandfather and I had just

been reading from an old edition of Molière. The suitor looked to me so

much like Agnes’s guardian in **L'Ecole des femmes** that I found a way to

slip into my answer a great part of the scene beginning, “The little cat is

dead,” when her guardian questions her about an unknown male visitor.

I gave him Agnes’s speech as an answer, word for word, and naturally he

didn’t understand. Then, driven to despair, I looked straight in his face,

and with the ingenuousness of Agnes, I said to him boldly, knowing he

had one glass eye, “Monsieur, is your other eye glass, too?” That seemed

to embarrass my relatives a little, and as for my suitor, he gave me a

venomous look from the eye that wasn’t glass, and made it clear he no

longer wanted to make me his fiancée.

At this time, I had been growing a lot, and my dress was very short. My

pinafore was torn, and in my pocket I had my net for catching toads. I

was only sorry that I hadn’t already caught a few so that I could slip them

into his pocket, but I didn’t need to. He never returned.

Moliere inspired me just as much when I dealt with the second of my

two suitors. I don’t think they knew each other, and yet they made a

good pair. So many persons seem to go in pairs or threesomes, like stars

that orbit around each other. They both had the idea of choosing a very

young fiancee and having her molded like soft wax for a few years

before offering her up to themselves as a sacrifice.

To my second suitor, I said, more or less: “You see plainly what’s

hanging on the wall over there.” It was a pair of stag antlers. “Well, I

don’t love you. I will never love you, and if I marry you I won’t restrain

myself any more than Mme Dandin did. If I marry you, you will wear

horns on your head a hundred thousand feet higher than those antlers.”

I suppose I convinced him I was telling him the truth, for he never

came back. My relatives advised me, however, to be a little more reserved

in quoting old authors in the future.

There have been unfortunate children who were forced to marry old

crocodiles like those. If it had been done to me, either he or I would have

had to jump out the window.

Not too long after that affair, my grandfather was returning from

Bourmont on the stagecoach. Seated next to him was a third maniac who

pointed out Vroncourt and the Tomb and said to him:

“You see that old rats’ nest.”
“Yes,” grandfather replied.
“An old fellow lives there who is raising his grandchildren for prison
and the scaffold.”
“Oh, really?” said grandfather.
“Yes, monsieur. My friend X-recently proposed marrying one of
them, a little smart-aleck, in a few years, if her education were directed
as he wished.”
“Well?”
“The old fellow let her give her own answer. Whatever she wished.
She said such horrible things that my friend doesn’t even want to repeat
them. If I had a daughter like that, I’d put her in a reform school. And
her a little wench who doesn’t have a sou to her name. Hey, where are
you going?”
“I’m getting off at Vroncourt,” grandfather said. “I’m the old fellow
you’ve been discussing.”

So these were the days of my childhood. Now they are sketched out,

laid out on the table, the cadaver of my life. These days of former times

were so calm in events and so full of tormented dreams. Even then I

sensed my destiny. People do sense their destinies, as dogs sense a wolf,

and sometimes it comes true with a strange precision. If everybody told

of their prescient thoughts in minute detail, it would be like reading the

<em>Tales</em> of Edgar Allan Poe.

I must write things as they come to me. They are like pictures passing

from sight and going away endlessly into the shadows. Of my old

relatives, of my young and old friends, of my mother, nothing remains

today but the dreams of my childhood. I see those who disappeared

yesterday or a long time ago, just as they were, and I see all that

surrounded their lives, and the wound of their absence bleeds just as

much now as it did in the first few days. I have no real homesickness for

a country, but I am homesick for the dead. And the further along I get

in these memoirs, the more numerous are the images that press close to

me of those whom I shall never see again.

At the Tomb, near the hazel tree in a bastion of the wall, was a bench

where my mother and grandmother used to come during the summer

after the heat of the day. My mother, to make Grandmother happy, had

filled this corner of the garden with all kinds of rosebushes. While the

two women talked I leaned on the wall. The garden was cool in the dew

of the evening. The perfumes of all the flowers mingled and climbed up

to the sky. The honeysuckle, the reseda, the roses, all exhaled sweet

perfumes which joined each other. Bats flew gently in the twilight, and

their shadows soothed my thoughts. I used to recite the ballads that I

loved, without ever thinking that death was going to pass over us.

When these days of my dawning ended, so ended my songs that were

sad and dreamy. Death swooped down on the Tomb. The foyer was

empty and those old people who had reared me were laid to rest under

the pines in the cemetery.

I inherited a small tract of land. I can only picture one piece of it now,

a small copse my mother planted on the hill near her little vineyard.

From the hill I could see the woods of Suzerin and the red roof of the

farm, the blue mountains of Bourmont, Vroncourt, the mill, and the

entire hill of wheat waving in the wind. In my mind I imagined that the

sea would look like that waving wheat, and I found out later I was right.

My mother took care of the copse during her long stay in the Haute-

Marne while I was an assistant schoolmistress in Paris.

There was so little time for living together. “Things have tears,” Virgil

wrote. I feel them when I think of the little woods and the vineyard

watered by Mother’s sweat. Years later, her own mother Marguerite

wanted to see the vineyard one last time before she died, and my uncle

carried here there in his arms.

During the Franco-Prussian War, Prussian soldiers went through like

victors. They cut down the woods and destroyed the vineyard. There

was a little hut in the middle, and I believe they burned it down while

making a fire to warm themselves out of the trees they cut down. When I

was sent to New Caledonia, people claimed payment for various debts I

had incurred during the Siege of Paris, and my mother had to sell the

land.

When my paternal grandparents died, I had to leave my calm retreat

in the Tomb. From this time until her own mother died, my mother

lived in Vroncourt near the cemetery. From there she could hear the

wind in the pines that shadowed the family’s cherished graves. I can still

see the tops of the pines, heavy with snow during the winter. Never have

I seen winters so long as in the Haute-Marne, and never have I felt such

cold, except in polar oceans.

Before I left the Tomb, I wrote a farewell verse and carved it in the

wall of the tower. The old ruins did not take good care of my farewell

very long, for not a stone of it remains today.

Farewell, my dreaming retreat in the manor.

Goodbye, my high and windy tower.

Only your old moss remains,

And I, a frail, storm-broken branch,

Shall follow the currents on.
Your swallows will circle without me

And sing summer days on the rooftop,

While I drift on, an outcast.

Won’t your turret be missing its mistress

When my voice is no longer its echo?

Chapter 4. The Making of a Revolutionary

Above everything else I am taken by the Revolution. It had to be that

way. The wind that blew through the ruin where I was born, the old

people who brought me up, the solitude and freedom of my childhood,

the legends of the Haute-Marne, the scraps of knowledge gleaned from

here and there—all that opened my ear to every harmony, my spirit to

every illumination, my heart to both love and hate. Everything intermingled

in a single song, a single dream, a single love: the Revolution.

As far back as I can remember, the origin of my revolt against the

powerful was my horror at the tortures inflicted on animals. I used to

wish animals could get revenge, that the dog could bite the man who was

mercilessly beating him, that the horse bleeding under the whip could

throw off the man tormenting him. But mute animals always submit to

their fate.

In the Haute-Marne, the brooks and the lush fields shaded with

willows are filled with frogs during summer. You can hear them in the

beautiful evenings, sometimes an entire choir.

The peasants cut frogs in two, leaving the front part to creep along in

the sun, eyes horribly popping out, front legs trembling as they try to

flee under the ground. Able neither to live nor to die, the poor beasts try

to bury themselves beneath the dust or mud. In the bright sunlight their

soft, enormous eyes shine with reproach.

And geese being fattened: The peasants nail a goose’s webbed feet to

the floor to keep it from moving around. Or horses, which men gore

with bulls’ horns. Animals always submit, and the more ferocious a man

is toward animals, the more that man cringes before the people who

dominate him.

The peasants give little animals and birds to their children for playthings. In spring on the thresholds of peasants’ cottages you can see poor

little birds opening their beaks to two or three-year-old urchins who

stuff them innocently with dirt. They hold up fledglings by a foot to

watch them flap little featherless wings trying to fly, or they drag puppies

or kittens like wagons over stones and through brooks. When the beast

bites the child, the father crushes it under his shoe.

When I was a child I saved many an animal. They filled up the

crumbling Tomb, but it didn’t matter if I added another to the menagerie.

At first I traded things with other children to get the nests of

nightingales or linnets, but then the children came to understand that I

raised the little creatures. Children are less cruel than people think;

people just don’t bother to make them understand.

And then there are dogs and cats that have grown too old: I have seen

them thrown live into crayfish holes. If the woman who was throwing the

beasts in had fallen into the hole herself, I wouldn’t have reached out my

hand to pull her out.

All of this happens without anyone really thinking about it. Labor

crushes the parents; their fate grips them the way their child grips an

animal. All around the globe people moan at the machine they are

caught in, and everywhere the strong overwhelm the weak.

The dominant idea of an entire life can come from some random

impression. When I was very small, I saw a decapitated goose. I was very

little, I know, because I remember Nanette holding me by the hand to

cross the hall. The goose was walking about stiffly, and where its head

had been its neck was a bruised and bloody wound. It was a white goose

with its feathers spattered with blood, and it walked like a drunkard

while its head, thrown into a corner, lay on the floor with its eyes closed.

The sight of the headless goose had many consequences. One result

was that the sight of meat thereafter nauseated me until I was eight or

ten, and I needed a strong will and my grandmother’s arguments to

overcome that nausea. The impression of the headless goose lies at the

base of my pity for animals, and it also lies at the base of my horror at the

death penalty. Some years after I saw the headless goose, a parricide was

guillotined in a neighboring village, and at the time he was to die, the

sensation of horror I felt for the man’s anguish was mixed with my

remembrance of the goose’s torment.

The impression I had gotten from seeing the decapitated goose was

kept vivid by stories of sufferings I heard at **écrègnes**. During the long

winter evenings of the Haute-Marne, the women of each village met in a

special house set aside for them known as the **écrègnes**. In their sessions,

also called **écrègnes**, they would spin and knit and tell old stories like those

about the Ghost-in-Flames, who dances through the fields in his fiery

robe, and gossip about what was going on in various peoples’ homes.

I liked to hear those stories told against the whir of spinning wheels at

the **écrègnes** on evenings when Nanette and I received permission to go

there. The clack of knitting needles cut through the drone with a little

dry noise. And outside, the snow, the great white snow falling, stretched

out over the ground like a shroud. We were supposed to return home at

ten o’clock, but we always stayed late. It was a beautiful time. Old Marie

Verdet rested her knitting on her knees, and her eyes grew wide under

her headdress, which came forward over her face like a roof. In her

broken voice she told story after story about apparitions: about the

Ghost-in-Flames, the Three Washerwomen, and the Valley of the Sorcerers.

Her sister Franchette had seen it all, too, and she nodded her

head approvingly. When Nanette and I had to leave, we left regretfully,

skirting the walls of the cemetery, where we always saw, alas, only the

snow and heard only the north wind of winter.

My evenings at the village **écrègnes** added to the feeling of revolt that I

have felt time and time again. The peasants sow and harvest the grain,

but they do not always have bread. One woman told me how during a

bad year—that is what they call a year when the monopolists starve the

country—neither she, nor her husband, nor their four children were

able to eat every day. Owning only the clothes on their backs, they had

nothing more to sell. Merchants who had grain gave them no more

credit, not even a few oats to make a little bread, and two of their

children died—from hunger, they thought.

“You have to submit,” she said to me. “Everybody can’t eat bread every

day.”

Her husband had wanted to kill the man who had refused them credit

at 100 percent interest while their children were dying, but she stopped

him. The two children who managed to survive went to work ultimately

for the man whom her husband wanted to kill. The usurer hardly gave

them any wages, but poor people, she said, “should submit to that which

they cannot prevent.”

Her manner was calm when she told me that story. I had gone

hot-eyed with rage, and I said to her, “You should have let your husband

do what he wanted to do. He was right.”

I could imagine the poor little ones dying of hunger. She had made

that picture of misery so distressing that I could feel it myself. I saw the

husband in his torn shirt, his wooden shoes chafing his bare feet, going

to beg at the evil usurer’s and returning sadly over the frozen roads with

nothing. I saw him shaking his fists threateningly when his little ones

were lying dead on a handful of straw. I saw his wife stopping him from

avenging his own children and others. I saw the two surviving children

growing up with this memory, and then going off to work for that man:

the cowards.

I thought that if that usurer had come into the ecregnes at that moment

I would have leaped at his throat to bite it, and I told her that. I was

indignant at her believing everybody couldn’t have food every day. Such

stupidity bewildered me.

“You mustn’t talk like that, little one,” the woman said. “It makes God

cry.”

Have you ever seen sheep lift their throats to the knife? That woman

had the mind of a ewe.

I was thinking about that little story one day at catechism, and it

caused me to argue energetically for the opposite of the old proverb,

Charity begins at home. The old curé (a real believer, that one) had

placed a book, bound like the encyclopedia I had stolen from Big

Laumont, near his hand. I confess that from the instant the cure put it

down I was preoccupied by what could be inside its brown leather

covers. It couldn’t be a child’s book. I was afraid the old cure would

notice my preoccupation, and when he called on me, I was fearful of

being punished, but he was calling on me only to give me the book.

It contained meditations on the Psalms of Exile, and was all I needed

to give me a horror of conquerors to add to my horror of other human

vampires. Reading the book, I cursed those who crush peoples as much

as I cursed those who starve them, never suspecting how many times

later I would see that very crime in high places.

Meanwhile, the family property was bringing in so little that neither

we nor my uncle, who cultivated half of it, was succeeding in making

ends meet. Many similar years would follow, I felt. People couldn’t

always help others, and indeed something more than charity was necessary

if each person was always to have something to eat. As for the rich, I

had little respect for them.

I know the full reality of heavy work on the land. I know the woes of

the peasant. He is incessantly bent over land that is as harsh as a

stepmother. For his labor all he gets is leftovers from his master, and he

can get even less comfort from thought and dreams than we can. Heavy

work bends both men and oxen over the furrows, keeping the slaughterhouse for worn-out beasts and the beggar’s sack for worn-out humans.

The land. That word is at the very bottom of my life. It was in the

thick, illustrated Roman history from which my whole family on both

sides had learned how to read. My grandmother had taught me to read

from it, pointing out the letters with her large knitting needle. Reared in

the country, I understood the agrarian revolts of old Rome, and I shed

many tears on the pages of that book. The death of the Greeks oppressed me then as much as the gallows of Russia did later.

How misleading are the **Georgies** and **Eclogues** about the happiness of

the fields. The descriptions of nature are true, but the description of the

happiness of workers in the fields is a lie. People who know no better

gaze at the flowers of the fields and the beautiful fresh grass and believe

that the children who watch over the livestock play there. The little ones

want grass only to stretch out in and sleep a little at noon. The shadow of

the woods, the yellowing crops that the wind moves like waves—the

peasant is too tired to find them beautiful. His work is heavy, his day is

long, but he resigns himself, he always resigns himself, for his will is

broken. Man is overworked like a beast. He is half dead and works for

his exploiter without thinking. No peasants get rich by working the land;

they only make money for people who already have too much.

Many men have told me, in words that echoed what the woman told

me at the **écrègne**: ’’You must not say that, little one. It offends God.”

That’s what they said to me when I told them that everyone has a right to

everything there is on earth.

My pity for everything that suffers—more perhaps for the silent beast

than for man—went far, and my revolt against social inequalities went

still further. It grew, and it has continued to grow, through the battles

and across the carnage. It dominates my grief, and it dominates my life.

There was no way that I could have stopped myself from throwing my

life to the Revolution.

I have often been accused of having more solicitude for animals than

for people. It is certainly true that a sadness takes hold of me when men

must destroy a beast to whom mercy cannot be shown without endangering others.

You hold in your hands a being that wishes to live.

Once, near where I lived, on the hill down which vineyards sloped,

men had surrounded a poor she-wolf that howled as she tried to hide

her little ones within her paws. I begged mercy for her, but naturally it

wasn’t granted.

The mercy that as a child I asked for the wolf, I wouldn’t ask now for

the men who behave worse than wolves toward the human race. Whatever the pity that wrings the heart, harmful beings must disappear. At

the death of those who, like the Russian czars, represent the slavery and

death of a nation, I would now have no more emotion than I would have

about removing a dangerous trap from the road. Such persons can be

struck down without remorse. If the opportunity arose, I would always

feel that way, as I did yesterday, as I will tomorrow.

I was accused of allowing my concern for animals to outweigh the

problems of humans at the Perronnet barricade at Neuilly during the

Commune, when I ran to help a cat in peril. I did that, yes, but I did not

abandon my duty. The unfortunate beast was crouched in a corner that

was being scoured by shells, and it was crying out like a human being. I

went to find him, and it didn’t take a minute. I put him more or less in

safety, and later someone even picked him up.

Another incident happened more recently. Some mice had appeared

in my cell at Clermont. I had a pile of wool coverings my mother and

friends had sent me, and I immediately used them to stuff up all the

mouseholes. From behind one of my makeshift plugs during the night,

however, I heard a poor little cry, a cry so plaintive that it would have

taken a heart of stone not to open up the blocked hole. So I did, and the

beast came out.

The mouse was either imprudent or a genius in knowing how to judge

her world. From that moment on she came boldly up on my bed,

carrying morsels of bread. She made fun of the gestures I made to get

her to leave, and she used the underside of my pillow as a pantry and

even worse.

She wasn’t in my cell when I was taken away, so I wasn’t able to put her

in my pocket. I asked my neighbors in nearby cells to care for her, but I

don’t know what happened to the poor beast.

Why should I be so sad over brutes, when reasoning beings are so

unhappy? The answer is that everything fits together, from the bird

whose brood is crushed to the humans whose nests are destroyed by war.

The beast dies of hunger in his hole; man dies of it far away from his

home. A beast’s heart is like a human heart, its brain like a human brain.

It feels and understands. The heat and spark will always rise up. It can’t

be crushed out.

Even in a gutter like a laboratory, a beast is sensitive both to caresses

and to brutalities. More often it feels brutalities. People find it interesting

to torture a poor animal to study mechanisms which are already well

known and which fresh tortures cannot make known any better, because

the pain being inflicted causes the animal’s organs to function abnormally.

When one of its sides is dug into, someone turns it over to dig into

the other. Sometimes, in spite of the bonds that immobilize it, the animal

in its pain moves the delicate flesh on which someone is working. Then a

threat or a blow teaches it that man is the king of animals. I have heard

that during an eloquent demonstration a professor stuck his scalpel into

the living animal as he would have into a pincushion, because he couldn’t

gesture holding the scalpel in his hand. The animal was already being

sacrificed, so additional pain made little difference. At Alfort, people

did sixty-some operations on the same horse, operations that did no

good, but made the beast suffer as it stood there trembling on its bloody

hooves with their torn-off shoes.

All this useless suffering perpetrated in the name of science must end.

It is as barren as the blood of the little children whose throats were cut by

Gilles de Retz and other madmen at the beginning of modern chemistry.

Ultimately, a science, not gold, came out of their crucibles and their

search for the philosopher’s stone, but science came from the nature of

the elements and not from the cruelties of experimenters.

New wonders will come from science, and change must come. Time

raises up volcanoes under old continents, and time allows new feelings to

grow. Soon there will be neither cruelty nor exploitation, and science will

provide all humanity with enough food, with nourishing food.

I dream of the time when science will give everyone enough to eat.

Instead of the putrefied flesh which we are accustomed to eating,

perhaps science will give us chemical mixtures containing more iron and

nutrients than the blood and meat we now absorb. The first bite might

not flatter the palate as much as the food we now eat, but it will not be

trichinated or rotten, and it will build stronger and purer bodies for men

weakened by generations of famine or the excesses of their ancestors.

With the abundance of nourishing food in that future world, there

must be art, too. In that coming era, the arts will be for everyone. The

power of harmonious colors, the grandeur of sculpted marble—they will

belong to the entire human race. Genius will be developed, not snuffed

out. Ignorance has done enough harm. The privilege of knowledge is

worse than the privilege of wealth. The arts are a part of human rights,

and everybody needs them.

Neither music, nor marble, nor color, can by itself proclaim the

Marseillaise of the new world. Who will sing out the Marseillaise of art?

Who will tell of the thirst for knowledge, of the ecstasy of musical

harmonies, of marble made flesh, of canvas palpitating like life? Art, like

science and liberty, must be no less available than food.

Everyone must take up a torch to let the coming era walk in light. Art

for all! Science for all! Bread for all!

Chapter 5. Schoolmistress in the Haute-Marne

When my grandparents died and I had to leave the Tomb, I began to

prepare for my examinations as a schoolmistress because I wanted to

make my mother happy. There was little money, but the arrangements

for my legal protection were complex. My mother served as one guardian

and M. Voisin, a former magistrate, was another, just as if they were

administering a fortune. The attorney, Maître Girault, notary at Bourmont,

served as surrogate of the court. People said that all this wasn’t

enough to keep me from immediately wasting the eight or ten thousand

francs in land that I had inherited.

For the moment, however, I devoted myself to my education. Except

for three months at Lagny in 1851, my whole higher education came

from the teacher-training course under Mmes Beths and Royer at

Chaumont.

I see Chaumont now as it was then. I see the Boulingrin, the street of

Choignes with its sinister memories, for that was where the executioner

lived. I see the viaduct crossing the whole valley of the Ecoliers. Most of

all, I see Sucot’s bookstore, where first as a student and then as a

schoolmistress I always had debts. I see the large curly head of M. Sucot

looking out of the window in which he displayed his fanciest stationery,

newest books, and latest musical scores from Paris. As a child I had been

dazzled when I looked at the bookstore in Bourmont, and certain

displays of books still affect me.

I see Chaumont, and the old boarding house where I lodged, and my

teachers, and my friends, with whom I played practical jokes on nasty

people. With Clara, one of my friends, I remember causing a great

commotion at the homes of people who were bullying republicans. On

the doors of their houses, we made a mark—a mysterious mark, they

said—with red chalk. Some people saw the mark as an egalitarian

triangle (a little elongated); others saw an unknown instrument of

torture; those who were disinterested in the affair saw a big donkey’s

ear. The last were right.

The three months at Lagny came when my mother and I visited

relatives in the area. We stayed with my uncle, who was disturbed by my

constant writing, for he feared I would desert the teacher’s examination

to write poetry. To forestall this, he put me in Mme Duval’s private

boarding school at Lagny, where his own daughter had been educated,

and I stayed there about three months.

At Mme Duval’s, as at my school in Chaumont, everybody lived for

books. The outside world stopped at the threshold, and I concentrated

all my enthusiasm on the crumbs and bits of science I was reading about.

The lack of time! You learn just enough to make you thirsty for the

rest, and there is never time for the rest. Before 1871 that was the

torture of every schoolmistress’s life. Before getting her diploma she was

faced with a program of study that kept growing boundlessly, and after

getting her diploma she saw that she knew nothing. To be sure, that

predicament was nothing new, and it was shared. All of us schoolmistresses

were in the same position. The living springs where you could

quench your thirst for knowledge were not for those who had to fight

for existence.

At my boarding house at Chaumont I met my friend Julie. Sometimes

the destinies of different persons intertwine for a time and then take

opposite courses. Julie and I were both schoolmistresses, first in the

Haute-Marne and then in Paris, where we stayed together while we were

assistant schoolmistresses at Mme Vollier’s.

In Paris Julie kept busy at her studies, and the hatred I felt for

Napoleon’s Empire left her cold. It was music and poetry that swept her

away. Then the great events of 1870-71 came and Julie remained a

stranger to them. Our paths diverged completely. But before those

events, during our vacation, we had gone into the deep woods, and

under the oak tree traditional for such oaths we had sworn eternal

friendship for each other. Neither of us really broke that oath. Events

pulled us apart.

When I took my diploma at the end of 1852, I would have liked to

have taught in Paris and worked as a schoolmistress while I continued

my studies. Many people did just that. But at the time I did not want to

be separated from my mother, and I taught in the Haute-Marne so I

could live near her and my grandmother Marguerite. That is why I

began my career, in January 1853, as a schoolmistress at Audeloncourt.

The road from Chaumont to Audeloncourt is long. It turns and

spirals around Mont Chauve, comes down the slopes by the easiest

descents possible, and then shoots forward, straightening out its bends

through villages whose houses still have thatched roofs. Then the road

comes to the Sueur Woods, where, under the low branches of twisted

apple trees, sits the collapsed ruin of a little inn. The old people of the

area claim that the throats of travelers used to be slit in that inn. Only a

little over a century ago those who entered that inn rarely left it.

Travelers got on and off the coach that stopped at each relay station

from Chaumont to Audeloncourt. Some were dressed in ordinary blue

work shirts with cherrywood snuff boxes in their pockets, and they

carried sticks hanging from their wrists by little leather straps. Others

were dressed in their very best, clothes worn so rarely that folds from the

cupboards where they had been packed were traced on them as if a

pressing iron had done it.

Part of my maternal family lived in Audeloncourt. My maternal

great-uncles—Simon, Michel, and Francis, who was called Uncle Franc-

fort—lived there. They were tall, handsome old men, with strong

shoulders, powerful judgments, and simple hearts. They all had red hair

with no silver threads in it, even as old as they were when I began

teaching. They had quick minds and, like my mother’s brothers, they

had somehow learned a great mass of information and spoke well.

Many years ago some ancestor had bought an entire library by the

kilogram. There were old texts illustrated with Homer calling down the

clouds on his characters; old chronicles from which legends flew so

strongly that my great-uncles had adopted some of them; volumes of

out-of-date science; novels of by-gone days—all published under the

king’s censorship. I heard all of those books spoken of so enthusiastically

that I deeply regretted the pages that were missing from some books,

and the other books that had been lost completely.

The women of Audeloncourt used to read my great-uncles’ novels in

their late-night **écrègnes**. The reader of the evening would lick her thumb

to turn the pages while her gentle eyes dropped tears over the misfortunes

of the heroes. Some people read aloud so well that they charmed

their listeners, and the **écrègne** lasted until midnight. Then, still trembling

from the emotional impact of the story, some of the women would

walk the others back to their homes. The snow spread over everything.

The hoarfrost, like flowers in May, covered the branches. The last

women, the ones who lived farthest away, ran through the snow to their

houses while their friends yelled after them to reassure them.

Perhaps my uncles’ library also gave my maternal family the habit of

studying alone, for none of them was rich enough to afford any formal

education. My mother’s brother, Uncle Georges, had an astounding

historical erudition. Uncle Michael had a passion for mechanical things,

which I abused when I was a child, making him descend to the construction

of a little chariot and a thousand other devices.

I loved my mother’s brothers a great deal, and I imprudently called

them Georges and Fanfan until one day when my grandmother told me

it was bad to treat one’s elders with so little respect. I had a third uncle

who died in Africa many years ago. He had been in military service and

either from that experience or from books had gotten a taste for travel.

He also had a sound appreciation of many things—above all, discipline,

which provided him with many reflections that he didn’t think I was

capable of understanding. Anarchy, I believe, germinates in the heart of

all discipline.

My school in Audeloncourt, which I opened in January 1853, was

classed as a Free School, because for it to become a communal school I

would have had to have taken an oath to support the Empire. I was

optimistic; I even nourished the illusion of making a happy future for

my mother. But a month’s charge for a student could only be one franc,

which was a relatively large sum for farm-workers. Because I wasn’t old

enough to meet the age requirement for keeping boarders, I was obliged

to put my students from other villages into the homes of my Audeloncourt

pupils. Still, in spite of accusations some idiots made about that

and about my political opinions, my class went very well because I taught

with passion. I had the zeal of the very young.

When we were in my classroom at Audeloncourt we could hear the

incessant noise of water. During the summer a brook flowed downhill

murmuring to the listener. In the winter, the brook became a furious

torrent. Who listens to it now? Who listens from the dark school where I

was surrounded by attentive students? Students are always attentive in

the villages, where no harsh distractions come from outside.

I can still call all my students by name, from Little Rose, whom we

called Little Mole because of her lustrous black hair, to Big Rose, who is a

schoolmistress herself now. Claire also became a schoolmistress. Eudoxie

died in my arms during an epidemic. There was Tall Estelle who looked

like a vivacious shepherdess of Floridan, and poor Aricie, thin, lame,

weak, who could absorb a whole textbook in a few days. And Zélie, the

sister of the public courier of Clefmont, I loved doubly because of her

vivid imagination and because she had the same name as a friend of

mine at Vroncourt, whom I mourned for a long time. The public courier

and his sister were orphans. He was the eldest of the family, and

although he was very young, he filled the place of their dead parents and

had wanted his sister to attend my school. In my trips between Audeloncourt

and Chaumont, he and I used to talk of all sorts of things, the way

people do who read a great deal.

In my class at Audeloncourt, we sang the Marseillaise before the

morning’s study began and after study ended in the evening. The stanza

especially for children:

We’ll take over this course

When our elders are no longer here

was sung kneeling; one of the youngest, the little brunette Rose, sang it

solo. When we picked up the chorus again, the children and I often had

tears flooding from our eyes.

I found that same feeling again at Nouméa during the last year of my

exile in New Caledonia. It was July 14, Bastille Day. At this period I was

in charge of teaching drawing and singing in the girls’ schools in the city.

M. Simon, who was the interim mayor, wanted the children to stand in

the open bandstand in the Place des Cocotiers and sing the Marseillaise

between the two customary evening cannon shots. Night had fallen

suddenly. In tropical areas like New Caledonia there is neither dusk nor

dawn. The palm trees were rustling gently, swayed by the evening

breeze. The lanterns lit the bandstand a little, but left the square in

shadow. We felt the pressure of the crowd—a black and white crowd. In

front of the bandstand was the military band. Mme Penand, the first lay

schoolmistress who had come to the colony, was standing near me, as was

an artilleryman who was going to sing with us. Arranged in a circle the

children surrounded us.

After the first cannon shot such a silence fell that our hearts stopped

beating. I felt our voices soaring into this silence, and it seemed as if we

were being carried off on wings. The penetrating voices of the children’s

choir and the thunder of the brass instruments between the stanzas

thrilled us beyond belief. That song had led our fathers; it was the living

Marseillaise and we loved it.

Upon my return from New Caledonia, I found the sacred hymn was

being used in all sorts of public spectacles. It had not really recovered

from the mire through which the last days of the Empire had dragged it,

and wounded once again, the Marseillaise was dead for us.

At Audeloncourt on Sundays, small black wooden shoes clicked hurriedly

toward the door of the church, in order to get out by the time the

priest intoned “Domine, salvum fac Napoleonem.” I had told the children

that it was sacrilegious to take part in a prayer for that man. The

little black wooden shoes ran hurriedly out of the church, making a

gentle, dry noise like hail, the same little dry noise that the bullets made

on 22 January 1871, raining down from the windows of the Hotel de

Ville upon the unarmed crowd. Later, I heard the sound of wooden

shoes again. Those were on the tired feet of the women prisoners at

Auberive, and they clumped sadly as the woman shuffled around the

prison.

In those years when I was teaching in the Haute-Marne, I often

thought of going to Paris. Paris, of which I had only an imperfect notion

and of which I had only glimpsed the marvels that people spoke about,

attracted me. Only there could people fight the Empire, and Paris called

so strongly that a person could feel its magnetism.

The self-proclaimed defenders of law and order around Audeloncourt

who deigned to bother about me at all, called me a “red,” meaning

a republican, and they accused me of wanting to go to Paris. I still don’t

see why my wanting to go there should have upset them. If my opinions

bothered them so much, they should have been happy to see me go.

Those denunciations did trouble my mother. They also got me a good

trip to Chaumont, the capital of the Haute-Marne. The business there

was supposed to occupy me for two days, but it ended as soon as I

arrived. I went to the home of the rector of the departmental academy,

M. Fayet, and there I sat on his hearth as I used to sit talking to my

grandparents at the Tomb. I explained my actions in the light of the

accusations made against me. I said people claimed that I wanted to go

to Paris and that I was a republican. Both claims, I admitted, were

perfectly true. In speaking of my studies, of the passion that called me to

Paris, and of the Republic, I opened my heart.

The rector looked at me in silence a long time before answering. His

wife, who took my side, smiled, while their pet doves flew around the

room, which was full of sunlight and smelled like spring and like

morning the entire day. The rector ended the interview by chiding me

gently.

I drove back from Chaumont with the public courier, who was the

brother of my student Zelie. Never did we have a more serious conversation

than we had on that drive. In my pocket I had a piece of red chalk

similar to that with which Clara and I had drawn donkeys’ ears on the

doors of Bonapartists in Chaumont. On the trip I used it to make the

same drawing on the back of a traveler who was trying to praise

Bonaparte. I also made him tremble when I said: “The Republic must

come. We are many, and we are strong.”

Another time, the accusations against me were of a different nature.

From Audeloncourt I sent verses to Victor Hugo. My mother and I had

seen him in the summer of 1851. Later, he answered the letters I wrote

to him from my exile, as he had sent letters from Paris to my nest in

Vroncourt and to my boarding house at Chaumont. I also sent a few

articles to the Chaumont newspaper. I still have a few fragments of those

articles, which are less fragile than the cherished hands that saved them

for me. One of my articles contained a passage that got me accused of

insulting His Majesty, the Emperor. That accusation was correct, of

course, and could have been made on the basis of other pieces I wrote at

the time.

The article was a history of the martyrs and began:

Domitian was ruling. He had banished . . . philosophers and scholars
from Rome, increased the salary of the praetorians, reestablished the
Capitoline games, and everybody therefore adored the merciful emperor
while they waited for others to stab him. . . .

We are in Rome in the year 97 A.D.

The prefect summoned me to his office. There he told me I had

insulted His Majesty, the Emperor, by comparing him to Domitian and

that if I were not so young he would have the right to send me to the

prison colony at Cayenne.

I answered that anyone who saw M. Bonaparte in the portrait I had

painted insulted him just as much as I was accused of doing, but that it

was indeed M. Bonaparte that I had in mind. I added that, as for

Cayenne, I would be perfectly happy to set up an educational establishment

there, and since I could not afford to pay for the expense of the

trip myself, it would be very nice if the state sent me there. Things went

no further.

Some time after this interview a credulous man wanted to ask the

prefect for some favor; what, I’m not sure. He came to me saying that

since I had been at the prefect’s, I could recommend him there. In vain I

tried to tell him I had been called to the prefecture only to be accused

and threatened with Cayenne, and that my recommendation would be

worth very little. The good man wouldn’t give up, so in the end I wrote

him a letter of recommendation that read, more or less:

Monsieur le préfet,

The person to whom you were kind enough to promise a trip to
Cayenne is being tormented to give a letter of recommendation to you.

I have not been able to make this man understand that this would be the
way to have him kicked out of your office. He is as stubborn as a donkey.

Let him not learn to his sorrow that I was correct in my reluctance to
write a letter for him.

I beg you, dear sir, not to forget the trip you spoke to me about.

After he had made his expedition to Chaumont, the man came up to

me. I confess I was already laughing at the tale of woe he was going to

tell me, when to my great surprise he said: “I knew it. You’re lucky for

me. I got what I requested.” He, not I, was lucky.

My dear friend Julie taught nearby at Millières, and two institutions

with no resources were barely able to subsist near each other. The

obvious thing was for us to get together, which we did at Milli£res. Julie

and I used to sing together in the spring evenings with a piano serving as

an organ. At that time she had a voice like the forest nightingales.

But always I dreamed of Paris. Throughout these years in the Haute-

Marne, Paris called me ever more strongly, for in Paris I would be at the

heart of affairs. In 1855 or 1856 I finally decided that there was no

alternative to my going there.

Chapter 6. Schoolmistress in Paris

When I left the Haute-Marne to become a schoolmistress in Paris, I had

to leave my mother and grandmother behind. Being separated from

them made me suffer deeply, but I hadn’t yet given up the hope of

making a happy future for them, and I held tightly to that illusion.

I became a teacher in Mme Vollier’s school at 14, rue du Château-

d’Eau in Montmartre. From the time I went to Paris until Mme Vollier

died in my own school four years before the Siege, we never left each

other. Her portrait is among my most precious souvenirs that my

mother preserved carefully for me—half-faded portraits, worm-eaten

books, bunches of yew and pine, and withered red carnations and white

lilies. Today those souvenirs also include the white roses with drops of

blood on the petals which I sent my mother from Clermont.

I see the pupils at the rue du Château-d’Eau again in groups. There

were the seniors, two or three of whom were very tall—Leonie, Aline,

Leopoldine. There were the blondes, two of whom had wide foreheads

and steel-blue eyes—Héloise and Gabrielle. There was a group of pale

children: Josephine, little Noel, Marie. And others so brown they were

black: Elisa, who had the sharp features of someone from the Midi; little

Julie, whose voice was loud even though it wasn’t beautiful yet; Elisa,

who played her little piece in a prize competition at a younger age than

even Mozart had done. And so many more. What has become of them?

Julie joined me as a teacher at the school, and Mme Vollier was as

affectionate as a mother. She even found ways to dress Julie and me

stylishly. I remember hats made of white crepe with bouquets of daisies,

a dress of black silk, and mantelets of lace. Pawn shops and secondhand

stores helped, and we were fitted out for much less money than people

would have believed.

While Julie and I were at Mme Vollier’s we always dressed alike and

because both of us were tall and brunette, people used to think we were

sisters. In 1871, when the police took down detailed information about

me, I had to explain that misconception.

At this time, two of my cousins were also assistant schoolmistresses,

one in the Puteaux suburb of Paris, the other at La Chapelle. We all had

about the same income, the little that teaching earned in this period.

That lack of money didn’t depress us, for we realized that this poor

income would continue under the regime of His Majesty Napoleon III

as it had under his predecessors. There is no profession in which people

have less money, and no trade in which people know so well how to do

without it. Some women of letters among our friends suffered far more.

We were all a little bohemian, even Mme Vollier. As much as any woman

who lives on her wages, and in spite of her age, she knew how to laugh at

the situation.

We used to joke about our troubles when we gathered every Thursday

evening and drank cups of steaming coffee. I kept from telling my

mother that I had great difficulty making my income equal my expenditures,

however restrained they were.

Recognizing that we wouldn’t earn anything from teaching, but not

wishing to publicize that fact, Mme Vollier, Julie, and I drew up a formal

partnership. I was able to send my mother the act of partnership,

executed in good and proper form, which stopped people from saying

things to her like: “Your daughter will never earn anything”; or, “She

spends everything and you shouldn’t send her any more”; or, “A cook

earns ten times more than your daughter does.” We knew quite well that

teaching paid almost nothing, but any other trade open to women

offered less fulfillment when money wasn’t the only objective. Are

women’s professions any better today? Men’s aren’t.

My own dear mother found a way to send me a little money occasionally, which unhappily for my wardrobe I spent on books and music.

Because of the act of partnership, she was entirely at ease about my

financial position. The lamentations that imbeciles made about how

wrong she had been in not forcing me to marry had ceased.

I continued to reject all thought of marriage. There are enough

tortured women in the world without my becoming another one. True, I

can think like this since those people who asked to marry me, although

they are as dear to me as brothers, would be equally impossible as

husbands. Why I feel this I truthfully don’t know. Like all women, I set

my sights very high, and I believed in remaining free for the coming

Revolution. Anyway, I have always looked upon marriage without love

as a kind of prostitution.

After the partnership there was nothing those who had been taunting

my mother could say. I was a partner in a day school in Paris, even if it

was less grand than they assumed. None of us was lazy, but educational

establishments crowded the neighborhood, and our rent was very high.

In the evening after classes we gave lessons to supplement our income.

Even Mme Vollier, although she was very old, gave some. And to a lesser

degree she told her sons the same lies I had told my mother.

“If your daughter earns so much money,” people asked my mother,

“why doesn’t she ever send you any presents?” Moreover, I hadn’t been

able to go see her during our vacation. We had only a week’s vacation a

year in our day schools, because otherwise we would have lost our

students. Parents who had to look after their children only when they

weren’t in class couldn��t or wouldn’t take complete charge of them for a

vacation of more than eight or ten days each year. Then, too, because we

were giving private lessons, we couldn’t get away for long. Besides, how

could we have made enough money to pay the terrible rent if there had

been no income for a month?

My mother came to Paris to see the situation for herself. A warm

friendship sprang up between her and Mme Vollier, who resembled my

grandmother. The two of them used to say bad things about me, but

what a good two weeks we spent during my mother’s first visit, with one

exception.

It was the evening of my mother’s arrival, and the three of us were

dining together. I was so happy that it seemed inevitable that this

happiness would be disturbed. I was right. A great lout of a man with

shifty eyes came to the door unexpectedly and demanded payment for a

promissory note I had completely forgotten about. He came just at the

moment when I was speaking warmly to my mother—not to deceive her

but to reassure her—about a resolution I had made not to spend

everything I had for books. The obvious silence of Mme Vollier while I

was saying this didn’t presage anything good, and the intrusion of that

jackass showed in the most absolute possible way that I was lying. Mme

Vollier, then, to put my mother at ease, took part of the rent money that

her sons had just finished getting together and gave it to the man. It was

just enough to pay off the note. My mother sent me the sum when she

returned to Vroncourt, and she gently drew my attention to how many

deprivations my purchasing books had already caused her. I didn’t buy

any more books for a long time, but it was hard to resist, for there were

so many that tempted me and to me books were everything.

Except for being unhappy over the struggle for existence, I have

never been unhappy as a teacher. When we played games during recess,

I had a magnificent time with the older students. We extemporized

dramas that we performed for the younger children. Through everything I stayed young.

One Sunday, alone at Mme Vollier’s, I was sitting at the piano trying to

write some music that I knew would never see the light of day. It was no

less than an opera, **The Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath**. I knew it would

never be presented, and I had resigned myself to that fact bravely. It is

impossible to find publishers when you’re unknown, and you can’t be

known until you find a publisher. You don’t waste your time dragging

your manuscripts into waiting rooms. You continue your regular trade,

whatever it is. If you don’t have a trade, I, at least, would rather become

a ragpicker than go looking for recommendations to influence publishers.

I even feel a kind of pleasure in throwing stanzas and motifs and

sketches into the wind.

The plot I had written for **The Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath** was a simple

one. After the destruction of all life on our planet, hell was established

here, where things were very suitable. In the first act, the end of life has

already been caused by a geological revolution. The stage looks like a

lunar landscape. Satan is seated on top of a Parisian building whose base

rests in molten lava.

The basis of all the action is the love that Satan and the other main

character, Don Juan, have for a druidess. Their love for her kindles an

infernal war. Every person in history, poetry, or legend who ever

inspired me had a role to suit his character in my drama.

The end comes when the globe itself crumbles. All the spirits are

absorbed in the forces of nature, whose chorus is heard in a night

crossed by flashes of lightning. The general clamor of the orchestra

diminishes little by little. First one instrument, then another, becomes

silent. Finally nothing is left but a chorus of harps, and one after the

other they too fall silent. Then only one remains, and it fades in a

pianissimo sweeter than water falling on leaves. At last these final notes

also fade away, and all is silent.

I scored this work for every instrument possible, from cannon to

harmonicas, lyres, flutes, bugles, and guitars. A choir of devils speaks

wordlessly-onstage with violins, twenty of them. To hold this monstrous

orchestra you’d need a valley in the mountains or some bay in the New

World.

As I was working at the piano that Sunday on the music for the scene

of the infernal hunt, someone rang the doorbell. It was an old Jewess,

the grandmother of one of my pupils. She stood as straight as the ghost

of Don Juan’s commander, and she was very beautiful. Her face looked

as if it had been carved from marble. She must have been listening to me

outside.

“Is it really you,” she asked, “who is responsible for that savagery I

have been hearing?”

“Yes,” I answered. “It is I.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t dare to continue those horrors in front of me,”

she said. “To punish you, I want to hear the rest.”

Because of that challenge I started The Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath

over. The wild motifs made her indignant, but I kept going. She wasn’t

so hard on several parts, and she liked the love songs. She liked the

“Ballad of the Skeleton.”

Lady of the green turrets

Who sings to the evening stars,

Come down and open up my heart.

White are my hands before you

And faithful my love. Come:

Then I will have light

In my eyeless sockets

And I will see

The tournament’s queen of beauty.

At the end of the ballad the girl, of course, has fallen in love with the

skeleton, and she follows him off into the unknown. They go off into a

valley of solitude to the accompaniment of only a lute solo.

The old lady also deigned to approve my “Lay of the Troubadour”:

The bird was singing

As it shivered

Beneath the falling leaves.

And in the wind,

The soul took wing,

And was crying,

Crying.

I went on through the finale, and after my grotesque imitation on the

piano of the last fading notes of the last harp, the Jewess looked at me

with amazement.

“Poor girl,” she said. “Those monstrosities really are yours.”

I didn’t answer.

“The most unfortunate thing about it is that there are some good parts

there.”

“If there weren’t any good parts,” I said, “I wouldn’t be stupid enough

to work on it.”

“You know very well,” she said, “that you have to be either rich or

famous to indulge in things like that.”

“I’m not simply indulging myself. I intend to stay on here as a teacher,

and as proof I shall leave this unproducible piece just the way it is now. It

really is a dream, you know, whether it is about covens or real life, and I

will throw it away as I have thrown away other dreams.”

She took my hand. Hers was cold.

“Your heart,” she said. “Where will you throw it?”

“To the Revolution,” I said.

She sat down at the piano and her icy hands glided over the keys. She

began to play some invocation to the God of Israel. In it you could feel

the desert and the calm of death, and this calm went straight to my heart.

Sometime later this lady took me to a synagogue, where the strangeness

of the rites and rhythms, a sort of Kyrie in a majestic place, took hold of

me. Seeing the tears in my eyes, she believed I had been touched by the

grace of Jehovah.

“No,” I told her. “It’s just that an impression has taken hold of me.

Perhaps everything is that way.”

I wrote out part of the score for **The Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath** to give

to my friend Charles de Sivry. From laziness I substituted a gradual

diminuendo for the final catastrophe, which saved me about ten leaves.

It’s so boring to write out a fair copy.

None of the part where the orchestra fades out and ends on the last

harp note appeared worth any great effort. The Revolution was rising,

so what good were dramas? The true drama was in the streets, so what

good were orchestras? We had cannon.

Today the room where I lived in Montmartre is inhabited by people

whom I do not know, but like the house near the cemetery at Vroncourt,

I like to let my memory rest on it for an instant. It has been so very long.

The last time I saw Vroncourt was during the vacation of 1865. I went

there with Mme Eudes, then Victorine Louvet. She was very young then,

perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, and she was preparing for her

teacher’s examination.

During the illness from which she died so young, after her return

from exile, Victorine still talked to me about that autumn vacation in

Vroncourt. We had gone together into the woods, and I had shown her

the oak tree where oaths were exchanged. The Tomb was still standing

then, and I took her to see that, too. She went with my mother into the

vineyard, which was full of young trees my mother had planted. One

evening, as we went through the forest from Thol to Clefmont, going to

the home of “Uncle” Marchal, an old forester who had just married off

his daughter, the regular steps and luminous eyes of a wolf followed us

the whole way. That gave me the setting for “The Legend of the Oak.”

**The Legend of the Oak**
1 .
Beneath the oak the priestess stands,

Vines of verbena entwining her hair,

Silence seizes the shadowed forest,

Except for the bards and the mystical priests,

Spreading their tools for the rite.
The great songs end; the air holds their echo.

Wind-blown branches strum the strings of a lute.

From goblets of oak the white bull’s blood pours,

But the sacrificed beast cries out in his pain,

A sinister omen.
The priestess beseeches the fates and hears

The rumbling storm demand she give

A human sacrifice. He comes

To let his blood be poured on the earth,

Let out of his heart with a golden scythe.
His death-glow lighting the purpling sky,

He waits the ennobling martyr’s death.

She strikes his heart with her golden scythe

And trembling, strikes herself, to fall

Piercing her heart again.
2 .
Fierce, proud men of Gaul long past

Wore over their hearts a talisman.

The furze that blooms above their bones

Allows them to wear their symbol still.
That was the time when every slave

Rose against bloody Caesar’s Rome.

That was the time when Gaul was brave

And gathered home her scattered sons.
Proud and ferocious great grand-sires,

How long and heavy is your sleep!

O Fathers, omens still occur today,

And your red blood flows in our veins.
You who arm yourselves, why live?

Liberty’s love is stronger than death.

A person must seek for freedom’s joy.

Happy are those who seize the chance!
Marriage fetters a hundredfold;

It gives new slaves to the tyranny

Of Tiberius with bloody eyes.

No, we’ll not be slaves in his games.
3.
My friends, beneath the oak is good.

Regardless, oaks keep oaths once sworn,

An oath of love, an oath of hate,

Sealed with blood on the mistletoe.

That vacation in the autumn of 1865 should have lasted forever. My

mother’s and grandmother’s joy in seeing me again was as great as my

own, but it was over far too soon. When Victorine and I left Vroncourt

and those two women, I didn’t dare to turn my head, for my heart was

breaking. I was never to see my grandmother Marguerite again. But it

was the moment when the struggle against the Empire was intensifying

and each person kept his place, as small as it was.

I am afraid to dwell too long on this first period of my life, the days of

calm with tormenting dreams. I have described puerile and childish

things; that is the way of every person’s earlier years, and sometimes it

lasts throughout whole lives. As I continue the narrative I will return to

moments and events from these early times, drawn by some association

or other; sometimes the pen, like spoken words, rushes off pursuing its

own goal.

Chapter 7. The Decaying Empire

The city of Paris condemned our school building on the rue du Chateau-

d’Eau. Mme Vollier hoped in vain that after its demolition we would get

an indemnity which would let us establish a day school in the suburbs.

Julie had received a small sum from her family, and she struck out on

her own. Relinquishing her share in the partnership to us, she bought a

day school in faubourg St. Antoine; I chose not to go with her, but on

holidays we got together, and on Thursday evenings I gave music

lessons at her school.

My mother sold all her remaining land except the vineyard to give me

enough money to buy a day school in Montmartre. The poor woman,

how little she got back for that money, and what sacrifices she and

Grandmother imposed on themselves to raise it! Mme Vollier and I lived

in the day school. Her sons gave her an annuity, and gradually the

number of our pupils increased, so that for schoolmistresses we were

nearly comfortable. What plans we made. Those were good times, when

my grandmother was still living, and I continually got good news about

her and my mother. For a few brief years, joy filled my heart.

But then Mme Vollier died. One evening Julie and Adèle Esquiros

had come over to dine with us. It was a holiday, and all four of us were

very warm in our little room high up. We spoke gaily, especially Mme

Vollier. I had never seen her so cheerful. She had just received her

pension, so we were momentarily rich, and we; were even talking about

sending a little gift to the Haute-Marne. Julie had brought something to

eat from the country, and Adèle was responsible for some dainties.

On the open piano, the fat, black cat paced back and forth on the keys,

listening to the tune which his paws produced. His head was raised, and

earlier he had lapped up a whole bowl of coffee cream.

I told the others how, the day before, I had pasted a republican poster

on the back of a policeman. I had been holding the poster, and there was

nowhere else to put it.

Mme Vollier told us that, in the best interests of the household, she

had collected all the keys and put them in her pocket. She made them

clink in her pocket with the same smile in her eyes I used to see in my

grandmother’s and that I had seen so many times in my mother’s when

she snatched something back from my little larcenies.

Our friends applauded Mme Vollier, and we laughed still more when,

full of remorse, I gave her back the purse I had stolen from the chest of

drawers that morning. Almost nothing was missing from it. In the midst

of all this happiness some kind of terrible grief took hold of me. We were

so happy it couldn’t last, but I did my best to try to ignore that

foreboding.

Our friends left fairly late, and I walked with them as far as the

omnibus on the rue Marcadet. The night was black and sad, and in this

darkness a dog was howling. As I was returning, he began to follow me.

It was chance that put this sinister beast on my track; he was an evil

portent.

When I got back to school I was careful to avoid letting Mme Vollier

see the sadness sweeping over me. She was still gay, but not for long.

That night she had her second stroke.

Her portrait is near my bed, opposite a bouquet of red carnations. Her

sons gave me a share of memorabilia as if I were their sister. After her

death a great sadness forced its way into my heart, but there was no time

to indulge my suffering. The Empire became more threatening as it

neared its end, and we became more determined.

I kept my school going. Mlle Caroline L’Homme, the first schoolmistress who had established herself in Montmartre, and who had, she

rightly claimed, taught the whole neighborhood to read, had become

sick and old. She still had a few pupils, and one day she brought them to

me and established herself in my school. She was exhausted.

She was like one of the legends of the North. She appeared to be one

of the Norns, so quietly did she walk. Pale, her long white hair fastened

by a large needle, she exhaled a spirit of something prophetic and

fateful. There was no person more charming than Mlle L’Homme. She

was so sweet and at the same time so proud, and now she too is dead.

Then my grandmother died. My poor mother had so few peaceful

days. Broken by the death of her mother, she came to Montmartre, but

when she came the Revolution was imminent, so I left her alone during

many long evenings. Afterwards it was days, then months, then years.

Can the mothers of revolutionaries be happy? I loved her so much that I

will be happy only when I go to meet her in the earth where we shall

sleep.

Of all the schoolmistresses I have known, one of the most keen to

collect all of the details of science was Mlle Poulin in Montmartre.

Although her health had been undermined by consumption for a long

time, she no longer felt it. She kept busy piling up the greatest amount of

knowledge possible so that she could take it with her to her grave. At the

very end of the Empire, Mile Poulin and I united our two schools into a

new school at 24, rue Houdon. Mlle Poulin lived for only a brief time,

and by coincidence I saw her tomb one last time at the climax of the

fighting in May 1871.

I had met Mlle Poulin at the rue Hautefeuille. Many of us schoolmistresses

continued our educations at the center where various activities

took place. We had free courses in elementary teaching, professional

courses, readings to mothers of families, and a night course for young

people who had to work. I taught a great number of those poor children

there. Young as they were they had to work all day, and if it hadn’t been

for the center on the rue Hautefeuille, they would never have been in a

class. Instruction continued up to ten o’clock at night, and when I got

out even the bookstores were closed. Under the Empire those women

who were either young teachers or were preparing themselves to become teachers were eager for this learning. They had only what they had

been able to snatch here and there, and at the rue Hautefeuille they

became even more thirsty for knowledge and liberty. Many good friendships were born there.

It was comfortable there in the evenings, both in our little groups and

when a large meeting occurred. When big meetings took place, we left

the floor of the hall to the strangers, and our little group of enthusiasts

gathered near the instructor’s desk, where a skeleton and other things

we liked were kept. From that spot near the desk we could see and hear

much better than if we had tried to join the mob in the room.

The rue Hautefeuille overflowed with life and youth. We lived in the

future, in the time when people would be more than beasts of burden

whose work and blood other people made use of. At the rue Hautefeuille

in the long night of the Empire we had glimpses of a better world.

Five or six years before the Siege, it provided an untainted refuge in the

middle of imperial Paris, a place impervious to the stench of the charnel

house, although sometimes our history courses roared out the Marseillaise

and smelled of gunpowder.

Somehow we were always able to find the time to attend courses

several days a week. There were lectures on physics, chemistry, and even

law. People tried out new methods of teaching, too. In addition to

listening to others, we found time to give lectures ourselves. I had never

understood how time could be so elastic. We didn’t waste a minute, and

our days were stretched to fit so that midnight seemed early.

I remember a tall old man with white hair explaining how useful

stenography could be in teaching. Using stenographic techniques would

allow many things to be abbreviated. People have so little time for study,

and they waste so much of it.

Several of us began spasmodic studies for the baccalaureate again. My

former passion for algebra engrossed me once more. I was able to verify,

and this time with certainty, that if a person isn’t an idiot (at least all the

time), he can get along in mathematics without a teacher. The trick is to

leave no formula behind without knowing it and no problem behind

without finding its answer.

A frenzy for knowledge possessed us. It was refreshing to sit two or

three times a week on student benches ourselves, side by side with our

own most advanced pupils, whom we sometimes brought with us. They

listened happily and proudly beside us, scarcely thinking about the time.

The more excited we got about all these things, the more we lapsed

into the high spirits of schoolchildren. We had good times, and often we

resembled students more than teachers.

When we were sad, we played jokes, for laughter cuts the shadows.

One vacation day, I went to an employment agency to get a job as a cook

at the home of some bourgeois family. After the first dinner I planned to

cook for them, they would have fired me pretty rapidly. The employment

agency was next to the Bastille on a fourth floor. Of course I had

no papers, so I told the employment agent I had forgotten them. When I

gave him the names of the imperial gangsters I claimed to have worked

for, he got giddy. He ended up making me feel sorry for him, and I gave

up the project; I flung it all in his face, laughing till my sides hurt.

Why are people so entranced with name-dropping? That was the

lesson I gave that poor devil, and it would have been worth the trouble to

go put pepper in the sugared dishes of some bourgeois soul used to

cordon bleu cooks. Once the employment agent understood what was

happening, he began to rail at me. Still laughing at him I left, after I

warned him against being too easily “bonaparted” with name-dropping.

I recall another incident. One evening at the rue Hautefeuille we had

been learning Danefs method of musical notation. As in England and

Germany the notes in Danel’s method are represented by letters of the

alphabet, but with the difference that they are written without a staff.

We left the rue Hautefeuille late, and because there were no more buses,

we were returning to our homes on foot. Some idiot began to follow me,

walking up on his toes with long heronlike legs. At first it amused me to

watch this shadow of a bird glide along under the streetlights.

He kept repeating the foolish remarks people use when they don’t

know if you will answer them. I became impatient, and that spoiled the

impression I got of his being some kind of fantastic bird running around

on his long legs. I looked him straight in the face, and in my loudest

voice I began to descend the Danel scale: D, B, L, S, F, M, R, D!

The effect was overwhelming.

Perhaps it was the somewhat masculine accent, or perhaps it was the

strange syllables formed by the letters. I never found out. The bird

disappeared.

Another time I was returning home on foot fairly late, and I had on a

long cloak which enveloped me completely. I was wearing a sort of wide

hat made out of shaggy cloth which cast a lot of shadows on my face, and

brand-new ankle boots from the pawnshop. For some reason the heels

made a lot of noise. The newspapers recently had been writing a lot

about nocturnal attacks. Some good bourgeois heard my boots ringing,

and being unable to make out my exact form because of my cloak and

hat, he began to run with such fear that it gave me the idea of following

him for a bit to scare him properly.

He went along, looking around to see if anyone would come to help

him. With the black night and the deserted streets, the bourgeois was

scared witless, and I was having a really good time. He lengthened his

stride as much as he could. I kept to the shadows and made my heels

strike even louder, because that noise was what kept up his fright. I don’t

know what district we had come to when I let the bourgeois go, yelling at

him: “Must you be so stupid?”

That night I returned home very late, or rather very early in the

morning, and I was no longer laughing. In the same night, after I had

scared the bourgeois idiot, I had seen the people who live off victims,

and people who are the victims themselves. It was an ordinary night of

what people call civilized society.

Mme Vollier was still living then, and when I got home she scolded me

for my lateness, in spite of my daily precaution of setting back the clock.

The poor woman had been worrying about me as my mother would

have done, and she told me how tired I would feel the next day.

As she was talking to me I composed in my mind a few verses about

the bandits and girls I had spoken with that night, and with whom I have

often spoken since.

Criminals and Whores
Discerned in the dark of ill-lit streets,

The sublimely wretched shamble through the night,

Namelessly slide past and cast no shadow,

Past obscured doorways at the edge of light

For other phantoms to erase.
I have seen criminals and whores

And spoken with them. Now I inquire

If you believe them made as now they are

To drag their rags in blood and mire,

Preordained, an evil race?
You, to whom all men are prey,

Have made them what they are today.

No one comes into the world with a knife in his hand to stab others, or

with a card in her hand to sell herself. No one comes into the world with

a club ready to be a cop, and no one comes into the world carrying a

minister’s portfolio, so that he may be captured by the dizziness of power

and drag nations down.

No bandit who could not have been an honest man. No honorable

man who is not capable of committing crimes.

Among the people associated with the rue Hautefeuille was Jules

Favre. At this time he was a true republican leader, but after the fall of

Napoleon III he became one of those who murdered Paris. Power would

poison him as it poisons all those who are clothed in that cloak of Nessus.

In those years during the twilight of the Empire that same Jules Favre

was like a father, and he treated us with a father’s kindness. Many times I

used his being a chairman of our association as a pretext for taking

people to him who needed a lawyer’s opinion and couldn’t pay for it.

One day, I remember I took him an old woman who thought she was

being persecuted, and he had to try to reassure her. Dealing with her

cost him a lot of time. I was with her in his office, and Favre came over to

tell me how annoyed he was with me. The obtuse angle made by his

forehead and his chin closed into a right angle, a bad sign.

“This is too much,” he muttered to me while the old woman kept

curtseying to him and telling him how she had been persecuted for

twenty years.

I can still see the spot where that took place; Favre and I were

whispering near a large vase his voters had given him. An uncontrollable

desire to laugh took hold of me, and I did. I laughed so heartily that the

right angle of Favre’s profile was transformed into its usual obtuse angle

again, and his eyes shone. He couldn’t stop himself from laughing, too.

Still curtseying, the old woman left saying, “Thank you very much.

Till another time. See you soon.”

Another chairman of our association was Eugene Pelletan, a republican member of Bonaparte’s assembly. His eyes, sunk under thick, gray

eyebrows, glowed like coals and gave him a strange appearance. He

reminded me of Nicolas Flamel or Cagliostro or some other alchemist

out of the legends. It was when he was speaking from the desk at the rue

Hautefeuille that we especially liked to huddle near the skeleton and

observe events from there, listening, caught up in the poetry of science,

caught up in his words on liberty, his love of the Republic, and his hatred

for the Caesars.

Under this inspiration we began to write many works that are lost

today. I wrote an enormous manuscript that I entitled <em>The Wisdom of a

Madman</em>. Pelletan was then our chairman, and I carried it to him so that

he could read it and give me his opinion. Since then I have come to

understand how patient he must have been to read that enormous,

unintelligible book and to annotate a few passages in it.

“This is not the wisdom of a madman,” he wrote. “One day it will be

the wisdom of peoples.”

Bringing that manuscript home, I seemed to walk on air. I reread

much of it carefully, but I didn’t have time to revise it. I had to give more

and more lessons after class, and **The Wisdom of a Madman** was laid aside

with my other unpublished works. Perhaps I would have looked for a

publisher if I hadn’t been so busy.

The last two years before 1871, the rue Hautefeuille was a hotbed of

intellectual women. My friend Marie L-wrote page after page, and

Jeanne B-and possibly her sister were assumed to have manuscripts

in progress. Julie L—and Mlle Poulin threw poems to the winds. But

prose and verse and music disappeared because we felt so near the

drama coming from the street, the true drama, the drama of humanity.

The songs of the new epoch were war songs, and there was no room for

anything else.

The professional schools, for which we had Jules Simon, an opposition

member of the Assembly, to thank, captured all-out enthusiasm. Those

schools saved a few handfuls of girls from apprenticeship, and provided

them with trades or diplomas.

In the last years of the Empire there was a free professional school on

the rue Thevenot. Each of us gave three evenings a week there. The

Society for Elementary Education took care of the rent, and it all worked

out. One of our professors, a man whom we called Doctor Francolinus,

displayed fiendish activity there. Sometimes the police of the Empire

gave us the pleasure of attending our classes, and then an hour of

lessons would go by quickly, because we put in occasional comments that

gave a good clawed swat at Napoleon Ill’s ugly hyena’s moustache.

I taught the literature and ancient geography courses twice a week

and Charles de Sivry taught them two other days. We taught them

exactly the same way, for Charles and I often had the same ideas. The

last idea we had was for a piano whose hammers had been replaced by

little bows to give a piano something of the passion that violins have. I

wrote an article about this, and it was published in the **Progrès musical**

under the name of Louis Michel. I have often noticed that when I sent a

periodical material signed Louise Michel it was a hundred to one it

wouldn’t be printed, but if I signed it Louis Michel or Enjolras, a

pseudonym I used, the chances of publication were greater.

What Charles and I taught in the courses on literature was the utility

of examining cities and peoples in terms of childhood, youth, and decay.

That is the real way it happens, although people think it is a romanesque

approach. The lives of individuals and the history of humanity show a

parallel progression. In every individual’s life you can see the same

transformations that you can see in our history, in the story of our

collective existence that spans the centuries.

Nevertheless, however aware a person is of those centuries-long

rhythms of change, he still lives inside his own epoch. It is inside his own

epoch that he feels, suffers, and is happy; and all the love, all the hate, all

the harmony, all the power that he possesses—he must throw all this into

his surroundings. One person is nothing and yet part of that which is

everything—the Revolution.

And so here is Louise Michel. She is a menace to society, for she has

declared a hundred times that everyone should take part in the banquet

of life. What would be the pleasure of riches if one were unable to

compare one’s own well-fed condition to that of people dying of hunger?

Where would the feeling of security come from if one were unable to

compare one’s good, solid position to that of people who must work in

poverty?

What is more, Louise Michel is a woman. If she could only be fooled

by the idea that women can get their rights by asking men for them. But

she has the villainy to insist that the strong sex is just as much a slave as

the weak sex, that it is unable to give what it does not have itself. All

inequalities, she claims, will collapse when men and women engage in

the common battle together.

Louise Michel is a monster who maintains that men and women are

not responsible for their situations and claims it is stupidity which causes

the evils around us. She claims that politics is a form of that stupidity and

is incapable of ennobling the race.

If Louise Michel were the only person saying all this, people could say

she is a pathological case. But there are thousands like her, millions,

none of whom gives a damn about authority. They all repeat the battle

cry of the Russian revolutionaries: land and freedom!

Yes, there are millions of us who don’t give a damn for any authority

because we have seen how little the many-edged tool of power accomplishes.

We have watched throats cut to gain it. It is supposed to be as

precious as the jade axe that travels from island to island in Oceania. No.

Power monopolized is evil.

Who would have thought that those men at the rue Hautefeuille who

spoke so forcefully of liberty and who denounced the tyrant Napoleon

so loudly would be among those in May 1871 who wanted to drown

liberty in blood? Power makes people dizzy and will always do so until

power belongs to all mankind.

During the twilight of the Empire the type of things I wrote changed.

When I was at Mme Vollier’s I sent some poems to the newspapers,

<em>L'Union des poetes, La Jeunesse</em>, and others. I just threw things out and I

barely paid any attention to them; I don’t even know which ones were

printed. I did send some of the best poems to Victor Hugo when I was in

exile.

The time was far removed from those days at Vroncourt when I had

sent him verses that the indulgent master had said were as sweet as my

youth.

Me, I am the white dove

Of the black arch.

I had sent him that one from Vroncourt. Now, the verses I sent him

smelled of gunpowder:

Do you hear the brazen thunder

Behind the man who takes no side?

A reluctant man betrays tomorrow.

Up the mountains and over the cliffs

We go together to sow freedom.

That poem, “The Black Marseillaise,” I threw one July 14 into the

wicket at the Echelle along with some others addressed to Mme Bonaparte.

These later poems, begun in collaboration with Vermorel, had

been reviewed and augmented by friends who had the same disdain for

rhyme; they added other phrases that were more appropriate to the

circumstances.

Under the Empire, literature was strange, as it always is when nations

are slaughterhouses. Books were filled with foolishness, but there were

forgotten corpses behind each page. All published writing smelled stale.

Adele Esquiros, the author of captivating works, remained silent

during those years as she waited for more propitious times. She continued to write,

but submitted nothing to a publisher. From time to time,

however, she would read us a few pages full of fresh lines and gracious

images that gave us the impression of spring mornings when dew covers

the flowers and the sun shines in the branches. There were also bitter

passages in her work, but she covered their sadness with some seeming

pleasantry. I wonder what has become of her manuscripts; I have never

seen any of them appear in print. Because of deportation and prison, I

haven’t had enough time to visit my old friends. Adele Esquiros has been

paralyzed for several years now, but she is submitting to her fate with the

same smile on her lips that she wore before.

At the end of the Empire our revolutionary meetings became more

numerous, and many of them were even held in daylight. Evening

meetings were more common, however, and one evening while my

mother was living with me, I had planned to go to a meeting. To keep

her from worrying, I had been claiming that I wasn’t actively involved in

anything. Two of our friends came by to take me to the meeting, but

stayed outside so she wouldn’t suspect what was going on. I told her I

was going out to give some lessons.

“Impossible,” said the poor woman. “You can’t be going out to give

lessons at this hour.”

“Julie sent for me,” I said.

She went to the window.

“I knew it,” she said. “It is one of your meetings.”

And she laughed in spite of herself, as my friends and I left laughing,

too.

Most of our meetings took place outside Paris. Often as we were

returning to Paris by little paths through fields, we talked about many

things. At other times we were silent, dazzled by the idea of sweeping

away the shame of twenty years. We were all poets, a little. We have

suffered, but we have seen some beautiful things.

One holiday I was going to Julie’s when I encountered a vast multitude

of people on the boulevard. With the hopes I held, I believed the

hour had come, but it was a carnival, in the midst of which the old

republican Miot was being taken to prison. Some people in the crowd

who were following the carnival performers left them to see the old man

dragged off by the varlets of the Empire. It was a joyous crowd on a day

of mourning, but they weren’t really the people. They were the same

crowd you see at public executions, but which you can never find when

you need to rip up paving stones to build barricades. They are the same

unthinking crowd that bolsters up tyrannies and cuts the throats of

people trying to save them. They are the great herd that bares its back

for the whip and holds out its neck to the knife.

For five years, from 1865 to 1870, we had believed that the end of the

Empire was imminent. For the cup to overflow, however, the defeat at

Sedan had to be added to the other crimes. People always wait for the

cup to overflow for the same reason that keeps them from ever being

upset by the approach of misfortunes they think they can prevent.

How strongly toward the end of the Empire the fearful stanza of

Victor Hugo came back to me. “Harmodius, it’s time! / You can strike

down this man without remorse,” Hugo wrote. Hugo’s words went into

my heart like a knife, and each syllable rang in my ears like the tolling of

a bell. Vengeance finally reached Harmodius, the Athenian murderer,

when the younger brother of his innocent victim cut him down.

I would have killed my tyrant without feeling any distress. Millions

would have been spared if he had died. Someone promised me an entree

to him; even to kill him I wouldn’t have requested a formal audience.

But I got that entree only after Bonaparte had left for the war and was

no longer in Paris.

Sedan could have been avoided if Bonaparte had been dead. People

are used to waiting for the annihilation of multitudes, and to stop

bandits like Bonaparte they will accept the annihilation of a nation

willingly. Perhaps Sedan will make things understood more quickly, and

the destruction of those legions will keep the human race from surrendering

itself any longer to those woodcutters of men who chop people

down like a forest for their own convenience.

Far away in the forests of New Caledonia, I once saw a rotten tree

collapse suddenly. When the cloud of dust dispersed, there was only a

heap of trash, over which, like headstones in a graveyard, a few green

boughs stretched out, the last effort of the old tree dragged down by the

dead trunk. In that tree, myriads of insects had lived for centuries, and

they, too, were engulfed in the collapse. Some of them stirred painfully

in the dust, and startled and upset they stared at the daylight which was

going to kill them, for their kind, born in the shade, could not stand

light.

Like those insects, we live in an old tree, and we stubbornly believe it

still lives, but the least breath of wind will destroy it, and its debris will

blow across the earth. No one can escape change.

Chapter 8. The Siege of Paris

<em>Despite overwhelming support given Napoleon III in a plebiscite held in May

1870, the emperor was coming under increasing political pressure, and his

government tried to win public support through an adventurous foreign policy.

Conflict with Prussia over the nomination of a German princeling to the empty

throne of Spain led the French government to decide for war against Germany on

14 July 1870. Two weeks later Napoleon left Paris to join the French military

forces. The Germans defeated the French army decisively at Sedan on 1 September

1870, and captured the emperor.</em>

<em>Crowds in Paris began to demonstrate two days later, and on September 4,

amidst severe disorder, the Paris mob proclaimed the Republic. A Government of

National Defense headed by Napoleon’s military governor of Paris, General

Trochu, took power in the name of the Republic. Two weeks later German forces

surrounded Paris.</em>

During the terrible year of the war and the Siege, when I saw our

people die while they were so full of life, I suddenly recalled an

impression from my childhood. I saw an oak standing tall and solid with

its shadow falling over the long grass full of white daisies and buttercups.

It was the oak of my legend, and it had an axe embedded in its heart; in

its trunk was a wide gash, and the iron of the axe was damp with sap.

These impressions come back like dead leaves driven by the wind.

Paris was quivering from the Empire’s crimes. In spite of the blandishments

of the imperial gang, we true republicans were not eager for the

war with Prussia. To befuddle the people, the Bonapartists had torn the

wings off the Marseillaise, and when we cheered for the Republic in

August, Paris should have risen in remembrance of its proud and heroic

tradition. The city should have cleansed itself by bathing in the blood of

the Empire. Instead, revolutionary Paris stood silent. I can still see the

city amid a quiet haze: Every shutter was closed, leaving the boulevard

La Villette deserted. Around the carriage in which Eudes and Brideau

were prisoners, people cried out: “Attack the Prussians!”

After September 4 there was too little change, for the people didn’t

insist on it. Some wanted to undertake desperate sorties to drive back the

Prussians, but they were forbidden to try. Even after the encirclement of

Paris, people waited for an army to liberate the city, for they claimed that

a city had never raised a siege without outside help. That something has

never happened before certainly does not mean it is impossible.

When several of our friends were condemned to death for having

tried to proclaim the Republic in August before Bonaparte was overthrown, André Léo, Adèle Esquiros, and I were appointed to carry to

General Trochu a protest against their sentences signed by thousands of

people. Some people had signed that protest from momentary indignation

and then had become timid, and wanted their names taken off the

lists because of second thoughts. Our friends’ lives were at stake, and I

certainly did not want to erase a single name.

To get our protest to General Trochu was not easy. It took all my

feminine stubbornness to get into his office. By almost a direct assault,

we got to some kind of antechamber. The people there wanted us to

leave before we had seen the governor of Paris.

“We come on behalf of the people,” we said, and the words sounded

ominous to them in those surroundings. There was only one red sash of

the Revolution being worn at the Hôtel de Ville, and that was worn by

Henri Rochefort. And yet the Parisians were saying to themselves, “The

people are now ruling.” We were invited to leave Trochu’s office, but we

went over and sat on a bench against the wall, declaring that we should

not leave without an answer.

Tired of seeing us wait, a secretary went to look for some personage

who was said to represent Trochu. That person came over to us, and

when we decided it was impossible to see the general personally, we

presented our protest to this aide. He weighed the voluminous petition

covered with thousands of signatures (which seemed to upset him) in his

hand, and he declared that the petition would be taken under consideration because of the number of signatures. That promise would have

meant little if the Empire hadn’t been collapsing. Rotten as the Empire

was, the hammer blow of Sedan killed it.

Shortly after the encirclement of Paris, I was arrested for the first

time. Because the city of Strasbourg was in great danger from the

Prussian armies, Mme Andre Leo and I had rounded up a large number

of volunteers, determined to make one last great effort or die with

Strasbourg. We were crossing Paris in long columns, crying out, “To

Strasbourg, to Strasbourg.” We were going to sign our names in the

register placed on the lap of the statue of Our Lady of Strasbourg in the

Place de la Concorde, and from there go to the Hôtel de Ville and

demand arms. There we were arrested, Mme Léo, me, and a poor, little

old woman who had been crossing the square to get some kerosene while

the demonstration was going on. She kept clutching her oil can while she

was being accused of intending to commit arson. We testified in her

behalf, but the most eloquent witness for her innocence was the way she

continued to grip her can, and the authorities let her go. As she left, her

oil can dribbled oil on her dress because her hands were trembling so

badly.

A fat old jackass came in later, egged on by his curiosity. I tried to tell

him what was going on. “What does Strasbourg matter to you?” this

insensitive, bedecked functionary asked. “Do you think that Strasbourg

will perish simply because you aren’t there?”

Finally a member of the Provisional Government got us released, but

at that very moment, September 27, Strasbourg surrendered to the

Prussians.

In Montmartre, in the Eighteenth Arrondissement, we organized the

Montmartre Vigilance Committee. Few of its members still survive, but

during the Siege the committee made the reactionaries tremble. Every

evening, we would burst out onto the streets from our headquarters at

41, chaussee Clignancourt, sometimes simply to talk up the Revolution,

because the time for duplicity had passed. We knew how little the

reactionary regime, in its death throes, valued its promises and the lives

of its citizens, and the people had to be warned.

Actually there were two vigilance committees in Montmartre, the

men’s and the women’s. Although I presided over the women’s committee, I was always at the men’s, because its members included some

Russian revolutionaries. I still have an old map of Paris that hung on the

wall of our meeting room; I carried it back and forth across the ocean

with me as a souvenir. With ink we had blotted out the Empire’s coat of

arms, which desecrated it and which would have dirtied our headquarters.

The members of the men’s Montmartre Vigilance Committee were

remarkable persons. Never have I seen minds so direct, so unpretentious,

and so elevated. Never have I seen individuals so clearheaded. I

don’t know how this group managed to do it. There were no weaknesses.

Something good and strong supported people.

The women were courageous also, and among them, too, there were

some remarkable minds. I belonged to both committees, and the leanings

of the two groups were the same. Sometime in the future the

women’s committee should have its own history told. Or perhaps the two

should be mingled, because people didn’t worry about which sex they

were before they did their duty. That stupid question was settled.

In the evenings I often was able to be at meetings of both groups, since

the women’s, which met at the office of the Justice of the Peace on the

rue de la Chapelle, began an hour earlier than the men’s. Thus after the

women’s meeting was over I could go to the last half of the men’s

meeting, and sometimes other women and I could go to the entire men’s

meeting.

The Montmartre Vigilance Committees left no one without shelter

and no one without food. Anyone could eat at the meeting halls,

although as the Siege continued and food supplies became shorter, it

might only be one herring divided between five or six people. For people

who were really in need we didn’t hesitate to dip into our resources or to

use revolutionary requisitioning. The Eighteenth Arrondissement was

the terror of profiteers. When the reactionaries heard the phrase,

“Montmartre is going to come down on you,” they hid in their holes; we

chased them down anyway, and like hunted beasts they fled, leaving

behind the hiding places where provisions were rotting while Paris

starved.

Ultimately the Montmartre Vigilance Committees were mowed down,

like all revolutionary groups. The rare members still alive know how

proud we were there and how fervently we flew the flag of the Revolution.

Little did it matter to those who were there whether they were

beaten to the ground unnoticed in battle or died alone in the sunlight. It

makes no difference how the millstone moves so long as the bread is

made.

Everything was beginning, or rather, beginning again, after the long

lethargy of the Empire. The first organization of the Rights of Women

had begun to meet on the rue Thevenot with Mmes Jules Simon, Andre

Leo, and Maria Deraismes. At the meetings of the Rights of Women

group, and at other meetings, the most advanced men applauded the

idea of equality. I noticed—I had seen it before, and I saw it later—that

men, their declarations notwithstanding, although they appeared to

help us, were always content with just the appearance. This was the

result of custom and the force of old prejudices, and it convinced me

that we women must simply take our place without begging for it. The

issue of political rights is dead. Equal education, equal trades, so that

prostitution would not be the only lucrative profession open to a

woman—that is what was real in our program. The Russian revolutionaries are right; evolution is ended and now revolution is necessary or the

butterfly will die in its cocoon.

Heroic women were found in all social positions. At the professional

school of Mme Poulin, women of all social levels organized the Society

for the Victims of the War. They would have preferred to die rather

than surrender, and dispensed their efforts the best way they could,

while demanding ceaselessly that Paris continue to resist the Prussian

siege.

Although I knew some of them well, I don’t know who is still living,

but during the Siege no one failed. They didn’t become like those

harpies the following May who dug out the eyes of our fallen comrades

with the tips of their parasols.

Later, when I was a prisoner, the first visitor I had was Mme Meurice

from the Society for the Victims of the War. At my last trial, behind the

hand-picked spectators, among those who had to wedge themselves in,

were two other former members of the Society, the large woman, Jeanne

B-and the petite Mme F-.

I salute all those brave women of the vanguard who were drawn from

group to group: the Committee of Vigilance, the Society for the Victims

of the War, and later the League of Women. The old world ought to fear

the day when those women finally decide they have had enough. Those

women will not slack off. Strength finds refuge in them. Beware of

them! Beware of those who, like Paule Minck, go across Europe waving

the flag of liberty, and beware of the most peaceful daughter of Gaul

now asleep in the deep resignation of the fields. Beware of the women

when they are sickened by all that is around them and rise up against the

old world. On that day the new world will begin.

The Prussian siege continued; the days became dark and the trees lost

their leaves. Hunger and cold reached more deeply into the houses of

Paris.

On October 31, at the Hotel de Ville the people proclaimed the

Commune. The Committees of Vigilance from all over Paris organized

the demonstration, and the people no longer cried out “Long live the

Republic”; they cried out “Long live the Commune!” The Government

of National Defense promised to hold meetings and elections and

promised to take no reprisals against these demonstrators. It broke both

promises. The word Commune was hushed up as effectively as some

conjurer’s trick, but experiences like that are necessary, for they let you

see who the real enemy is. If we are implacable in the coming fight, who

is to blame?

Another month went by and conditions became increasingly bad. The

National Guard [best described as a half-trained Parisian popular militia] could have saved the city, but the Government of National Defense

feared supporting the armed force of the people.

Early in December I was arrested a second time. That second arrest

came when several women who had more courage than clairvoyance

wanted to propose some unknown means of defense to the government.

Their zeal was so great that they came to the Women’s Vigilance

Committee in Montmartre, using the name of a woman and of a group

whom they had neglected to receive permission from, but if they had

come to us with no recommendation at all to introduce them, it would

not have mattered. We agreed to join them the next day in a demonstration in front of the Hôtel de Ville, but we made one reservation. We told

them we would go as women to share their danger; we would not go as

citizens because we no longer recognized the Government of National

Defense. It had proved itself incapable even of letting Paris defend itself.

The next day we went to the rendezvous at the Hôtel de Ville, and we

expected what happened: I was arrested for having organized the

demonstration. I answered their charges by saying that I couldn’t have

organized any demonstration to speak to the government, because I no

longer recognized that government. I added that when I came on my

own behalf to the Hotel de Ville, it would be with an armed uprising

behind me. That explanation appeared unsatisfactory to them, and they

locked me up.

The next day four citizens—Théophile Ferré, Avronsart, Christ, and

Burlot—came to claim me “in the name of the Eighteenth Arrondissement.”

At this declaration, the reactionaries became frightened. “Montmartre

is going to descend on us,” they whispered to each other, and

they released me.

Mme Meurice also came to claim me in the name of the Society for the

Victims of the War, but she arrived after I had already left the prefecture.

It wasn’t until January 19, when the struggle was almost over, that the

Government of National Defense finally agreed to let the National

Guard effect a sortie to try to retake Montretout and Buzenval. At first

the National Guard swept the Prussians before them, but the mud

defeated the brave sons of the people. They sank into the wet earth up to

their ankles, and unable to get their artillery up on the hills, they had to

retreat.

Hundreds stayed behind, lying quietly in death; these men of the

National Guard—men of the people, artists, young persons—died with

no regrets for their lost lives. The earth drank the blood of this first

Parisian carnage; soon it would drink more.

Paris still did not wish to surrender to the Prussians. On January 22,

the people gathered in front of the Hotel de Ville, where General

Chaudey, who commanded the soldiers, now had his headquarters. The

people sensed that the members of the government were lying when

they declared they were not thinking of surrendering.

We prepared a peaceful demonstration, with Razoua commanding

our battalions from Montmartre. Because our friends who were armed

were determined for the demonstration to be peaceful, they withdrew

with their weapons, even though peaceful demonstrations are always

crushed.

When only a disarmed multitude remained, soldiers in the buildings

around the square opened fire on us. No shot was fired by the people

before the Breton Mobiles fired their volleys. We could see the pale faces

of the Bretons behind the windows, as a noise like hail sounded in our

ears. Yes, you fired on us, you untamed Celts, but at least it was your

faith that made you fanatics for the Counterrevolution. You weren’t

bought by the reactionaries. You killed us, but you believed you were

doing your duty, and some day we will convert you to our ideals of

liberty. You will bring to liberty the same fierce convictions you now are

bringing to the reaction, and with us you will assault the old world.

The Breton Mobiles fired first; the people around the square of the

Tour Saint Jacques became indignant as the bullets began to rain down

on them, and they began to throw up barricades. Malézieux, his cloak

riddled with bullet holes, took over as our leader. He was an old man

now, a hero of June 1848. He remembered bygone days and bravely

took command of the situation as if he had been draped in his June flag.

I stood in the middle of the square lost in thought. I looked at the

accursed windows from which the Bretons continued to fire on us and

thought, “One day you will be on our side, you brigands.”

The bullets continued to make their hail-like noise. The square

became deserted while the projectiles coming from the Hotel de Ville

dug into the ground haphazardly or killed people here and there.

Near me, a woman of my build, who was dressed in black and who

resembled me, was struck down by a bullet. A young man who had come

with her was also killed. We never found out who they were, but the

young man had the intrepid profile of the Midi.

Gradually the square emptied. Many people did not want it to end like

that, but we decided that this was not the time to attempt to overthrow

the government.

On this January 22, Sapia was killed along with many others. P— of

the Blanqui Group had his arm broken. Passersby were killed like our

own people, and over the fallen we swore an oath of vengeance and

liberty. As a token of defiance, I took off my red scarf and threw it on a

grave. A comrade picked it up and knotted it in the branches of a willow.

Six days after that January 22, the people having been raked by

machine-gun fire and then raked with assurances that the government

did not intend to surrender, the government surrendered to the Prussians.

This time the shudder of anger that went through Paris did not

abate; it prepared Paris for the coming months.

Chapter 9. The Commune of Paris

<em>After Paris surrendered to the Prussians in January 1871, the other French

forces agreed to an armistice, during which the Prussians allowed the French to

elect a national government, there being some doubt whether the self-proclaimed

Parisian government could speak for France as a whole. Expected to decide on the

terms of the peace, that new government met first at Bordeaux and then moved to

Versailles, just outside Paris. Monarchists dominated the new Versailles government, and until the divisions between those who supported rival pretenders to the

throne became evident, it seemed likely that the Versailles government would

reestablish a monarchy in which the dreams of republicans and revolutionaries

would dissolve.</em>

On January [**sic:** February] 22, the Committees of Vigilance were

closed down, and newspaper publication was suspended. The Versailles

reactionaries decided they had to disarm Paris. Napoleon III was still

alive, and with Montmartre disarmed, the entrance of a sovereign, either

Bonaparte or an Orleanist, would have favored the army, which was

either an accomplice of the reactionaries or was allowing itself to be

deceived. With Montmartre disarmed, the Prussian army, which was

sitting in the surrendered forts around Paris while the armistice continued, would have been protected.

The cannon paid for by the National Guard had been left on some

vacant land in the middle of the zone abandoned by the Prussians. Paris

objected to that, and the cannon were taken to the Parc Wagram. The

idea was in the air that each battalion should recapture its own cannon.

A battalion of the National Guard from the Sixth Arrondissement gave

us our impetus. With the flag in front, men and women and children

hauled the cannon by hand down the boulevards, and although the

cannon were loaded, no accidents occurred. Montmartre, like Belleville

and Batignolles, had its own cannon. Those that had been placed in the

Place des Vosges were moved to the faubourg Saint Antoine. Some

sailors proposed our recapturing the Prussian-occupied forts around the

city by boarding them like ships, and this idea intoxicated us.

Then before dawn on March 18 the Versailles reactionaries sent in

troops to seize the cannon now held by the National Guard. One of the

points they moved toward was the Butte of Montmartre, where our

cannon had been taken. The soldiers of the reactionaries captured our

artillery by surprise, but they were unable to haul them away as they had

intended, because they had neglected to bring horses with them.

Learning that the Versailles soldiers were trying to seize the cannon,

men and women of Montmartre swarmed up the Butte in a surprise

maneuver. Those people who were climbing believed they would die,

but they were prepared to pay the price.

The Butte of Montmartre was bathed in the first light of day, through

which things were glimpsed as if they were hidden behind a thin veil of

water. Gradually the crowd increased. The other districts of Paris,

hearing of the events taking place on the Butte of Montmartre, came to

our assistance.

The women of Paris covered the cannon with their bodies. When their

officers ordered the soldiers to fire, the men refused. The same army

that would be used to crush Paris two months later decided now that it

did not want to be an accomplice of the reaction. They gave up their

attempt to seize the cannon from the National Guard. They understood

that the people were defending the Republic by defending the arms that

the royalists and imperialists would have turned on Paris in agreement

with the Prussians. When we had won our victory, I looked around and

noticed my poor mother, who had followed me to the Butte of Montmartre, believing that I was going to die.

On this day, the eighteenth of March, the people wakened. If they had

not, it would have been the triumph of some king; instead it was a

triumph of the people. The eighteenth of March could have belonged to

the allies of kings, or to foreigners, or to the people. It was the people’s.

The people arrested General Lecomte, who commanded the soldiers

that had moved against Montmartre, as well as General Clement

Thomas, whose curiosity had led him to watch what he thought would be

the degradation of Paris. Their very acts had convicted both of them a

long time before. Clément Thomas’s crimes extended as far back as the

June Days of 1848, and he had reminded the people of his earlier

actions when he insulted the National Guard. Lecomte, like Clement

Thomas, owed an old debt he had to pay. His soldiers remembered, and

vengeance came out of the past. The hour struck for them.

It will strike for many others, without the Revolution pausing in its

course. The old world takes note of the reactionaries who die because of

popular reprisals. It does not count our side’s losses; it is not able to,

because the sons of the people who fall are only stubble under sickles,

only grass mowed in the summer sun.

Several of our side perished. Turpin, who was wounded near me on

the eighteenth in the predawn attack on 6, rue des Rosiers, died at

Lariboisière several days later. He told me to commend his wife to

Georges Clemenceau, the mayor of the Eighteenth Arrondissement, and

I carried out his dying wish.

I have never heard Clemenceau’s testimony at the inquiry into the

events of March 18; we weren’t able to read newspapers when he gave

his evidence. Clemenceau’s indecisiveness, for which people reproach

him, comes from the illusion he holds that he should wait for parliamen-

tarianism to bring progress. But parliamentarianism is dead, and Clemenceau’s

illusion is some kind of infection he caught from the

Bordeaux Assembly. When that assembly became the Versailles government,

he fled from it. Properly, his place is in the streets, and when his

anger is finally roused, he will go there. That is what remains of his

revolutionary temperament. His indignation at some infamy will bring

him out of his illusions, as he came out of the Bordeaux Assembly.

Wouldn’t it be better for the last parliamentarians who remain honest

to follow the example of the great Jacobin, Delescluze? The attempt to

work through parliaments has been going on for a long while, but

parliaments, standing as they do in the midst of rottenness, can no

longer produce anything worthwhile.

In the provinces people believed the stories Versailles spread about

the Commune. After all, statecraft requires a government to create

discord among the common people. The bosses give the common people

enough to allow them to work, but too little to revolt. And between each

periodic pruning they grow back as numerous and as strong as Gallic

oaks. At any rate, some of our most committed supporters went from

Paris to the provinces to explain the situation. Among those who went

were women like Paule Minck. They worked as hard as they could. If the

provinces had only understood the true situation, they would have sided

with us, but they listened to the lies of the Versailles government. We in

Paris even tried launching balloons filled with letters to the provinces.

Some of them came down in the right places, but they were not enough.

Nevertheless, not everyone was fooled by the lies of Versailles. Lyon,

Marseille, Narbonne, all had their own Communes, and like ours, theirs

too were drowned in the blood of revolutionaries. That is why our flags

are red. Why are our red banners so terribly frightening to those

persons who have caused them to be stained that color?

Some people say I’m brave. Not really. There is no heroism; people

are simply entranced by events. What happens is that in the face of

danger my perceptions are submerged in my artistic sense, which is

seized and charmed. Tableaux of the dangers overwhelm my thoughts,

and the horrors of the struggle become poetry.

It wasn’t bravery when, charmed by the sight, I looked at the dismantled

fort of Issy, all white against the shadows, and watched my comrades

filing out in night sallies, moving away over the little slopes of Clamart or

toward the Hautes Bruyères, with the red teeth of chattering machine

guns showing on the horizon against the night sky. It was beautiful,

that’s all. Barbarian that I am, I love cannon, the smell of powder,

machine-gun bullets in the air.

I am not the only person caught up by situations from which the

poetry of the unknown emerges. I remember a student who didn’t agree

with our ideas (although he agreed even less with the other side’s), who

came to shoot with us at Clamart and at the Moulin de Pierre. He had a

volume of Baudelaire in his pocket, and we read a few pages with great

pleasure—when we had time to read. What fate held for him I don’t

know, but we tested our luck together. It was interesting. We drank

some coffee in the teeth of death, choosing the same spot where three of

our people, one after another, had been killed. Our comrades, anxious

about seeing us there at what seemed to be a deadly place, made us

withdraw. Just after we left a shell fell, breaking the empty cups. Above

all else, our action was simply one of a poet’s nature, not bravery on

either his part or mine.

During the entire time of the Commune, I only spent one night at my

poor mother’s. I never really went to bed during that time; I just napped

a little whenever there was nothing better to do, and many other people

lived the same way. Everybody who wanted deliverance gave himself

totally to the cause.

During the Commune I went unhurt except for a bullet that grazed

my wrist, although my hat was literally riddled with bullet holes. I did

twist my ankle, which had been sprained for a long time, and because I

couldn’t walk for three or four days, I had to requisition a carriage.

It was a little two-wheeled buggy that looked fairly attractive. We

harnessed it to a horse which, unfortunately, was used to the whip. The

rotten beast refused to move when we treated him nicely. Everything

was all right when we were only following a funeral cortege to a

Montmartre cemetery at a walking pace, but after the funeral it was a

different story. That damned animal wouldn’t keep up even the slow jog

which allowed him practically to go to sleep standing up. He simply

stopped, which gave time for a group of imbeciles to gather around us

and begin whispering to each other, “Ah. Here are some people who

have a buggy. They’re filthy rich. The upkeep of that buggy must cost a

lot.”

“Wait,” said a friend who was riding with me. “Don’t get down. I’ll

make the horse move.” He gave a piece of bread and other encouragements

to that monster, who began to munch on the bread while he rolled

back his lips as if he were laughing in our faces. And he didn’t budge an

inch. At that point, with all due respect to those who, like me, are slaves

to beasts, I applied the law of necessity and hit him with the whip, and he

took off, shaking his ears, for the Perronnet barricade at Neuilly.

While I was going to Montmartre for the funeral, I hadn’t dared to

stop off at my mother’s, because she would have seen that I had a sprain.

Several days before the funeral, though, I had come face to face with her

in the trenches near the railroad station of Clamart. She had come to see

if all the lies I had written her to soothe her were true. Fortunately, she

always ended up believing me.

If the reaction had had as many enemies among women as it did

among men, the Versailles government would have had a more difficult

task subduing us. Our male friends are more susceptible to faintheartedness

than we women are. A supposedly weak woman knows better than

any man how to say: “It must be done.” She may feel ripped open to her

very womb, but she remains unmoved. Without hate, without anger,

without pity for herself or others, whether her heart bleeds or not, she

can say, “It must be done.” Such were the women of the Commune.

During Bloody Week, women erected and defended the barricade at the

Place Blanche—and held it till they died.

In my mind I feel the soft darkness of a spring night. It is May 1871,

and I see the red reflection of flames. It is Paris afire. That fire is a dawn,

and I see it still as I sit here writing. Memory crowds in on me, and I

keep forgetting that I am writing my memoirs.

In the night of May 22 or 23, I believe, we were at the Montmartre

cemetery, which we were trying to defend with too few fighters. We had

crenelated the walls as best we could, and, except for the battery on the

Butte of Montmartre—now in the hands of the reactionaries, and whose

fire raked us—and the shells that were coming at regular intervals from

the side, where tall houses commanded our defenses, the position wasn’t

bad. Shells tore the air, marking time like a clock. It was magnificent in

the clear night, where the marble statues on the tombs seemed to be

alive.

When I went on reconnaissance it pleased me to walk in the solitude

that shells were scouring. In spite of my comrades’ advice, I chose to

walk there several times; always the shells arrived too early or too late for

me. One shell falling across the trees covered me with flowered

branches, which I divided up between two tombs, that of Mlle Poulin

and that of Murget, whose spirit seemed to throw us flowers. My

comrades caught me, and one ordered me not to move about. They

made me sit down on a bench near the tomb of Cavaignac. But nothing

is as stubborn as a woman.

In the midst of all this Jaroslav Dombrowski passed in front of us sadly

on his way to be killed. “It’s over,” he told me.

“No, no,” I said to him, and he held out both his hands to me.

But he was right.

Three hundred thousand voices had elected the Commune. Fifteen

thousand stood up to the clash with the army during Bloody Week.

We’ve counted about thirty-five thousand people who were executed,

but how many were there that we know nothing of? From time to time

the earth disgorges its corpses. If we are implacable in the coming fight,

who is to blame?

The Commune, surrounded from every direction, had only death on

its horizon. It could only be brave, and it was. And in dying it opened

wide the door to the future. That was its destiny.

Chapter 10. After the Commune

Somehow I managed to escape from the soldiers trying to arrest me.

Finally the victorious reactionaries took my mother and threatened to

shoot her if I wasn’t found. To set her free I went to take her place,

although she didn’t want me to do it, the poor, dear woman. I had to tell

her a lot of lies to convince her, and as always she ended up believing me.

Thus I saw to it that she returned home.

They took me to the detention camp in the 37th [sic: 43rd] Bastion,

near the Montmartre railroad. Even that far out, fragments of paper ash

coming from the burning of Paris blew like black butterflies. Above us

the lights of the fire floated like red crepe. And always we could hear the

cannon. We heard them until May 28, and right up to that day we said to

each other:

“The Revolution will take its revenge.”

At the 37th Bastion, in front of the dust-filled square where we were

penned up, there are casemates under a mound of green lawn. There, as

soon as General de Gallifet arrived, the soldiers shot two unfortunate

people in front of us. They resembled each other and must have been

brothers. They both struggled until the shots rang out, for they did not

want to die. They hadn’t even been on our side. They had come out into

the street, perhaps to insult us, and had been arrested. Before they were

shot, they had said they weren’t worried, because they were sure they’d

be freed. Then General de Gallifet gave an order to shoot into the crowd

if anyone moved. The two brothers were terrified and tried to flee. We

cried out:

“We don’t know them. They’re not ours.”

But it did no good. They were shot anyway. They weren’t even able to

stand up for the volley. They were so frightened that all they could say

was that they were Montmartre merchants; they couldn’t even remember

their addresses so that they could commend their children to those

of us who remained. We didn’t think we could figure out who they were

either. People thought that one of them was saying “Alas.” I have always

guessed that he said “Anne,” and that she was his daughter. How many

people were seized like this, how many who really were enemies of the

Commune, like those two unfortunate men of Bastion 37?

After this execution we were lined up and marched off toward

Versailles. As we arrived there, a bunch of bullies threw rocks at us as if

we were rabbits, and a member of the National Guard had his jaw

broken. One thing I owe to the cavalry who were guarding us: They

pushed back the ruffians and their girl friends who had come to the

prisoner-baiting. We didn’t stop at Versailles, however; we were led

beyond, south to Satory.

The prisoners filing past from Montmartre to Satory are present now

in my mind. We were marching between the lines of a cavalry escort. It

was night. Nothing could have been more horribly beautiful than the

place where they made us climb down into the ravines near the Chateau

de la Muette. The gloom, barely lit by the wan moon, transformed the

ravines into walls. The shadows of the horsemen on either side of our

long file formed a black fringe that made the path seem lighter. The sky,

hovering with the promise of heavy rains on the morrow, seemed to

press down on us. Everything became blurred and appeared dreamlike—except

for the horsemen who led the column and the first groups

of prisoners. A sudden flash of light filtered from below between the

hooves of the horses and lit them up; scattered red reflections seemed to

bleed on us and on the uniforms. The rest of the file stretched out in a

long trail of ink, ending in the murky depths of the night.

People said they were going to shoot us in those ravines, but the

soldiers had us climb out, although I didn’t know why. I felt no fear, for

I was wrapped up in the picture I saw and no longer thought of where

we were. Thrilled by my perceptions, I earned no merit at all for

despising a danger I wasn’t thinking about. Gripped by the tableau I

only looked, and now I remember.

Satory! As we got there during a downpour which made the slope

slippery, we were told: “Move! Climb as if you were charging up the

Butte of Montmartre.” And everybody climbed at full charge, and then

we had to walk in front of some machine guns that they rolled after us.

We told an old woman who was on the verge of hysterics, and who was in

our group only because her husband had been shot, that the machine

guns were only a formality they went through each time new prisoners

arrived. We weren’t so sure of this, but at least the woman fell silent. We

believed the soldiers were going to kill us, and there would only be time

enough for us to yell, “Long live the Commune” before we died. But

then they pulled back the machine guns.

Satory! In the middle of the night the soldiers would call out groups of

prisoners. They’d get up from the mud where they had lain down in the

rain, and follow the soldier’s lantern that led their way. They’d be given

a pick and shovel to dig their own graves, and then they’d be shot. The

echoes of volleys shattered the silence of the night.

Satory! The prisoners drank from their hands at the little pond when

they were too thirsty and when the heavy rain which was falling on them

had swept away the pink foam. There the victors washed their hands,

which were often redder than those of butchers.

Who will record the crimes that power commits, and the monstrous

manner in which power transforms men? Those crimes can be ended

forever by spreading power out to the entire human race. To spread the

feeling of the homeland to the entire world, to extend well-being to all

people, to give science to all humanity—that will save humanity.

When I arrived at Satory the soldiers said they were going to shoot me

the next day, in the evening; then the next day they said they would

shoot me the day after. I don’t know why they didn’t, for I was insolent

to them, as insolent as one is in defeat to ferocious victors.

Shortly thereafter, a group of us was sent to the prison of Chantiers at

Versailles. As we were marching, a strange thing happened. A furious

woman dashed in front of us, crying out that we had killed her sister,

that she knew it, that there were witnesses. A cry rose up from our midst.

It was her sister, who had been arrested by the Versailles government.

When we arrived at the prison of Chantiers, we were kept in a huge

square room on the second floor, sitting on the floor by day and

stretching out any way we could at night. At the end of two weeks they

gave us bundles of straw, each of which had to do for two people. At

night two lamps lit our morgue, where we hung up our rags and tatters

on strings above our sleeping bodies. Above the room was a hole

through which we climbed to the interrogation room; another hole led

to the ground floor, where they kept the children who were prisoners,

the children whose fathers they couldn’t find. Some of those children,

like Ranvier, were courageous and we were proud of them.

For a long time I was forbidden to see my mother, who came often

from Montmartre without being able to speak to me. One day she was

pushed back while she was offering me a bottle of coffee, and I threw the

bottle at the gendarme who had pushed her. A nearby officer rebuked

me, and I told him my only regret was that I had thrown the bottle at a

tool of the government rather than at the head of it. They finally did

allow my mother to see me, but it was a long time later.

At the prison of Chantiers I saw grotesque things...

A deaf and dumb woman spent several weeks there, charged with

having cried out, “Long live the Commune!” An old woman, both of

whose legs were paralyzed, was charged with having built barricades.

For three days, another woman just walked around the room, her basket

under one arm and her umbrella under the other. In her basket were

some poems that her employer had written in praise of the victors.

Ironically, the soldiers believed those poems were in praise of the

Commune, even one with a line that ran:

Good gentlemen of Versailles

Enter into Paris.

But laughter quickly dies. The cries of the insane, uncertainty about

relatives and friends whose fate was unknown, mothers left alone—all

that I feel even now.

We were proud in defeat, and the ruffians and their girl friends who

came out to see the vanquished as if they were going to look at animals in

the Jardin des Plantes didn’t see our tears. Instead, we sneered at their

idiotic faces.

On the floor of our prison room there were so many lice they made

little silver nets as they meandered about, going to their nests that

resembled anthills. They were enormous lice, with bristling backs that

were a little bit round-shouldered, so many lice that you believed you

could hear the noise of their swarming.

Constantly guarded by soldiers, we women couldn’t change our underwear

easily (those of us who had any to change into). I was finally able

to get some from my mother, who pushed it through the openwork gate

in the courtyard.

I spent my nights looking at the tableau of this morgue. I have always

been taken by views like that, so much so that I often forget people in the

face of the horrible eloquence of things. Sometimes this morgue looked

like dusk or dawn playing on a field where the crop had been harvested.

I could see the empty stalks, thin bundles of straw, gilded like wheat. At

other times, light mirrored off them. When daybreak paled the lamps, it

looked like a harvest of stars.

On 15 June 1871, the worst forty of us were sent from the prison to

the reformatory at Versailles. Mme Cadolle and Mme Hardouin have

related what happened at Chantiers after we left.

Of course I was one of the worst forty sent to Versailles. We had to

wait in the courtyard under a beating rain, and an officer said he was

sorry. I couldn’t keep myself from saying that making us stand in the

drenching rain fitted in with all their other acts, and anyway I liked it

better that way.

At the reformatory of Versailles, conditions for us forty were

strangely eased. To get ready for the trial of the members of the

Commune, the government tried a number of unfortunate women and

sentenced them to death, although they had only been ambulance

nurses. Because of her name, Eulalie Papavoine was sentenced to forced

labor and was sent to Cayenne, even though she was not related to the

legendary Papavoine. The Versailles government carefully kept from

sentencing the boldest women to death; they didn’t execute either

Elisabeth Retif or Marchais, although they proved the two had conspired

with each other, in spite of the fact that they had never met.

On the third of September, the eve of the first anniversary of the

proclamation of the Republic, the sentencing of the chief members of

the Commune was drawing to a close. By decree the governor general of

Paris had established the Third Military Court-Martial. Colonel Merlin

was president and the members were Major Gaulet, Captain de Guibert,

M. Mariguet, Lieutenant Caissaigne, Second Lieutenant Léger, Warrant

Officer Labbat, Major Gaveau, and Captain Senart. The Third Military

Court-Martial tried eighteen persons, among them Théophile Ferré.

Théophile Ferré, who once had been Clemenceau’s deputy mayor,

was the brother of my great friend Marie. In the <em>Dossier [sic: Cahiers] de la

magistrature</em> by Odysse Barot I found an account of Théophile Ferré’s

arrest, and I quote those pages which were written under the vivid

emotion of the horrible scene. People will understand why, when I am

discussing these terrible sorrows, I quote friends who have related the

events of those sad days instead of telling about them myself. Courage

has limits, and one doesn’t pass them unless duty demands it.

There is a detail about which people do not know and which has not
been written about until now: the manner in which Ferry’s arrest took
place and the way the authorities discovered his hiding place.

All enquiries had been fruitless. The authorities had arrested five or six
pseudo-Ferres, just as they had shot five or six pseudo-Billiorays and five or six pseudo-Valles.

What did they do then? They went to the little house on the rue
Fazilleau in the suburb of Levallois-Perret, where the former member of
the Commune used to live with his parents.

Theophile Ferre was not at the house, but the authorities had known
when they went to Levallois-Perret that there was no chance of finding
Ferr£ at his parents’ home. Why did they go there? How naive you are! He
lived there with his family, and what good is a family if it does not inform
on and surrender its own?

Needless to say, the authorities pushed their way brutally into the little
cottage surrounded by its garden. Ah! Wait, I do not know if my pen will
have the courage to finish. The other day business took me to Levallois,
and when I passed down that street and came to that house, whose number
suddenly came back to mind, I was forced to stop for a few minutes. Blood
rushed to my head and sweat ran down my forehead; a simple memory
caused waves of anger and rage to overwhelm me. Please excuse me for
this involuntary emotion, but you will share that indignation, that anger,
and that rage.

The authorities entered the house. The father had left for his daily job,
and only two women were there, the old mother and the young sister of
the man they were looking for. The sister, Mlle Marie Ferre, was in bed,
dangerously sick with a high fever.

The authorities fell on Mme Ferre and questioned her harshly. They
ordered her to reveal the hiding place of her son. She swore she didn’t
know it and that, if she did, it was terrible to tell a mother to betray her
own son.

They increased their pressure and used both gentleness and threats.

“Arrest me if you want to,” Mme Ferre said, “but I can’t tell you what I
don’t know and you will not be so cruel as to tear me away from my
daughter’s sickbed.”

The poor woman trembled all over just thinking about that. One of the
men smiled fleetingly, for her words had given him a diabolical idea.

“Since you won’t tell us where your son is, we are going to take your
daughter away.”

Mme Ferre cried out in despair and anguish, but her prayers and tears
were unavailing. The men set about getting her sick daughter up and
dressing her, at the risk of killing her.

“Courage, mother,” said Mlle Ferre. “Don’t worry, I’ll be strong. It will
be nothing. They will have to let me go.”

They were going to take her away.

Mme Ferre was faced with the horrible alternative of sending her son to
his death or killing her daughter by allowing her to be taken off. In spite of
desperate signs which the heroic Marie made to her, the hapless mother in
a frenzy of grief lost her head in her anguish, hesitated...

“Be silent, mother! Be silent!” murmured the sick girl.

The authorities were taking Marie off...

It was too much for her mother to bear. She broke down. Her reason
became dark, and incoherent phrases escaped from her lips. The executioners listened for a clue.

In her hysteria the tormented mother let the address “rue Saint-Sau-
veur” slip several times.

Alas! No more was needed. While two of the men kept the Ferre home
under observation, the others ran to finish the job. The rue Saint-Sauveur
was sealed off and searched, and Theophile Ferre was arrested.

A week after the horrible scene at the rue Fazilleau, the courageous
Marie was freed. But they didn’t free her mother, who had become insane,
and soon died in the asylum of Sainte-Anne.

At the court-martial, Théophile Ferré refused to have a defense

lawyer, but the president of the court, according to law, appointed

Maitre Marchand to defend him. Ferre explained the role of the

Commune, after having discussed the coup d’etat prepared by the

enemies of the Republic, who had gone so far as to deny Paris the right

to elect its municipal council.

“Honest and sincere newspapers were suppressed,” Ferre said to the

court-martial. “The most patriotic among us were condemned to death

while Royalists were preparing to divide France. Finally, during the

night of March 18, they believed they were ready, and they tried to

disarm the National Guard and arrest all republicans. Their attempt

failed because it was faced with the complete opposition of Paris and

even the mutiny of their own soldiers. The royalists fled and took refuge

at Versailles.

“Paris was now free, and some vigorous and courageous citizens tried

to reestablish order and safety at the risk of their lives. A few days later

the population voted and created the Commune of Paris.

“It was the duty of the Versailles government to recognize the validity

of the vote of Paris and to confer with the Commune about restoring

tranquility. On the contrary, as if foreign war had not already given

France enough misery and ruin, the government added a civil war.

Breathing hate and vengeance against the people, the Versailles government attacked Paris and subjected it to a new siege.

“Paris resisted for two months, and then it was conquered. For ten

days, without making any pretense at legality, the Versailles government

authorized the massacre of citizens. Those terrible days remind us of St.

Bartholomew’s Massacre and surpassed the atrocities of June and December.

When will the machine-gunning of people stop?

“Because I am a member of the Paris Commune, I am in the hands of

the victors. They want my head. Let them take it. Free I have lived, and

free I expect to die.

“I add only one word: Fortune is capricious. I entrust to the future my

memory and my revenge.”

Ferré was condemned to death. Of the eighteen defendants at that

court-martial only he and Lullier were sentenced to death. Urbain and

Trinquet were sentenced to life at hard labor. Sentenced to deportation

to a fortification were Assi, Bilhoray, Champy, Reg£re, Ferrat, Verdure,

and Grousset. Jourde and Rastoul were sentenced to simple deportation.

Courbet was sentenced to six months and fined 500 francs, and Des-

champ, Parent, and Clement were acquitted.

Another murder took place, too. Flourens was killed in an outpost as

punishment for letting some men escape on October 31. They slipped

away through windows, doors, and water closets, and he didn’t join the

hunt for the vanquished.

The Board of Pardons reviewed the verdicts of the court-martial, and

that board is guilty of the volleys at the execution stakes. The fifteen

members of the Board of Pardons were only fifteen executioners. If the

soldiers were drunk with blood up to their ankles, the Board of Pardons

had blood up to its belly.

Théophile Ferré and I were able to exchange a few letters from our

prisons while we were both at Versailles. I still have some of them, and

some of the poetry I wrote for him. The year of seventy-one! I have a

notebook of black-bordered mourning paper in which Marie copied

down some of my poems, a number of which she copied in red ink, red

like blood. Marie had given this notebook to her brother Hippolyte, who

lent it to me, but he won’t get it back until I’m dead and the pages that

are now blank are written upon.

I think I still have Ferré’s last letter to me from his cell at Versailles.

None of the house searches took those papers away from me, and my

friends didn’t want to disturb them because the people mentioned were

either dead or prisoners. It is too painful to quote his letter; I will say

only that Ferré, instead of being moved by his own fate, looked at liberty

rising on the faraway horizon across the blood of 1871.

I do have a copy of the last letter Ferré sent to my dear Marie. This

fragment came to me on May 24 of this year; I did not need to see the

accompanying letter to guess that it came from you, my dear Avronsart.

Tuesday, 28 November 1871, 5:30 a.m.

My beloved sister,

In a few moments I am going to die. At the last instant, thoughts of you
will be in my mind. I beg you to ask for my body so that it may be reunited
with that of our unfortunate mother. If you can, have the hour of my
burial put in the newspapers, so that friends can accompany me. Of
course, no religious ceremony: I die a materialist, as I have lived.

Place a wreath on the tomb of our mother.

Try to cure my brother and to console our father. Tell them both how
much I loved them.

I give you a thousand kisses and thank you for the attention you have
never ceased to lavish on me. You must overcome your sorrow and, as you
have often promised me, be equal to events. As for me, I am happy. I am
going away to be done with my sufferings, and there is no reason to feel
pity for me.

All yours,

Your devoted brother,

Th. Ferré

All my papers, my clothing, and other objects are to be returned, except
for the money in the clerk’s office which I leave to more unfortunate
prisoners.

Th. Ferré

At seven o’clock on the morning of 28 November 1871, Ferré was

assassinated on the plain of Satory along with Rossel and Bourgeois, who

had been condemned to death in another trial. Here are the terms in

which a reactionary newspaper related the heroic death of Ferré :

The condemned are very firm. Ferré, backed up to his post, throws his
hat on the ground. A sergeant comes forward to place a blindfold over his
eyes; Ferré takes the blindfold and throws it on his hat... The three
condemned remain alone. The three firing squads, which have just advanced, fire.

Rossel and Bourgeois fall immediately; as for Ferré, he stays standing
for a moment and then falls on his right side. The surgeon-major of the
camp, M. Dejardin, hurries over to the cadavers. He signals that Rossel is
quite dead and calls the soldiers who are to give the coup de grace to Ferré
and to Bourgeois.

Finally the march past begins.

Marie recovered somewhat, and being the only member of the family
who was free, she proved her courage by going from prison to prison as
long as her brothers and her father were locked up, and she came to
claim Theophile’s body for burial.

Because of the letters Théophile and I had exchanged, the Prefect of
Police sent me to Arras. By a maneuver of the prefect, a name was
crossed off the list of those who were being sent to wait in faraway
prisons, and mine was put in its place. I must say that the Military
Tribunal didn’t know about this, let alone approve it. I protested not
against the prison, where we found much better treatment than at
Satory or in the temporary prison camps, but against the squalid
maneuvering of this transfer. I was under the jurisdiction of the Military
Tribunal and not that of the Prefect of Police, who wanted to delay my
trial indefinitely, while insulting me by trying the other women, Retif
and Marchais, first.

On the day of Ferré’s execution I was recalled from Arras. At the
railroad station of Versailles I saw Marie, who had come to claim her
brother’s body. I was able to speak to her for only a moment. She was
dressed entirely in black, and her thick brown curls stood out as if her
skin was marble, for she was very pale. She showed neither tears nor
weakness, but she looked like a corpse, and she was so cold to the touch!
She was as cold as she was years later when I arranged her in her coffin.

The execution of Ferré prompted me to write to General Appert,
under whose authority the trials were taking place.

Sir:

I finally believe that the triple assassination of Tuesday morning really

happened.

If you don’t want to go through the legal formalities, you already know
enough about me to shoot me. I’m ready, and the plain of Satory is nearby.

You and all your accomplices know very well that if I get out of here
alive I will avenge the martyrs.

Long live the Commune.

Louise Michel

But they didn’t want to put me in front of a firing squad at Satory, and

I am still here, seeing death mow people down all around me. No one

who hasn’t experienced this kind of emptiness can know what courage it

took to live.

But no weakness! None! Long live the dead Commune! Long live the

living Revolution!

In May 1871 the streets of Paris were dappled white as if by apple

blossoms in the spring. But no trees had cast down that mantle of white;

it was chlorine that covered the corpses. Now, the ground was all white

again, this time with snow. On 28 November 1871, six months after the

hot-blooded butchery had ended, the cold-blooded assassinations began.

The soldiers had become tired and perhaps their machine guns were

breaking down. Now there would be an end to scenes of limbs half-covered with earth, an end to cries of agony coming from heaps of persons

who had been summarily executed, an end to swallows dying poisoned

by the flies that had been feeding in that enormous charnel house.

Henceforth, murder would be done cold-bloodedly, in an orderly fashion.

We do not know the names of all those who died in the hunt and after.

The enormous number of missing persons proves how minimal the

official figures of the slaughter are. Sometimes now, in the corners of

cellars, skeletons are found, and no one knows where they came from.

People claim it is mysterious, but every out-of-the-way spot became a

charnel house to the victory of the Versailles royalists.

And the plain of Satory. If it were excavated, corpses would be found

there too. The royalists covered them with quicklime in vain, because

plows will uncover them, and every stone upturned will reveal them.

As I write these pages, those places are only boneyards. Fifteen years

ago they were slaughterhouses. And down in the catacombs under Paris,

where the government chased the Communards with torches and dogs

as if they were animals, there must be many modern skeletons among

the ancient bones. Betrayals so numerous they were nauseating, stupid

fear, disgust, the horror—all this was the aftermath of the Commune.

The trial of the members of the Commune was riddled with errors,

but the main purpose of the appeal our lawyers filed with the Court of

Cassation had been to test Versailles’s justice to its end. None of the

condemned counted on it, although the legal flaws were numerous. The

prosecutor, Major Gaveau, insulted Ferré in the course of the trial by

saying “the memory of a murderer.” That same Gaveau twice vacated his

seat as public prosecutor, did not appear even for a moment at the

session of September 2, and did not attend the reading of the sentence, a

sentence in which false documents appeared.

The members of the Commune did not conceal their acts. It was not

easy to be found innocent, even when one had committed no crime,

when people felt responsible for their own actions. Ferré carried his acts

proudly and bore responsibility for them to the execution post at Satory.

The others carried theirs to prison or to exile. Yet in order to convict the

defendants, the authorities thought they needed to add forgeries that

were established as false, forgeries that were so patently false that some

were not even written in French.

By June 1872 the Versailles “justice” had delivered 32,905 verdicts.

They had already condemned 72 persons to death, and sentenced

another 33 to death in absentia. That made a total of 105 sentenced to

capital punishment, and the Versailles “justice” kept on operating.

Forty-six children under the age of sixteen were put in reformatories.

No doubt it was to punish them for what their fathers had been shot for.

Small children, in the orgy of the fighting, had had their heads smashed

against walls.

In the summer of 1873 they were still shooting prisoners at Satory.

After a mockery of a trial in which I made no attempt to defend myself, I

was sentenced to deportation to a fortification for life.

Chapter 11. The Trial of 1871

<em>This chapter consists of an account of the trial as reported in the</em> Gazette des

Tribunaux **that Louise Michel included as an appendix to her memoirs.**

Sixth Court-Martial Board (Versailles)
President of the Court: Delaporte, Colonel, Twelfth Cavalry
Session of 16 December 1871

The Background of the Case against Louise Michel

The Commune had an insufficient number of men for protection

against the loyal members of the National Guard, so it established

companies of children known as Wards of the Commune. It also tried to

organize a battalion of amazons. This group was never formed, but

women wearing fanciful uniforms and carrying carbines at their shoulders could be seen preceding the battalions that went to the ramparts.

Among those women who seem to have exercised considerable influence

in certain quarters was Louise Michel, ex-schoolmistress at Batignolles,

who never stopped displaying boundless devotion to the insurrectionary

government.

Louise Michel is thirty-six years old, petite, brunette, with a very

developed forehead which recedes abruptly. Her nose, mouth, and chin

are very prominent, and her features reveal an extreme severity. She

dresses entirely in black. Her temperament is as excitable as it was

during the first days of her captivity. When she was first brought in front

of the court-martial, she suddenly raised her veil and stared at her

judges fixedly.

Captain Dailly was the public prosecutor for the Sixth Court-Martial.

According to regulations, Maitre Haussman was appointed to assist the

accused in her defense, but she declared she would refuse the help of

any lawyer.

The clerk of the court-martial, M. Duplan, read the following report:

Statement by the Clerk of the Court-Martial

In 1870, at the occasion of Victor Noir’s death, Louise Michel began to

display her revolutionary ideas. Because Michel was an obscure schoolmistress with almost no pupils, it was not possible for our investigators to

find out what her previous revolutionary activity had been or what her

part was in the events leading up to the monstrous offense which

terrified our unfortunate country.

To retrace the incidents of 18 March 1871 in their entirety would be

useless, and this court, as its point of departure in the prosecution of

Mlle Michel, will limit itself to determining precisely the part she took in

the bloody drama whose theater was the Butte of Montmartre and the

rue des Rosiers.

Louise Michel was an accomplice in the arrest of the two unfortunate

generals, Lecomte and Clément Thomas. She was fearful that the two

victims might escape. “Don’t let them go,” she cried out with all her

might to the scoundrels who surrounded the generals. Later, when the

murder had been committed, she showed her joy at the spilled blood,

and dared to exclaim in the presence of the mutilated bodies, “It serves

them right.” Then, radiant and satisfied with her good day, she went to

Belleville and La Villette to assure herself “that these neighborhoods

were still armed.”

On the nineteenth she returned home, after having taken the precaution of removing the National Guard uniform that could incriminate

her. She felt the need to talk a bit about the events with her concierge.

“Ah,” she cried. “If Clemenceau had gotten to the rue des Rosiers a few

instants sooner, they wouldn’t have shot the generals. He would have

been against it because he was on the side of the Versailles government.”

Paris, in the hands of foreigners and rascals who had come from every

corner of the world, proclaimed the Commune. Louise Michel, as

secretary of the society called Improvement of Working Women

through Their Work, organized the famous Central Committee of the

Union of Women, as well as the Committees of Vigilance charged with

recruiting stretcher-bearers—and, at the height of the struggle,

women—to serve on the barricades and perhaps even some to be

arsonists.

A copy of a manifesto found in the Town Hall of the Tenth Arron-

dissement indicates the role she played in the aforementioned committees during the last days of the struggle. The text of that manifesto

reads:

In the name of the Social Revolution that we acclaim, in the name of the
demand for the right to work and the rights of equality and justice, the
Union of Women for the Defense of Paris and the Care of the Wounded
challenges with all its strength the shameful proclamation addressed to
women which a group of reactionaries posted the day before yesterday.
That proclamation stated that the women of Paris are appealing to the
generosity of Versailles and are requesting peace at any price.
No. The women workers of Paris have come to demand not peace but
war to the death.
Today, reconciliation would be treason. It would be to deny all the
aspirations of women workers who acclaim complete social change, the
annihilation of all existing social and legal relations, the suppression of all
special privileges, the end of all exploitation, the substitution of the reign
of work for the reign of capital. In a word, they demand the emancipation
of the worker through his own efforts.
Six months of suffering and treason during the Siege, six weeks of
titanic fights against the united exploiters, waves of blood spilled for the
cause of liberty—these are our warrant for glory and vengeance.
The present struggle can have only one result—the triumph of the
popular cause. Paris will not pull back, for it carries the flag of the future.
The final hour has struck! Give way to the workers! Enough of their
executioners! Acts! Energy!
The tree of liberty grows tall, watered with the blood of its enemies! . . .
United and resolute, the women of Paris are matured and enlightened
by the suffering that social crises bring. The women of Paris are deeply
convinced that the Commune, representing the international and revolutionary principles of peoples, carries in itself the germ of Social Revolution. When the moment of greatest danger comes, the women of Paris will
prove to France and to the world that they know how, at the barricades
and on the ramparts of Paris, if the reactionaries force the gates, to give
their blood like their brothers, to give their lives for the defense and
triumph of the Commune—for the people.
Then, victorious, able to unite and agree on their common interests,
working men and working women, interdependent and made one for a
final effort . . . [The last phrase is incomplete.]
Long live the Republic of all persons! Long live the Commune!

Holding the positions cited above, Louise Michel directed a school at

24, rue Oudot. There, from her lectern in her rare spare moments, she

professed the doctrines of free thought and made her young pupils sing

poems she had written, among which was the song entitled “The

Avengers.”

As President of the Club of the Revolution which met in the church of

Saint-Bernard, Louise Michel is responsible for the vote at the session on

May 18 (21 Floreal, year 79). That vote was for:

The suppression of magistrates and the annihilation of the legal Codes,

with their replacement by a commission of justice;

The suppression of religions, the immediate arrest of priests, and the

sale of their goods and the goods of those fugitives and traitors who

supported the scoundrels of Versailles;

The execution of an important hostage every twenty-four hours until

Citizen Blanqui, an appointed member of the Commune, is freed and

arrives in Paris.

It was not enough for this “passionate spirit,” as the author of an

imaginative account included in her dossier calls her, to stir up the

people, to applaud assassination, to corrupt children, to preach fratricide, and to encourage crime; she still had to set an example and commit

crimes herself.

Thus we find her at Issy, Clamart, and Montmartre fighting in the

front line, shooting at government forces or rallying retreating rebels.

The April 14 issue of the Cri dupeuple proves this charge. “Citizen Louise

Michel, who fought so valiantly at Moulineaux, was wounded at the fort

of Issy.” Fortunately for her, we add, the heroine of Jules Vall&s came

out of that notorious action with a simple sprain.

What was the motive that pushed Louise Michel down this irrevocable

path of politics and revolution?

Clearly, it was arrogance.

Louise Michel was an illegitimate child reared by charity. Instead of

thanking Providence for giving her the means to live happily with her

mother, she surrendered to her heated imagination and excitable character. Breaking with her benefactors, she ran to Paris for adventure.

The wind of revolution began to blow. Victor Noir died. It was the

moment for Louise Michel to enter on stage, but an anonymous role was

repugnant to her. Her name had to draw public attention and be in the

headlines of false proclamations and posters.

In conclusion, we must give a legal classification to the acts this

devil-ridden fanatic committed during the period from the beginning of

the frightful crisis that France has just undergone to the end of the

blasphemous struggle in which the accused took part amid the tombs of

the Montmartre cemetery.

She assisted, knowingly, the persons who apprehended the generals

Lecomte and Clement Thomas. She assisted, knowingly, in the deeds

that followed their apprehension: the torture and death of those two

unlucky individuals.

Intimately linked with the members of the Commune, she knew all

their plans in advance. She helped them with all her might and will.

Moreover, she assisted them and even surpassed them when she volunteered to go to Versailles and assassinate the President of the Republic

with the intention of terrifying the Assembly and, according to her,

ending the fighting.

She is as guilty as “Ferré, the proud republican,” whom she defended

in such a strange fashion and whose head, to use her own words, “is a

challenge thrown at your consciences—the answer to which is revolution.”

She excited the passions of the crowd and preached war without

mercy or truce. A she-wolf eager for blood, she brought about the death

of hostages through her hellish plots.

Therefore, it is our opinion that there is sufficient cause to bring

Louise Michel to trial for:

1. A crime, having the overthrow of the government as its goal.

2. A crime, having for its purpose the instigation of civil war through

encouraging citizens to arm themselves against each other.

3. For having, during an insurrection, carried visible weapons and

worn a military uniform and for having made use of those weapons.

4. Forgery of documents.

5. Use of a false document.

6. Complicity through provocation and planning in the assassination

of persons held as hostages by the Commune.

7. Complicity in illegal arrests, followed by torture and death, and

knowingly assisting the perpetrators of those deeds in the acts they

committed.

These crimes are provided for in articles 87, 91, 150, 151, 59, 60, 302,

341, and 344 of the Penal Code, and article 5 of the Law of 24 May 1834.

The Testimony of Louise Michel

President of the Court: You have heard the acts you are accused of.
What do you have to say in your defense?
The Accused: I don’t want to defend myself, nor do I want to be
defended. I belong completely to the Social Revolution, and I declare
that I accept responsibility for all my actions. I accept it entirely and
without reservations.
You accuse me of having participated in the assassination of Generals
Clement Thomas and Lecomte. To that charge, I would answer yes—if I
had been at Montmartre when those generals wanted to fire on the
people. I would have had no hesitation about shooting people who gave
orders like those. But once they were prisoners, I do not understand
why they were shot, and I look at that act as a villainous one.
As for the burning of Paris, yes, I participated in it. I wanted to block
the Versailles invaders with a barrier of flames. I had no accomplices in
that. I acted on my own.
I am also charged with being an accomplice of the Commune. That is
quite true, since above everything else the Commune wanted to bring
about the Social Revolution, and Social Revolution is my dearest wish.
Moreover, I am honored to be singled out as one of the promoters of the
Commune. It had absolutely nothing to do with assassinations or burning. I attended all the sessions at the Hotel de Ville, and I affirm that
there never was any talk of assassinations or burnings.
Do you want to know who the real guilty parties are? The police.
Later, perhaps, the light of truth will fall on all those events. Now people
naturally place responsibility on the partisans of Social Revolution.
One day I did propose to Th£ophile Ferré that I go to Versailles. I
wanted two victims: M. Thiers and myself, for I had already sacrificed
my life, and I had decided to kill him.
Question: Did you say in a proclamation that a hostage should be shot
every twenty-four hours?
Answer: No, I only wanted to threaten. But why should I defend myself?
I have already told you I refuse to do it. You are the men who are going
to judge me. You are in front of me publicly. You are men, and I, I am
only a woman. Nevertheless, I am looking you straight in the face. I
know quite well that anything I tell you will not change my sentence in
the slightest. Thus I have only one last word before I sit down.
We never wanted anything but the triumph of the great principles of
Revolution. I swear it by our martyrs who fell on the field of Satory, by
our martyrs I still acclaim here, by our martyrs who some day will find
their avenger.
I am in your power. Do whatever you please with me. Take my life if
you want it. I am not a woman who would dispute your wishes for a
moment.

<em>Question:</em> You claim you didn’t approve of the generals’ assassinations.

On the contrary, people say that when you were told about it, you cried
out: “They shot them. It serves them right.”

<em>Answer:</em> Yes, I said that. I admit it. In fact, I remember that I said it in the

presence of Citizens Le Moussu and Ferré.

<em>Question:</em> Then you do approve of the assassinations?

<em>Answer:</em> Let me point out that my statement is not proof. I said those

words with the intention of spurring on revolutionary zeal.

<em>Question:</em> You also wrote for newspapers, the <em>Cri du peuple</em>, for example.

Answer: Yes, I’ve made no effort to conceal that.

<em>Question:</em> In each issue, those newspapers demanded the confiscation of

the clergy’s property and suggested other similar revolutionary measures. Were those opinions yours?

<em>Answer:</em> Indeed yes, but note that we never wanted to take those goods

for ourselves. We thought only of giving them to the people for their
well-being.

<em>Question:</em> You asked for the suppression of the court system?

<em>Answer:</em> Because I had in front of me examples of its errors. I remembered the Lesurques affair and so many more.

<em>Question:</em> Do you confess to having resolved to assassinate M. Thiers?

<em>Answer:</em> Of course. I have already said that, and I claim it now.

<em>Question:</em> It seems that you wore various uniforms during the Commune.

<em>Answer:</em> I was dressed as usual. I only added a red sash over my clothes.

<em>Question:</em> Didn’t you wear a man’s uniform several times?

<em>Answer:</em> Once. On March 18. I dressed as a National Guardsman so I

wouldn’t attract attention.
Few witnesses had been subpoenaed, because Louise Michel had not
disputed the acts she was charged with. . . .
*** Summation
Captain Dailly, the prosecutor, spoke. He asked the court-martial to
excise the accused from society, because the accused was a continuing
danger to it. He withdrew all charges except that of carrying visible or
hidden arms in an insurrectionary movement.
Maître Haussman, appointed to defend the accused, spoke. He declared that because of the formal wish of the accused not to be defended,
he would simply put his faith in the wisdom of the court-martial.
President of the Court: Accused, do you have anything to say in your
defense?
Louise Michel: What I demand from you, you who claim you are a
court-martial, you who pass yourselves off as my judges, you who don’t
hide the way the Board of Pardons behaves, you who are from the
military and who judge me publicly—what I call for is the field of Satory,
where our revolutionary brothers have already fallen.
1 must be cut off from society. You have been told that, and the
prosecutor is right. Since it seems that any heart which beats for liberty
has the right only to a small lump of lead, I demand my share. If you let
me live, I will not stop crying for vengeance, and I will denounce the
assassins on the Board of Pardons to the vegeance of my brothers.
President of the Court: I cannot allow you to continue speaking if you
continue in this tone.
Louise Michel: I have finished. ... If you are not cowards, kill me. . . .

The Sentence

After these words, which caused a great stir in the courtroom, the

court-martial withdrew to deliberate. After a time, it returned and

announced its sentence: that Louise Michel be sentenced to deportation

to a fortified place.

Louise Michel was brought back into the courtroom and informed of

the verdict. When the clerk told her she had twenty-four hours to

petition for reviews, she cried out: “No, there is nothing to appeal. But I

would have preferred death.”

[This speech ends the excerpt from the **Gazette des tribunaux** reprinted in

the Memoirs. Louise Michel later appended a short note.]

Observations

I shall limit myself to pointing out a few errors.

1. I was not reared by charity but by my grandparents, who thought it

proper to do so. I left Vroncourt only after their deaths, and I left to prepare for my

schoolmistress’s diploma. I believed that in this fashion I could be useful

to my mother.

2. The number of my pupils in Montmartre was 150. That was stated

by the authorities during the Siege.

3. Perhaps there is some use in noting that contrary to the description

of my person given at the beginning of the account in the <em>Gazette des

tribunaux</em>, I am tall, not short. In the times in which we live, it is proper to

pass only for oneself.

Chapter 12. Voyage to Exile

While I waited for deportation, I was kept in the Auberive prison. Once

again I can see that prison, with its enormous cell blocks and its narrow

white paths running under the pines. There a gale is blowing, and I can

see the lines of silent women prisoners with their scarves folded at their

necks and wearing white headdresses like peasants. In front of the pines

burdened with snow during the long winter of 1872-73, the tired

women prisoners passed slowly by, their wooden shoes ringing a sad

cadence on the frozen earth.

My mother was still strong then, and I waited for my deportation to

New Caledonia without seeing what I have seen since: the terrible and

silent anguish under her calm appearance. She was staying at her sister’s

in Clefmont, which was very near the Auberive prison, and I knew she

was well. She brought me packages of cakes and cookies the way she

used to do when I was a student at Chaumont.

How many little gifts her old hands sent me, even in the last year she

was alive. We revolutionaries bring so little happiness to our families, yet

the more they suffer, the more we love them. The rare moments we

have at home make us intensely happy, for we know that those moments

are transient and our loved ones will miss them in the future.

According to the few pages remaining from my journal of the trip to

New Caledonia, we left Auberive on Tuesday, 5 August 1873, between

six and seven in the morning. The night before we left my mother came

to say goodbye, and I noticed for the first time that her hair was turning

white.

When I left for exile I wasn’t bitter about deportation because it was

better to be somewhere else and so not see the collapse of our dreams.

After what the Versailles government had done, I expected to find the

savages in the South Pacific good, and perhaps I would find the New

Caledonian sun better than the French one.

We were put on a train and while we were crossing through Langres

on the way to Paris, five or six metalworkers with bare arms black up to

their elbows came out of their workshop. One white-haired worker

flourished his hammer and let out a yell that the noise of the railroad

carriage’s rolling wheels almost drowned out. “Long live the Commune!”

he cried. Something like a promise to stay worthy of his salute

filled my heart.

That evening we arrived in Paris in a prison carriage. As we were

being transported from the Gare de l’Est to the Gare d’Orléans, I peered

out and could see the little shop on the rue Saint-Honoré where my

mother planned to live with a relative after my departure. We left almost

immediately from the Gare d’Orléans, and the next day around four in

the afternoon we arrived near the Atlantic coast at the prison of la

Rochelle.

On August 8 we were put aboard a vessel, the **Comète**, to go the last

thirty kilometers to Rochefort. Aboard the **Comète** we were treated like a

vanquished enemy, not like evildoers, and some friendly people in small

boats followed the **Comète** the entire way. We answered their salute from

afar. As my last farewell I wanted to wave a red scarf I had saved since

the Commune, but it was buried deep in my baggage, hidden from any

search, and on deck I had only my black veil.

In the harbor at Rochefort we were put aboard the old warship

<em>Virginie</em>. On Sunday, August 10, the crew let out the sails and weighed

anchor while they sang the old war songs of Brittany. The rhythm of

their songs multiplied their strength, and the cable rose while the men

sweated. Their harmony became a force without which it would have

been impossible to raise the anchor.

Until Monday we skirted the coasts of France. Then came the open

sea. At first two or three ships were in sight on the horizon; then only

one; then none at all. Two seabirds accompanied us for some time, but

toward the fourteenth the last large ones disappeared. On the sixteenth

the waves were strong. The wind blew a tempest, and the sun made a

thousand flashes on the water. Two rivers of diamonds seemed to slide

down the flanks of the ship.

It was really my ship then, alone under the heavens! Except for the

trip between Chaumont and Paris, I had never traveled. Now I was

taking a long voyage on a warship; I would never have dared to dream

of such a stroke of good luck, especially with the state paying the cost. It

was true that ultimately the cost was high: our people by the thousands

fallen in the slaughter and mothers who believed they would never see

us again. Still, to me, the sea was the most beautiful of spectacles, even

though from infancy pictures and tales and especially my imagination

had filled my mind with the ocean. I had dreamed of the ocean the way it

truly was, and now that the reality had appeared, I was charmed and

magnetized by its immensity. In my imagination I had loved the sea all

my life; now I loved it as I really saw it.

For my first toys my grandfather had made me boats, beautiful little

ones whose sails could be clewed up with cables of thick thread. In a

poem about my childhood, I wrote about those toy boats my grandfather

made.

As my first toys, he made me some boats.

Ships of great beauty with real sails and masts,

And we floated them through the cool of the pond.

We sailed them through hazards of monstrous brown toads,

Which sometimes turned and leaped on their decks

Down near the old elm where honeybees swarmed

In the hot summer sun, midst the roses of Provins.

How many white sails I saw as a child.

They swooped o’er the waves in my dreams of the night,

There was one in the starlight that floated alone,

A soaring white bird against blackest horizon.

How great was its beauty! I painted it brightly,

And stood struck with awe at its forest of rigging.

My grandfather said: “I will build you a ship,

A ship of great beauty with its heart made of oak,

For it is a frigate.”...

But though he made me many lesser craft he never made that dream

frigate with its oaken heart, and we never set it afloat in the pond near

the red rosebushes with bees flying over its masts. He never built it, and

yet on the real waves, after the defeat of the Commune, I recognized my

dream frigate; it was the **Virginie**.

Anyone can try to explain this childhood dream. When I saw the ship

from my imagination appear in the real world, I had already seen too

many strange things to be moved by that new coincidence. I have seen

things that made me think of Edgar Allan Poe or Baudelaire or the

narrators of strange events; here I simply note that the **Virginie** breasting

the waves under full sail was the very ship I had seen in my dreams.

On August 19 a black ship like the legendary **Naglfar**, the spectral ship

of the North, came into view, sometimes crowding on sail and coming

nearer, sometimes slipping back. It began to look as if it were lying in

wait, and we wondered if its crew were liberators. It followed us in an

intermittent fashion for two days. On the evening of the second day our

vessel did some practice maneuvers and fired two blank cannon shots,

and the strange ship faded into the night. For a little while longer it

watched from a greater distance, its white sails shining like stars just over

the horizon against the depths of shadow. Then it returned no more.

On August 22 sea swallows perched on our yardarms. We were in

sight of Palma [**sic:** Las Palmas], Grand Canary Island, whose white

houses seemed to grow out of the water. From the ships we could see

mountains and more mountains, piled up and mixed with the clouds.

From the anchorage at Las Palmas we could see some savage rocks, two

forts, Luz and Santa Catarina [**sic:** Catalina], and some ruins which we

were told were those of a customshouse. To the north, on a hill

overlooking the bay, was the citadel.

The inhabitants came out to the ship in barges laden with enormous

grapes, and they acquainted us with the monetary system of the Canaries.

An ounce of gold or **quadruple** is eighty-four francs eighty

centimes, a quantity of money none of us needed to worry about. Then

there are quarters, eighths, and sixteenths of **piastres** and **piécettes** and

<em>demi-piécettes</em>. There is also the real, nine of which are equal to a five-franc

piece, and still others.

More interesting was the type of inhabitant. Two among them were

magnificent. May science forgive me, but after looking in a number of

scientific books, I don’t think I’m mistaken; the natives were the

Guanches, and their ancestors had lived in Atlantis. Perhaps the Canaries

are the remains of Atlantis. Why not? The tormented ground there still shakes.

On the twenty-fourth we raised anchor at 9 a.m. We followed the reef

and kept seeing mountain peaks without number and without end. In

the deep gorges between them were forests or plantations of a somber

green with delicate green spots. The bays lay open to the northwest

wind. To the west we could see Tenerife in the distance and farther still

we could see what appeared to be a blue summit lost in the sky, but we

decided it must be masses of clouds.

I can smell the bitter odor of the waves. I can hear the organlike sound

of the wind in the sails and the clatter of clearing for action and

maneuvers. I can hear the whistles trilling as the sailors heaved up the

anchor, snubbed it, and made it fast. I can hear the rough chafing of the

cable and metal being bumped and the chants of the sailors who pushed

at the capstan.

I see the ship tacking, and I see our ports of call, the Canaries and

then Santa Catarina in Brazil before we turned southeastward. The

sailors spread the topsails and hauled in the sheets to hoist them. Up on

the yards the sailors let out the reefs, the canvas caught the wind and

pulled away from the mast, and the land disappeared behind us.

We exchanged many letters and poems across the grates of the cages

in which we were confined. Such actions were forbidden, but the guards

did not enforce that rule. Because they treated us with consideration, we

did not break their other regulations.

Until after my return from exile I saved much of that shipboard

correspondence, but it has since been destroyed. The only fragments I

still have are a few scraps of poetry I wrote and a wonderful poem that

Henri Rochefort wrote to me, “To My Neighbor, Starboard Aft.” I miss

those scraps of paper on which the deportees wrote their simple letters

and verses. There was one very pretty dedication that a comrade, a

zealous Protestant, wrote on the flyleaf of some pious book that was

scented with myrrh and cinnamon. I tore out the dedication and kept it,

but I threw the book overboard. Some letters—a great many of them—

were full of memories of those we left behind us. Those persons would

be less free under the surge of the triumphant reaction in France than

we would be in the Caledonian deserts.

The **Virginie** sailed on, ever southeastward. The sea was calm as an

oilcloth, peacefully reflecting the shadow of the high yards. Then came

the stormy seas of the Cape of Good Hope. On the mountains of waves

all white with foam, all black in their depths, the eastern sun rose. At

night millions of phosphorescent stars made constellations in the waves.

How magnificent it all was!

There were albatrosses, the poor albatrosses that beat their wings

against the ship or that the sailors caught with a hook. After snaring

them, the sailors hung them up by their beaks until they died; any other

method of killing them might let drops of blood spot the whiteness of

their valuable feathers. Sadly, the albatrosses would keep their heads up

as long as possible, rounding their swans’ necks, prolonging their pitiful

agony for a moment or two. Then with one last grimace of horror they

opened wide their great, black-lidded eyes and died.

I wrote a poem to them:

Soar high in brilliant whiteness, birds,

Fly high above the roaring waves,

And beat your shining wings around

The tiny ship that glides away.

Float in a dream on the foaming sea,

Float like a scattered, roving fleet,

Gleam in the light of the shining sun,

For soon our men will capture you.

Men to glut their petty vices,

Defiling beauty, want your feathers.

They mean to torture you to death.

Poor flying birds, be fearful!

That sort of death is not given only to an albatross. Some men kill

other men the same way, being very careful not to let the drops of blood

soil either them or their victims.

The **Virginie** sailed through polar seas far south of the Cape of Good

Hope, and the air itself was frozen under a black sky in which morning

mingled with evening. With every swell the vessel creaked. The sailors

sang old airs from Brittany as a magical chant to keep the cold from

overtaking them, so that in the midst of polar cold, I smelled the breath

of Brittany filled with the scent of genista in bloom.

Finally as we sailed across the Indian Ocean, the terrible cold slackened,

and for week after week we sailed across the empty seas bound for

New Caledonia.

[[l-m-louise-michel-the-red-virgin-1.png 80 f][New Caledonia and the Ducos Peninsula]]

Chapter 13. Numbo, New Caledonia

*Louise Michel was fortunate. Those persons sent to New Caledonia and sentenced

to the most rigorous deportation lived under conditions that were tolerable, if not

easy. Basically, the authorities restricted Louise Michel and her comrades to a

small territory near Nouméa at the tip of the Ducos Peninsula. The issue of

rations was insufficient, but the deportees were allowed to supplement their diets

through their own efforts.*

*After Henri Rochefort’s successful escape in 1874, the tyrannical Governor

Aleyron replaced Governor de la Richerie, and the major problem of the deportees

was an arbitrary administration which harassed them and cut off information

about the world outside as much as possible. Medical care was minimal. Conditions,

in fact, were more unpleasant than Michel suggests, but less severe than the

government had intended.*

Four months after the **Virginie** left France, we sailed into Nouméa

through one of the gaps in the double rampart of coral which surrounds

the island. Here, as at Rome, there are seven hills, which appeared blue

under an intensely blue sky. To the south was Mt. Dore, with red

crevasses of gold-bearing earth, and other mountain peaks were visible

in all directions. One mountain had split in two, forming a V, and where

the two arms of the V met, uprooted rocks had fallen backwards into

some internal cavity. Those arid summits, those gorges torn from a

cataclysm and still gaping wide, those volcanic cones from which flames

spurted long ago and may erupt again—all that wilderness pleased me.

As usual, the authorities tried to separate the men from the women.

At first they tried to send us women up the coast to Bourail while the

men stayed on the Ducos Peninsula just outside Nouméa. The excuse

they used was that conditions at Bourail were better, and for that very

reason we protested bitterly. If our male comrades were going to suffer

more on the Ducos Peninsula, we wanted to be there with them. The

captain of the **Virginie** understood that we were right, and he made the

authorities understand, too. Finally, on the captain’s orders, the **Virginie**’s

launch ferried us ashore.

I can still see all the details of the site. On the Ducos Peninsula we lived

on the edge of the sea near the Western Forest. Nouméa was on the

other side of the hills from Numbo, which was composed of earthen huts

over which creepers formed arabesques. From a distance their random

groupings among the trees were lovely. We heard the waves beating

eternally on the reefs, and above us we saw the cracked mountain peaks

from which torrents of water poured noisily down to the sea during the

frequent great rains. At sunset we watched the sun disappear into the

sea, and in the valley the twisted white trunks of the niaoulis glowed with

a silver phosphorescence.

The men who had sailed with us had disembarked several days before

we women did. When we were rowed ashore, they were waiting for us on

the beach with other comrades who had come on earlier ships, and for

more than a week we were honored guests, feted from hut to hut.

Our first meal was with Père Malézieux, that old man of the June Days

whose coat had been riddled by bullets on January 22. He had escaped

from the slaughter without having any idea how he had survived, nor

did we. I believe that the less you value your life, the more chance there

is that you will keep it.

Lacour cooked a roast in a hole, the way the Kanakas do. Lacour was

the comrade who had heard the Protestant organ playing one night at

Neuilly near the Perronnet barricade. The organ had been answering

the Versailles artillery, sometimes like a challenge, sometimes by imitating

the diabolical thunder of the cannons. Lacour, along with five or six

National Guardsmen, had pushed his way into the church oratory to

threaten the person whose playing was attracting shells to the barricade.

It was I, of course. Ordered to rest, I had gone into the oratory, which

was close to the barricade; the organ was a good one—at that time only a

few notes were broken—and I had never felt in greater form. Everyone

rests in his own way. In my memory I could hear a few measures of that

dance of the bombs, so Lacour was an old friend.

At another feast in our honor, one given by Henri Rochefort, I met a

Kanaka for the first time. It was Daoumi, from Sifou. On Balzenq’s

advice, Daoumi had come dressed like a European in a high hat, which

marred the effect of his wild man’s head, and he was wearing kid gloves.

With his hands thus imprisoned, Daoumi could not help Olivier Pain

with the roast, nor could he help with the other preparations. That is

how I was able to get him alone and have him sing a war chant to me

while I fed leaves to a she-goat tethered to a castor oil plant.

Daoumi sang that war chant in the soft voice of the Kanakas. A threat

howled through its tune in quarter tones, and the farewell at the end

came out as a true cry; the Kanakas get those quarter tones from the

cyclones, just as the Arabs draw theirs from the hot and violent wind of

the desert.

Within the prison area on the Ducos Peninsula, the town of Numbo

grew up little by little, each new arrival adding his own earthen hut

covered with grass. Numbo, in the valley, was crescent-shaped, the

eastern end being the top of the crescent and containing the prison, the

post office, and the canteen. The other end, the western one, lay in a

forest on low hills covered with salt-resistant plants. The middle of the

crescent, running along the whole length of the bays from east to west,

was where we built our huts.

Each person built his nest or dug his lair according to his own

impulses. From a distance Bauër’s hut was a beautiful villa. He had hung

a basket in front of it filled with euphorbia that was sometimes cared for.

Père Croiset had built a chimney for his hut, and with luck you could

almost make coffee there to celebrate the anniversary of March 18

without making the roof go up in flames. G— had ploughed up half

the mountainside to plant crops; an onlooker would have thought he

was watching the Swiss Family Robinson. In G—’s storehouse under a rock he kept a whole menagerie, in the midst of which his cat reigned

supreme. At the very top of the mountain Burlot dwelt like a lookout.

You could hear the sonorous cackle of his hen, which sang out like a

donkey warning him of anyone entering his place.

Champy’s hut on the western coast was so small that when several

people sat down there it was like being in a basket. When the wind blew,

as it did strongly enough to tear the horns off cattle in the forest and on

Nou Island southwest of us in the bay, it made Champy’s little basket

dance.

Provins had a stupendous voice and would yell across from one bay to

another, trying to chat with us across four hundred meters of water. We

could hear him, but our responses couldn’t reach him. He was the only

one among us with such a powerful voice.

Père Malézieux had built his hut with his smithy at the edge of a large

forest, which we called Père Malézieux’s Forest. Near him lived Balzenq,

a former staff member of Blanqui’s newspaper, and in his hole full of

crucibles, Balzenq distilled an essence of niaouli from the trees. At his

hut you could almost believe you were visiting some alchemist. Bunant

lived nearby and went into the woods with his hatchet in his belt; he and

his wife both dressed like bandits.

All our operations were as primitive as the Stone Age. We had to make

our own tools, improvising as best we could for the things we lacked or

that weren’t allowed in the camp.

When I was living at Numbo in a hut below the infirmary, I partially

demolished an uninhabited hut to make it into a greenhouse. The

guards were appalled at my audacity in daring to touch a building

owned by the state. Even the deportees found my action a little brash,

and speculated on what the governor—at that time de la Richerie—

would do when he inspected the area and found out about it.

As it turned out, I was able to get his sympathy for my experiment

when he came. I took him inside the greenhouse and showed him some

trees standing in the best-lit corner. They were papayas which I had

vaccinated with the sap of other papayas afflicted with plant jaundice,

and I wanted to keep them hidden until my experiment was completed.

Governor de la Richerie understood my experiment and gave orders

that I be allowed to continue using the greenhouse.

I wanted to succeed with twenty trees before I talked about my

experiment. That was important to me because even among the deportees,

where all of us were suffering for having loved liberty, prejudice

still remained. What would my comrades have said if I had talked openly

about using vaccines on vegetables? Even when only very few persons

knew what I was doing I kept hearing things like, “If it were true that

vaccines could be used against all illnesses, professors of medicine would

already have done it. Are you some sort of scientist that you are so busy

on projects like this?”

Since that time scientists have tried vaccines for rabies and cholera,

just as I tried it for plant jaundice in New Caledonia. Sap is like blood,

and the same principles that govern diseases of the blood apply to the

illnesses of plants. If boldness is useful to experimenters, it is most useful

when it is employed to reason about the analogies that exist among all

living things.

My four vaccinated papayas contracted jaundice, but they recovered.

Perhaps they were the only ones which did not die of plant jaundice that

year, especially on the peninsula. Before my experiment was complete,

however, a new governor, the brutal and grotesque Aleyron, sent us

women to the Bay of the West, and I don’t know what became of my

trees.

Governor Aleyron took over in 1874, following Henri Rochefort’s

escape, and the situation of the deportees worsened greatly. Governor

Aleyron’s time in office was a time of desperate madness. On one side of

the area to which we were confined was the prison itself, and under

Governor Aleyron the prison was always full. Many of our friends were

locked up there for long periods. Odious things happened. The guards

shot at any deportee who returned to his cabin after curfew, even if he

was only a few minutes late. One unfortunate man who didn’t have all

his wits about him was shot at, the way somebody would have taken aim

at a rabbit, because he came back a little late to his plot. At roll calls there

were similar insults, and as punishment the deportees were deprived of

bread.

The comical thing—there is always something comical—was that

Aleyron set sentries around Numbo at night, and their calls in the midst

of silence created an operatic effect. The sentries cast black shadows as

they stood under the full moonlight which came over the peaks. Down

from the top of the mountains we heard the clear night echo to,

“Sentinels, take care.” It was almost as if I were at a performance of the

<em>Tour de Nesles</em> on an immensely enlarged stage, and I admit I enjoyed the

spectacle greatly. Some of the sentries had beautiful, deep voices, and

chance picked them to begin. But then their voices grew hoarse and the

effect palled.

Even under Aleyron and Admiral Ribourt, who was on the island

investigating Rochefort’s escape, I was able to smuggle a few letters out.

They described the illegal actions of Governor Aleyron, and they tell the

story of our transfer from Numbo to the Bay of the West.

Numbo, New Caledonia

18 April 1875

Dear friends:
From the publicity given the revelations made by those who have
escaped recently, you ought to know, more or less, the situation of the
deportees. You ought to know about the abuses of authority which
Messieurs Ribourt, Aleyron, and their consorts are guilty of.
Under Admiral Ribourt our letters were opened and read, as if the few
persons who had survived the slaughter of 1871 still struck fear into the
assassins across the ocean.
Under Colonel Aleyron, the hero of the Lobau barracks, a guard fired at
a deportee sitting in his own hut. That deportee had unknowingly crossed
the boundary to look for firewood. Earlier another guard had shot at
Croiset’s dog, which was lying between the legs of his master, and I don’t
know whether the guard was aiming at the man or the dog.
So many things have happened since then. It seems to me that I’m going
to forget something, because there is so much to tell, but I’ll remember
sooner or later.
You have already learned that the guards cut off the bread ration of the
deportees who showed up for roll call but did not line up in two rows in a
military fashion. The deportation laws do not require them to line up that
way, and their protest was vigorous but peaceful. It showed that the
deportees had not forgotten solidarity, in spite of the divisions brought
about among us by people foreign to our cause, whom the administrators
have deliberately mixed with us. Since then, the guards have cut off
supplies to forty-five deportees, allowing them to receive only bread, salt,
and dried vegetables. Their only crime was showing their hostility to a job
that existed solely in the officials’ imagination.
Four women have also been deprived of supplies on the charge that
their conduct and morality left something to be desired. That charge is
false. The husband of one of those women, the deportee Langlois, responded vehemently because his wife had given him no grounds for
discontent. For defending his wife against those slanders, he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and fined 3000 francs.
Verlet says that the deportee Henry Place also spoke up for the woman
who is his companion, the conduct of whom merits the respect of all the
deportees. Place nevertheless was sentenced to six months in prison and
fined 500 francs. Even worse, nothing can bring his child back to life. The
child was born while Place was imprisoned awaiting trial, and it died as a
consequence of the torments suffered by its mother, who was nursing it.
Place was never allowed to see his child alive.
The courageous and dignified Cipriani was sentenced to eighteen
months in prison and fined 3000 francs. Nourny was treated the same way
for writing insolent letters to the authorities, letters that they clearly
deserved.
Recently, Citizen Malezieux, the dean of the deportees, was seated one
evening in front of his hut chatting with several deportees who work with
him. A drunken guard accused him of disturbing the peace at night and
struck him, whereupon Malezieux was put in prison.
Our beloved conquerors mix the droll with the harsh. They have drawn
up lists to give deportees rewards for hard work or to cut off provisions
from persons being disciplined. It turns out that the people who have
worked the hardest since their arrival have been put on the list to be cut off
from provisions. One deportee is on both lists at the same time: the list of
those being punished for refusing to work and the list of those to receive
rewards for special diligence, both lists being printed in the official Journal
de Nouméa.
At the evening roll call a few days before Captain de Pritzbuer took over
from Aleyron as governor, a guard with a bad reputation threatened the
deportees with his revolver in his hand. That challenge and many others
since merit the deepest scorn.
It is very probable that in the future there will be new lists of persons cut
off from provisions. Work doesn’t really exist because communications
have been cut off for too long for anyone to try anything. Moreover, for
some of the deportees to continue their old professions would require
some basic expenditures which it is impossible for them to make.
Telling all these things will serve to tear the veil completely away from
the events in New Caledonia. It will show just where the hatred of the
victors can descend, and that is useful to know. But not to imitate them, for
we are neither butchers nor jailers. We need to know and publicize the
exploits of the party of order so that its defeat will be complete.
Farewell. I’ll see you soon, perhaps, if the situation requires those of us
who don’t value our lives highly to risk them to escape, so that we can tell
people about the crimes our lords and masters are committing here in New
Caledonia.
Louise Michel, number 1

At the end of this letter of 18 April 1875 I went on to talk about an

escape plan Mme Rastoul and I had worked out. Mme Rastoul lived in

Australia, and we developed our plan through letters we smuggled from

the Ducos Peninsula to Sydney and back hidden in the bottom of a box

of sewing materials.

The plan was that one night after roll call I was to climb over the

mountain and get to the Northern Forest. There I would get on the road

that ran through the Northern Forest, and if I observed three or four

risky precautions as I followed it, I would finally enter Nouméa through

the cemetery. Meanwhile, Mme Rastoul would arrange for someone to

smuggle me aboard the mail packet to Sydney. When I arrived in Sydney

I would tell about the actions of Aleyron and Ribourt, inspiring the

English, I hoped, to send a brig crewed by bold sailors. I would return

on the brig to rescue the other deportees, or if I failed to move the

English, I would return alone.

It was the sewing box containing the plan which failed to return.

When I finally came through Sydney after I was legally repatriated, I

learned from Mme Rastoul (now Mme Henry) that at the moment when

I was supposed to receive the message to carry out our escape plan,

someone handed our sewing box over to the authorities.

I have no idea why the New Caledonian administration never spoke to

me about those plans for escape they had intercepted, but it may have

been one motive behind sending us women from Numbo to the Bay of

the West.

A month after I wrote the letter to my friends about the evil acts of

Governor Aleyron and his guards, we women were ordered to move

from Numbo to the Bay of the West, which is also on the Ducos

Peninsula, and I wrote another letter describing those events.

Ducos Peninsula

9 June 1875

Dear friends,
Here are the official transfer papers I have spoken to you about. We
consented to the transfer only after our protests had been satisfied. We
protested two points: first, the way the transfer was ordered; and second,
the manner in which we were to live in the new huts.
Whether we occupied this corner or that corner of the peninsula made
no difference to us, but we couldn’t endure the insolence of the first order
the administration posted, and we had the right to set our conditions and
not consent to change residence until those conditions were met.
That is what we did.
Here is a copy of the first order, dated 19 May 1875 and posted at
Numbo. That was the way we got the government’s orders—by proclamation.

19 May 1875
BY ORDER OF THE GOVERNMENT THE DEPORTED<BR>
WOMEN WHOSE NAMES FOLLOW WILL LEAVE THE<BR>
CAMP OF NUMBO ON THE TWENTIETH OF THE CURRENT MONTH

TO GO TO LIVE ON THE BAY OF THE WEST IN THE

LODGINGS ASSIGNED TO THEM

Louise Michel, number 1

Marie Schmit, number 3

Marie Cailleux, number 4

Adèle Desfosses, number 5

Nathalie Lemel, number 2

Mme Dupré, number 6

We protested. Here are our two letters of protest, the first from

Mme Lemel.

Numbo, 20 May 1875
The deportee Nathalie Duval (Mme Lemel) does
not refuse to live in the hut to which the administration
assigns her, but she wishes to call attention to the
following points.
First, she cannot move herself;
Second, she cannot procure the wood necessary for
cooking her food and saw it up herself;
Third, she has already built two hen houses
and cultivated a garden;
Fourth, through the authority of the law on
deportation which reads, “The deportees will be
able to live in groups or in families,” the deportees
have the right to choose the persons with whom
they wish to establish relationships. The said
deportee Nathalie Duval (Mme Lemel) refuses communal
life except under those conditions.
(signed) Nathalie Duval (Mme Lemel), number 2

I sent the authorities my protest, too.

Numbo, 20 May 1875
The deportee Louise Michel, number 1, protests
the measure which assigns a domicile far from the
camp to the women deportees, as if their presence in
the camp was a scandal. The same law governs both
male and female deportees; no unmerited insult should
be added.
I cannot go to this new domicile unless the
administration publicly posts its motives for sending
us there.
The deportee Louise Michel declares that if those
motives are insulting, she will be obliged to protest
to the end, no matter what happens to her.
Louise Michel, number 1

The day after our protests, we were warned to be ready to move during
the day, an order we hastened not to obey. We were firmly resolved not to
leave Numbo until the authorities acceded to our just protests. We declared
we were ready to go to the prison if they wished, but we would
certainly not bother to move as they had ordered. We affirmed, however,
that once the insolent proclamation was corrected and our lodgings
arranged in such a way that we wouldn’t disturb each other, we had no
reason to prefer one place to another.
The head guard was very annoyed with us. Toward evening he came on
horseback so he would appear more imposing, but his horse kept breaking
wind, which spoiled the effect. And then, bored with the long pause his
master made in front of our huts, the horse ran back to the military camp
more swiftly than his rider wished.
Three or four days later, the governor and the territorial commanding
officer came to our huts. They promised to accede to our demands by
putting up a second proclamation, and they agreed to separate us in little
huts where we would be able to live in twos and threes as we wished. Thus
at the Bay of the West we would be allowed to group ourselves according
to our trades.
They fulfilled a part of their commitments immediately, but so long as
they weren’t met totally, it was impossible for them to make us leave
Numbo. Their problem was that there were no places for us in the prison,
so they decided to meet our demands completely. Now we are at the Bay of
the West. It is sad for Mme Lemel, who is so sick she can scarcely walk.
That’s why I’m not rejoicing in the nearness of the forest I love so much.
Without passion or anger, that is the story of our transfer.
Louise Michel, number 1
Bay of the West, 9 June 1875

The administration gave in to our rebellion because it would have had

greater problems if it had not; there was no special prison in which to

keep a half-dozen women. But in June 1875 I made a new beginning at

the Bay of the West.

Chapter 14. The Bay of the West

When I was forced to go to the Bay of the West, I had a greater

opportunity to observe the countryside that I loved. Between the Western

Forest and the sea, there is a band of volcanic rocks, some standing

like the menhirs at Karnak, others affecting monstrous poses, one even

looking like an enormous rose with a few broken petals. At high tide the

sea prevents people who are fearful of the water from prowling around.

Dominating the Western Forest is the signal post. Covered with swallows

resting on its supports, the signal post appears from afar to be a gigantic

tree with spreading branches, and from their resting places the talkative

swallows gossip with each other.

The forest was beautiful. Lianas cover it with creepers twice a year,

their branches floating in the air or thrown in mad arabesques. Almost

all of them have white or yellow flowers, but different varieties of liana

have differently shaped leaves. Some are like arrowheads in the tarot,

others like lanceheads, and still others like grape leaves. Others have

leaves that look like cut glass.

There is another creeper with grape leaves which are fragile and

transparent and covered with a sort of down, like a French plum. It has

flat, checkered seeds covered with a vermillion fruit, like the jellyfish that

cyclones scrape up from the bottom of the sea and throw on the beach.

The woods are red with indigenous tomatoes about the size of French

cherries. They climb high up through the shade, and, like strawberries,

they put out fruit where the sun reaches through. There are figs which

smell like ashes, fat mulberries covered with an odorless white coating

like sugar, and yellow plums with an enormous round pit. Most people

said the fruits weren’t fit to eat, but I liked them; indeed, I preferred

them to European fruit. I particularly liked gathering them from bushes

between the rocks in the profound silence of the forest. Then all I

needed was a light breeze from the sea and some good letter from my

mother or Marie in my pocket.

There are berries which look like black currants. They have a fragrant

aroma, although each cluster of fruit yields scarcely half a drop of juice.

It has the bouquet of a very strong madeira, and I believe it could be

fermented to make a liquor that would comfort the sick.

When I walked in the Western Forest, I saw few niaoulis, which are

uncommon there but plentiful on the high slopes that crown the Ducos

Peninsula. On dark nights the niaoulis give off a phosphorescence, and

in the light of the full moon their branches rise up weeping like the arms

of giants crying over the enslavement of the earth.

In the midst of the Western Forest, deep in a gorge between little

knolls still impregnated with the bitter odor of the sea, there is an

immense tree very like a European olive tree, and its branches stretch

out horizontally, like a larch. No insect ever lands on its bitter-tasting

black leaves, and no matter what the time of day or season, there is a

grottolike coolness in its shadow, refreshing to thought as well as body.

Above it, enveloping a whole rock with its archings, was a banyan tree,

which was cut down in the last year of our exile. Never have I seen

stranger insects than those that lived in the clefts of worn-away rock

under the shadow of that banyan tree. If we hadn’t been forbidden to

have alcohol, I would have been able to preserve some of them.

Once and sometimes twice a year a gray snow enveloped the peninsula,

sometimes ankle deep and whirling around. It was locusts. Noise

scared them away temporarily, but they always returned, and eventually

they devoured the forests and the cultivated lands alike. Leaves, vegetables, tender grass, old bushes—everything except the trunks of the trees

was eaten.

If they appeared a second time, it was because the eggs of the first

wave had hatched in the bushes. They remained there wingless for a

time before flying out to devour the second crop and then to go off

elsewhere to destroy the vegetation of some other area, lay eggs, and die.

Perhaps men could sweep the locusts into deep trenches, and cover them

with enough earth to blanket the smell; then the locusts would become a

rich fertilizer.

Nothing was as beautiful as the gray and turbulent snow of the locusts.

Their uniform color filled the whole sky, and the insects filtered the

sun’s rays, making it look as if the sunlight were coming through a sieve.

From the sky, gray flakes fell in a strangely blurred chiaroscuro.

Only as a last resort did the locusts attack the castor oil plants that

grew everywhere; and often they left those plants completely untouched.

So castor oil silkworms could be raised in New Caledonia, and

they are esteemed in the Indies almost as highly as the mulberry

silkworms. For ten years I wrote asking scholars to send me castor oil

silkworm eggs. In telling this story I beg the pardon of those savants who

sent them to me, but they always sent the eggs first to Paris. From there

they came through the mail to me half across the world, and they always

died in transit. Yet ships came to Nouméa which had just stopped at the

very places from which those eggs had been sent to France. During the

last year of my exile, after thoroughly cursing the manners and customs

of scholars who do nothing the simple way, I found some castor oil

plants covered with worms that looked like silkworm moths. Perhaps

silkworms exist in the wild in New Caledonia, and I will know someday.

New Caledonia is the paradise of spiders, too, among them a silk-spinning spider.

It spins a tent of gauze and might be useful for mankind.

The natives respect spiders because they think spiders destroy

cockroaches. They even allow an enormous, black, hairy-legged variety

to run free in their houses for that purpose. The Kanakas also esteem a

fat white spider, which looks like a giant hazelnut, for its fine taste; they

esteem it as highly as the locusts, which they eat like shrimp.

Another spider is a real monster. It exploits the work of little spiders

who live in its web and repair it. Does the big spider eat them eventually?

Probably, unless their work is more profitable than the nourishment

they provide.

At the top of the high knolls in the Western Forest, enormous rocks

have collapsed like the ruins of fortresses and have been covered over

with pink heather, fragile creepers, and fragrant flowers. Among those

ruined rocks lives a brown spider, as hairy as a bear. The female attaches

the male to her web, and when he no longer pleases her, she devours

him. That is the opposite of the human species.

No New Caledonian insect has a venom that affects humans yet; they

have known man for too short a time. Even the animals that use poisons

against each other cannot harm man.

Even the water serpents pose no threat to man. Their fangs are too

short, and their species is disappearing everywhere. Those serpents are

large and very beautiful. Some have white and black rings; others have

patches of white and black. Some of us tamed them, and for a long time I

kept one in a water hole I dug, but I had to let it go free because my old

cat was terrified by it and constantly provoked it by spitting in its face.

The serpent might have ended up by smothering her in its coils;

certainly it followed her movements with its little reptile eyes filled with

an expression that held very little sympathy.

On the mountain slope near the prison was the post office, its veranda

covered with creepers. To send a letter to France and have it answered

took six to eight months. At the end of my stay in New Caledonia, it

regularly took only six months. On mail days, we climbed that hill

anxiously at the exact hour set. Oh dear, beloved letters! With what

ecstasy I received them. My mother wrote me the longest letters, and I

awaited news from her with great joy.

Another frequent correspondent was M. de Fleurville, the inspector

of the Montmartre schools, who had taken charge of my affairs in

Paris—mostly a certain number of debts. At his own expense he got my

Contes d’enfants published; I had written it while I was in the Auberive

prison. M. de Fleurville wrote to me in New Caledonia about new

discoveries because he knew we were not allowed newspapers.

I am reliving those days. I am walking down the hill with my letters in

my hands: Marie’s, full of flowers; M. de Fleurville’s, a good half of

which he devoted to scolding me the way he had in Montmartre; my

mother’s, in which she assured me she was still strong. At the beginning

of last December she was still telling me she was well, just as she had

during those years in New Caledonia, and forbidding anyone to tell me

about her illness.

Coming back from the post office to the Bay of the West, I am

following the edge of the sea. The pungent and powerful odor of the sea

fills the air and smells good. Walking on the path, I hear guitar music coming from L—’s hut played on the guitar Père Croiset has made here in Numbo. It is so nice on shore, but I cannot keep from thinking

about the prisoners on Nou Island only two kilometers away across the

water. They are forced to live under the most severe conditions and are

far more afflicted than we are. It is there that the best of us are locked

up. We are hungry for news of them, but news is difficult to get through

a thousand obstacles.

I see those silent beaches at the edge of the sea, where suddenly a fight

between crabs splashes the water under the mangroves. Nothing but

wild nature and deserted waves exists any more.

And the cyclones. Once you’ve seen them you are sated with the

terrible splendors brought by the fury of the elements. It is the wind, the

waves, the sea, which the old songs sang about. A cyclone seems to carry

you away amidst the howling of a terrible choir; wings carry you, and

they beat between the dark of the sky and the black of the waves.

Sometimes an immense red fork of lightning tears the shadows and

leaves a glimmer of purple against which the blackness of the waves

floats like a mourning band. Thunder, the harsh sounds of the waves,

the alarm gun firing in warning, the noise of water pouring in torrents,

the enormous blast of the wind—all that is only one sound, immense and

superb, the orchestra of frenzied nature.

Our first cyclone took place at night. Those are the most beautiful

ones. On the Ducos Peninsula the barometer had fallen to its lowest

point. No single refreshing breeze stirred, and the air had announced

the coming cyclone since morning. The animals became uneasy, and

everybody took his beasts into his own house. Having taken in my goat

and my cats, I got an idea which I wanted to tell to Perusset, a former

ship captain. There was no time to lose.

With some difficulty I followed the path to Numbo. Evening was

falling, and the storm was beginning. I got to his house, one of the first

houses on the side of the Western Forest where I used to live, and

knocked.

“Who’s there in this weather? Idiot,” came from within. “Who’s

there?” Still grumbling, Perusset opened his door.

“I came to look for you,” I said.

“Why?”

“The boat that guards the harbor isn’t rowing around any more. It

won’t be in the harbor the rest of the night. On a raft we could float off

with the cyclone and be carried to the next landfall. Sydney, probably.

To an old sea dog like you they would give a brig to sail back and get the

others.”

But I flattered Perusset in vain. I called him an old salt, an old pirate,

and so forth, but my vocabulary was soon exhausted. Perusset simply

looked at me silently. He was a scholar, and knowledge makes you think;

it is a bar to action, for it prevents you from surrendering yourself gladly

to the unknown.

Finally, very gravely, he said, “In the first place we have nothing to

make a raft with.”

“There are some old barrels,” I said. “We could fasten them together.”

“Where do we get them?” he asked.

“Wherever we find them,” I said. “At the canteen. Wherever.”

“Even if we had them, how do we know where we’ll land?”

“Luck,” I said. “We must take our chances.”

“A thousand to none we’d die.”

“Well,” I said, “we’ll take the one chance you call ‘none.’ ”

Thus we argued while the storm unfolded and the rain began.

“Do you want me to escort you back?” Perusset asked. He was uneasy

about the path.

“No,” I yelled. “I don’t need you.” I slammed his door shut in his face.

I heard his lamp fall, poor old man. He opened the door, but I had

already moved away, and I cried from afar, “I’m with many others.” I

told him five or six names. “Go back. Eight of us are leaving.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I wouldn’t lie.”

But it wasn’t true. I was all alone, and when you’re angry it’s better to

be alone. Keeping to the rocks, I returned to the Bay of the West. How

beautiful it was. I no longer thought about Perusset or anything else. I

looked not only with my eyes, but with all my heart.

Like night grabbing day the sea rose up on the rocks where I stood.

Enormous claws of foam, completely white, stretched out toward me.

From the waves came a sound like a death rattle deep in someone’s chest.

I finally returned to my hut and changed clothes because mine were

soaked.

The young people who were my students gradually gathered at my

hut as the storm increased its intensity. They were afraid something

would happen to me, so they came.

“We almost got bowled over by the wind,” they said.

“I know,” I answered.

And, I reflected, if only I had thought of those young people to crew

my raft. If only Perusset’s title of sea captain hadn’t dazzled me. For

there certainly was no question of navigating during a cyclone; you only

surrender to it. Those young people would have found what we needed

to make a raft, and then we would have tempted fate. Now there was no

longer time to do it.

I began to look around to see as much as I had eyes for, to absorb this

night in which everything collapsed, moaned, howled. Whatever you see

at any given moment has its usefulness and beauty. Across the torrents

of rain, as if across a crystal veil, the lightning bolts showed splendid with

horror.

How silent it was the next day! Thrown together in the river mouth

were flotsam torn from the bowels of the sea and pieces of wreckage

from the peninsula and Nou Island. And the chance for escape during

the cyclone had passed, for the guard boat had resumed its monotonous

patrol.

On a branch torn from the forest a female bird sat on a nest above her

little ones. The cyclone had carried them away without destroying their

nest, and the little birds had not fallen out during their terrible voyage;

the mother bird must have held them pressed down under her body.

Among humans during fires or other disasters, some terrified parents

forget their children while fleeing. I picked up the branch and fastened

it to a gum tree as well as I could. The birds would be better off there

than on the ground.

Month by month, deportees kept arriving at the Ducos Peninsula.

When I first got there, few of the condemned of the Commune had yet

been sent out. They continued to arrive until just before the amnesty

which the people forced the government to grant.

From the time we first arrived, each mail brought illusions to the

homesick and those hopes pushed them into their graves. Those exiles

could have mastered their yearning to return if only they hadn’t nurtured

premature hopes which disillusionment later crushed. In vain we

cautioned them that the average deportation lasts ten years. We told

them too much blood had flowed for the government to allow us to

return. But they preferred to dream those fallacious dreams that killed

them rather than to listen to the voice of reason. Too many times I

walked in funeral cortèges dressed in a clean white frock, the flower of a

wild cotton plant in my buttonhole, mourning some father of a family of

little children, for during the first days of exile it was the fathers of small

children who were most likely to leave for the deliverance of death.

When I had disembarked on the Ducos Peninsula the first person I

had asked about was Verdure. I had seen him only once since 4

September 1870, when we had gathered saplings for liberty trees from

the garden of the Tuileries. My mother kept one of them alive for

several years, but it perished in the glacial winter just before my return.

During the days of the fighting, we hadn’t had enough time to see our

friends, and I had hoped to find Verdure in New Caledonia and help

him to teach the young people. But just before my arrival Verdure had

died of grief at receiving no news from home. Only a few days after his

death a bundle of letters arrived for him. Poor Verdure! Now he sleeps

over there, and I took over his pupils alone.

Many of the best of us have stayed on in New Caledonia because they

fell into the great sleep. Some of those ghosts are good, others terrifying.

Muriot, the suicide, sleeps under a niaouli which twists its white, desolate

branches like the limbs of some specter. Blanche Arnold, who lived like

the sweet flowers on the liana, died on the voyage home. She does not lie

in the ground; instead she sleeps under the waves. In the earth of New

Caledonia little Théophile Place lies in his coffin, his tiny hands folded

around the stanzas written in honor of his birth. Over his tomb, a

eucalyptus grows. There lies Eugénie Tiffault, a beautiful girl with dark

blue eyes who died at the age of sixteen. For her tomb Henri Lucien

made a terra cotta statue which survived the cyclones until after our

departure. The comrades on New Caledonia cultivated flowers on all the

graves.

Down the hill from the cemetery, mangroves intertwine, sometimes

beating back the ocean, sometimes being recaptured by the waves.

Above the cemetery is a rock of rose marble on which I would have liked

someone to have inscribed the names of those buried there.

Wreaths from France still cover the grave of Passedouet, the journalist.

Passedouet died a little before I returned; he had been sick a long

time, and his memory had failed. In spite of all his wife’s care, it seemed

that his last moments were approaching and that he would never leave

his bed again, so I was astonished when I encountered him at the Bay of

the West, when only the evening before I had seen him look very ill.

Now his mind was clear. He stopped to rest at the women’s huts in the

forest, and he chatted almost the way he used to do, but he was very pale,

and his legs were trembling.

I didn’t dare to tax him with explaining how he had undertaken this

trip alone, but I suspected his wife must be very uneasy over his absence.

So I proposed that I return with him to Numbo, where he lived, and he

accepted.

Leaning rather heavily on my arm, he walked very well. When we

reached the heights between the Ndié Bay and the Bay of the West, from

where we could see the buildings of the convict prison on Nou Island,

reddish on the horizon, Passedouet drew himself up to his full height.

He stretched out his long, gaunt arm toward the prison, and said to me,

biting off each syllable:

“Proudhon was right. Every reform we’ve ever tried to make keeps the

same causes for disasters, the same inequalities, the same antagonisms.

Proudhon said it: ‘The men who produce everything get only poverty

and death in return.’ The best commercial treaties of a nation only

protect exploiters. People will end all that. But how much pain, how

much evil. ...”

Now reciting Proudhon word for word, now developing ideas in short

phrases separated by rather long intervals, Passedouet remained standing

there with his arm stretched out toward Nou Island. It was the

Passedouet of the old days. But he was a phantom getting ready to rejoin

the slaughtered of ’71. Several times he repeated: “Proudhon. Proudhon.”

Then he became silent, and said almost no word after that. We walked

on to Numbo where, as I had expected, they were looking for him. He

lived only a few more days, and we never knew why he had come to the

Bay of the West.

But that is the way I remember him now: standing on the heights, his

arm outstretched toward Nou Island and giving the last light of his

reason, the last breath of his body, to the day of deliverance.

And it will come.

That same hope for liberty and bread was in the hearts of the

Kanakas. They rebelled in 1878, seeking liberty and dignity. Not all of

my comrades approved of their rebellion as strongly as I did. One day

Bauer and I were talking about the revolt of the Kanakas, a burning

question on the Ducos Peninsula. We started speaking so loudly that a

guard ran over from the post office thinking that a riot had broken out.

He withdrew, very disconcerted, when he saw there were only two of us.

*As a general statement, Michel’s explanation for the Kanaka rebellion is

sufficient, but more specifically, the French settlers were displacing the natives

from the land; the introduction of a large number of cattle caused serious

problems. The natives felt that French labor practices were, at best, deceptive, and

the French males were casual in carrying off native women. Precipitating the

insurrection was a serious drought in some areas in 1877, which caused French

cattle to destroy native crops.*

That argument was about not only the Kanakas, but also about a

Kanaka play. Bauer accused me of wanting to put on a Kanaka play, and

I didn’t deny it. We deportees had a real theater on the hill above

Numbo. It had its directors, its actors, its stagehands, its sets, and its

board of directors. This theater was a masterpiece, given the conditions

under which we were living. Every Sunday we used to go to the theater.

We put on everything there: dramas, vaudeville, operettas. We even

sang fragments of an opera, **Robert the Devil**, although we didn’t have all

the score.

True, the leading women usually had deep, booming voices, and their

hands kept searching in their skirt pockets as if they were looking for a

cigar. Even my court-martial dress, which was very long, left their feet

uncovered to the ankles, for some of our leading ladies were tall. They

lengthened their skirts finally, and then nothing was lacking in their

costumes.

Wolowski trained the chorus. They were talking about an orchestra

when I left the peninsula for Nouméa. I had my own ideas for an

orchestra: I wanted to shake palm branches, strike bamboo, create a

horn from shells, and use the tones produced by a leaf pressed against

the lips. In short, I wanted a Kanaka orchestra, complete with quarter

tones. Thanks to knowledge I had gotten from Daoumi and the Kanakas

who brought supplies, I believed I knew enough to try. But my plan was

blocked by the Committee of Light Classical Theater. Indeed, they

accused me of being a savage.

To some comrades I seemed to be more Kanaka than the Kanakas.

They argued a bit, so to make the situation a little more interesting, I

spoke of putting on a Kanaka play whose text was wearing out my

pocket. I even talked about performing the play dressed in black tights,

and I added a few more details designed to exasperate those people.

The incident took its normal course, rousing my adversaries and amusing me deep within.

The revolt of the tribes was deadly serious, but it is better if I say little

about it. The Kanakas were seeking the same liberty we had sought in

the Commune. Let me say only that my red scarf, the red scarf of the

Commune that I had hidden from every search, was divided in two

pieces one night. Two Kanakas, before going to join the insurgents

against the whites, had come to say goodbye to me.

They slipped into the ocean. The sea was bad, and they may never

have arrived across the bay, or perhaps they were killed in the fighting. I

never saw either of them again, and I don’t know which of the two

deaths took them, but they were brave with the bravery that black and

white both have.

There is the legend—perhaps it is a story—of Andia, the bard with

long hair, Andia the Takala, who sang his songs and was killed in combat

by the side of Atai' [a historical figure, the leader of the insurrection of

1878]. Andia had an olive complexion, and the build of a dwarf with an

enormous head and crooked legs; his body was as crooked as a niaouli,

but his heart was brave. In his blue eyes the light sparkled, and he died

for liberty at the hands of a traitor, when Atai, too, was struck down.

May traitors everywhere be cursed!

From the traditions of the Kanakas or from the resources of his

musical ear, Andia discovered, or rediscovered, the lute. The Kanakas

have their bamboo and shell instruments, and they also have a bagpipe;

the legends say it was first made by Naina from the skin of a traitor. In

this tradition, Andia made a lute, with strings of catgut taken from one

of the degenerate, wild descendants of the cats Captain Cook abandoned

in the forests here.

It took a traitor and a white military expedition to kill Ataï and Andia.

Under Kanaka practice a chief can be struck only by a chief or by

someone appointed by another chief. One chief had sold out to the

whites and appointed Segou to kill Ataï, even giving him the weapon

with which to kill him. Segou went out with the white militia columns

and spotted Atai between the huts and Amboa; Atai was returning to his

own encampment with some of his people. Segou ran out from amidst

the white soldiers and pointed out the great chief Ataï, who was

recognizable because of his snow-white hair. Atai had his sling wrapped

around his forehead and carried a gendarmarie saber in his right hand

and a small axe in his left. Around him were his three sons and the bard

Andia, who was armed with a short spear.

Ataï turned to face the column of whites and noticed Segou.

“There you are,” he cried out.

The traitor Segou faltered for a moment under the look of the old

chief, but then, wanting it all to be over, he threw his short spear at Atai

and it pierced the old chief’s right arm. Ataï raised his axe in his left

hand as his sons were shot down around him, one killed and the others

wounded.

Andia lunged forward crying out, “A curse on you. A curse on you,”

but he was shot dead instantly.

Then Segou moved in against the wounded Atai, and with his own axe

struck blow after blow, the way he would have chopped at a tree.

Ataï fell, and Segou grabbed at his partially severed head. He struck

him several more blows, and Ataï was finally dead. Seeing Ataï fall at

Segou’s hands, the Kanakas unleashed their death cry in an echo to the

mountains. The Kanakas love the brave.

Ataï’s head was sent to Paris, but I don’t know what happened to the

bard Andia’s.

To keep memory alive, I have translated one of Andia’s war chants.

The **Takata**

Gathered **adouéke** in the forest,

<em>Adouéke</em>, the shield herb,<br>

In the moonlight, **adouéke**,

The war herb,

The spirit plant.

The warriors

Divided **adouéke**.

It makes them fierce

And charms their wounds.

The spirits

Of their fathers

Make a storm.

They are waiting

For the brave.

The brave

Are welcome.

Friends or enemies,

They are welcome

Beyond this life.

Those who wish to live

Go back.

War is come.

Blood will flow

Over the earth

Like water.

The **adouéke**

Must be blood.

The Kanakan Insurrection of 1878 failed. The strength and longing

of human hearts was shown once again, but the whites shot down the

rebels as we were mowed down in front of Bastion 37 and on the plains

of Satory. When they sent the head of Ataï to Paris, I wondered who the

real headhunters were; as Henri Rochefort had once written to me, “the

Versailles government could give the natives lessons in cannibalism.”

After I had stayed on the Ducos Peninsula for five years, first at

Numbo and then at the Bay of the West, I was allowed to go to Nouméa

as a schoolmistress. There it was easier for me to study the country, and I

was able to see Kanakas of various tribes. I even had some in my Sunday

classes, a whole horde of them at my house in Nouméa.

Shortly after I left the peninsula, some of my friends who had been at

Nou Island arrived there, and I went back to welcome them. It was a

joyful occasion for the deportees. We loved them more than the others

because they had suffered more. That made them as proud as they had

been during the May Days. We sat at the edge of the sea on rocks, and

events came back to us, rising like the waves.

After the human beehive of Paris, any crowd looked small to us. After

we had crossed the entire world to New Caledonia, any voyage seemed

short to us. Days became crowded together without our really thinking

about them, as if we turned the hourglass each year. Days fell upon days

in the silence, and all the past swirled around us like the gray snow of

locusts.

Chapter 15. Nouméa and the Return

During my exile I used to let my mind return to France. From time to

time down there in New Caledonia, with my gaze fixed on the sea and

my thoughts free in space, I used to see the years gone by. I inhaled

again the odor of roses in the yard, the hay just mown and lying in the

summer sun, and the bitter reek of hemp. I saw it all again: thousands of

details which had made no impression on me when they had occurred

floated up from the depths of my memory. I discovered the sacrifices my

mother had uncomplainingly made for me. She would have given me

her very blood as piece by piece she had let me take everything we

possessed so that I could promote ideas she didn’t share. All she ever

wanted was to live near me in some quiet corner, in some village school

lost in the woods.

Now that I have returned to France I let my thoughts roam free in

space to New Caledonia. After the cyclones I witnessed there, I no

longer gaze at the European storms I used to love so much. I had seen

my first cyclone at night while I was on the Ducos Peninsula. I saw my

second cyclone by day at Nouméa. It was beautiful, but less grand than

the cyclone at night had been, even though sheet-metal roofs went flying

about like immense butterflies. The sea clamored with rage. The rain

soaked us; it didn’t fall so much as pour down like an ocean. The needle

of the compass went wild and searched for north with anguish. Great

gusts of wind struck in the midst of the roar of sea and rain, and yet the

dramatic effect was less awesome; perhaps I was becoming as sated with

storms as I was with other things.

I had pardoned Perusset a long time before for failing to help me

escape during the first cyclone, and while I was living in Nouméa he

died. Although he had done many other bold things, he had refused to

help me escape, perhaps because he felt he had trusted his luck too

often, and to have put blindly to sea would have been to provoke fate.

Men, like beasts, have an instinct that warns them of danger, and when

we think too much, we lose that ability. A horse has no hesitation in

surrendering to instinct and can find the road hidden beneath the snow

when its lost rider loosens the reins in desperation. Perhaps if Perusset

had listened to me, we would have arrived in Sydney the way other waifs

have dropped anchor there.

The authorities allowed me to leave the Ducos Peninsula and move to

Nouméa early in 1879. Those who had a profession and could be

self-supporting were given a measure of freedom; so I went to Nouméa

to teach. There I taught not only the children of the white colonists, but

also the Kanakas, and among those I taught was Daoumi’s brother.

It was fitting that I should teach him, because Daoumi was the first

Kanaka I had met in New Caledonia, when he had come to Rochefort’s

banquet. After that first meeting with Daoumi, I saw him again many

times. To practice European life he got a job at the canteen on the Ducos

Peninsula, and when I talked to him I got him to tell me the legends of

the Kanakas, and he gave me vocabulary lists. For my part, I tried to tell

him the things I believed it was most important for him to know.

Daoumi himself, though he was the son of a chief of Lifon, was almost

European through living with whites. He knew how to read perfectly, his

writing wasn’t any worse than many others, and even under the miserable

stovepipe hat which he had had the naivete to burden himself with,

he had the air of Othello.

He introduced his brother to me, a magnificent wild man with

glittering teeth and wide phosphorescent pupils. He was dressed in the

Kanakan manner, which is in nothing at all, and he spoke French, which

is harsher than Kanakan dialects, with difficulty.

There is a story that a certain white woman loved Daoumi and nearly

died of grief when her parents refused her permission to marry him.

When I went to Nouméa, I found that the white girl who had loved

Daoumi was still living, but that Daoumi had died, and Daoumi’s brother

had taken over the project of learning about European life. It is he who

will return to his tribe with knowledge, and he who will derive the

benefits from it.

That handsome wild man had begun to dress in a strange costume he

believed was European. He had already learned how to read, and he

came to my house to learn to write. There we used to speak about

Daoumi and of the long-shadowed past of his tribe.

I do not know if the traditions which say that another race lived where

their own was established are founded in fact or not, but the legends that

are connected with them are too numerous for there to be no truth in

them, all things considered. I don’t know the evidence for the argument

that people make about some mainland Asian tribes being the same type

as some Oceanic ones. But I believe that the so-called albinos seen by

Cook and others in this part of the world were not albinos, but the last

representatives of an Aryan branch, having long hair and, most of all,

blue eyes, which are not albino characteristics. These Aryans, lost in

some migration or in some geological revolution, lived on, marrying

among themselves and among the Oceanic tribes. That inbreeding and

intermarriage together are what explains their extinction and the rickety

forms of their last representatives.

There were many legends that I learned from Daoumi and his

brother. Daoumi’s brother and I also spoke of the short future that

loomed before his race, when untutored and unarmed men faced our

greed and our innumerable means of destruction. Seeing the lofty,

resolute mind and the courageous and kind heart of Daoumi’s brother, I

wondered which of us was the superior being: the one who assimilates

foreign knowledge through a thousand difficulties for the sake of his

race, or the well-armed white who annihilates those who are less well

armed. Other races giving way before our arms is no proof of our

superiority. If tigers and elephants and lions suddenly covered Europe

and attacked us, they would triumph in a storm of destruction and

would seem superior to us.

At my school in Nouméa on Sundays, I got to know the Kanakas

firsthand. They are neither stupid nor cowardly, two characteristics

common in the present century. Curiosity about the unknown is as

strong for them as it is for us, perhaps even more so, and their

perseverance is great. It isn’t rare for a Kanaka to puzzle for days—I’ve

even seen them spend years—over something that interests him, trying

to understand something, and finally come and tell you, “Me understand

what you say other day.” Time for them is always measured the same:

‘other day.’

In their minds, like blank pages, many new things could be inscribed,

perhaps better than in ours. Ours are confused by doctrines and blurred

by erasures.

Lively methods must be used to teach the Kanakas; they’re necessary

for any young mind. Even educated persons learn more quickly if their

teachers use dramatic colors rather than arid lists. In any case, the

Kanakas don’t have the time or the facilities to wear out their pants on

schoolbenches. For one thing, they have no pants.

Reading, mathematics, and the elements of music can be taught with a

pointer against wall charts. With the pointer the teacher can single out

letters or numbers, or using a pencil tip, can draw notes on a staff. This

technique produces a spirited atmosphere, which facilitates understanding.

The Kanakas learn writing almost intuitively. If the teacher makes the

words with movable letters, the blacks will write the words in an acceptable way very quickly. I say ‘acceptable’ with assurance, because the

Kanakas have a marvelous dexterity for writing as well as for drawing.

Their sense of numbers is unlike ours. Ours has been shaped by our

voyages and our crowds which have accustomed us to large numbers.

Their sense of numbers is of small ones only. It is impossible for them to

put a specific number on a large quantity—even one that is still small to

us. Their word is ‘numerous’—that which can no longer be numbered

precisely.

At Nouméa I had a piano. Some of the keys were silent, and unless

someone sang constantly to cover up the gaps in the melody, you

couldn’t use it. Boeuf finally rebuilt the piano for me as a true instrument,

and at the very end of my stay I was able to use it properly. But

before it was repaired the piano served me as a teaching method that

produced good results. With this piano whose broken hammers or

strings made some notes in a run silent, the pupils realized there were

gaps, and filled them in with their own notes. Sometimes they sang notes

from the piece they were studying, and at other times they searched out

their own musical phrases to fill the gap. Thus they created motifs which

were often strange and sometimes beautiful. Since I’m on the subject, let

me add that I tried out this method on my regular schoolchildren as well

as in my Sunday class for the Kanakas.

From time to time on Sundays, when I was teaching my Kanaka

classes, I noticed the head of M. Simon outside my window. Then I

could be sure that shortly I would receive the white paper, boards for

wood carving, notebooks, and everything else we lacked. In addition M,

Simon would see to it that I got tobacco, firecrackers, and other treats for

the Tayos.

At my Sunday classes there were tall Tayos, whose protruding ears

had been lulled by the wind from the sea blowing through the palm trees

and filled with the noise of storms. After they have reflected for five or

six years over the little we have taught them, perhaps they will find from

that little bit the wherewithal to astonish us. Leave them alone and let

them dream about what they’ve learned. If, instead of civilizing childlike

peoples with muskets, we sent schoolmasters to the tribes—as M. Simon,

the mayor of Nouméa, wanted to do—the tribes would have buried the

warstone a long time ago.

Throughout the world there are too many minds left uncultivated,

just as good land lies fallow while much of the old cultivated land is

exhausted. It is the same for human races. Between those who know

nothing and those who have a great deal of false knowledge—those

warped for thousands of generations by infallible knowledge that is

incorrect—the difference is less great than it appears at first glance. The

same breath of science will pass over both.

When I returned to Europe from New Caledonia, the pen-wielding

crows attacked me with various calumnies. Some hate-maddened idiot

arranged for a newspaper (I forget which one) to print infamous things

about my work in Nouméa. Those enemies had already tried to put their

lies across in a gathering where, purely by chance, some former deportees

from the Commune who knew better were present, so the attack was

without success, or without the sort of success they had anticipated.

Now they hoped for better luck through the publication of their lies.

They did not dream that thousands of persons had watched my life day

by day in New Caledonia. It was another Caledonian, M. Locamus, a

lawyer and former town councilor and officer at Nouméa, who answered

those charges against me. Because my anonymous slanderers have been

so persistent, I am obliged to reprint M. Locamus’s letter, even though it

is flattering. Is it worth the trouble? Yes, because all the witnesses will

soon be dead, and we ought to keep our reputations pure for the sake of

the Revolution, which will live eternally. Shaking off specks of mud is

not useless, so here is a clipping that prints M. Locamus’s letter:

following letter. We believe we must publish it, even though our friend

Louise Michel needs no testimonial to protect herself against the foul

vilifications against which her whole life stands in evidence.

Paris, February 27
Dear Editors:
I have just read in the **Intransigeant** a few lines from Louise Michel’s
response to her slanderers. I have not read the calumny, but I am
convinced, as you are, that it should only be scorned. Nevertheless,
because Louise Michel has deigned to answer it, I feel it is my duty to
discuss the subject; also, Nouméa is far away, and the response to those
slanderers would come too late from there.
Happily, there are some former Noum^ans in Paris. I am one, and as
town councilor of Nouméa, with responsibility over public education in
1879 and 1880, I must now give a certificate of esteem and satisfaction to
our former town schoolmistress.
The Board of Municipal Public Education was composed of three
persons: M. Puech, an important merchant; M. Armand, a pardoned
deportee, and me. The lay schools we inaugurated in the colony produced
excellent results. By virtue of a governmental decree issued by the interim
mayor, M. Simon, Louise Michel was invited to assist us, and she discharged her duties with unfailing devotion. Her assistance was most useful
for us.
I shall add that Louise Michel’s conduct and attitude at Nouméa inspired respect and admiration even from her political enemies.
Sincerely,
P. Locamus

In 1880, after I had spent a year and a half in Nouméa, the government

granted a general amnesty to us Communards. At the same time

that I heard the news of the amnesty, I received word that my mother

had had her first attack. Weariness had overcome her, and she was

fearful she wouldn’t live to see me again. I, too, was afraid that I would

arrive too late. My voyage home, therefore, was sad, and I came on deck

only rarely. But the voyage was beautiful.

We were landed at Sydney and there, thanks to the lessons I had given

and to help from a few friends, I was able to request passage on a mail

packet rather than a slow sailing ship. That way I would get to my

mother’s side more quickly. The French consul at Sydney had not yet

made up his mind to repatriate me with some others scheduled to go on

the mail packet. I told him that, in that case, I would be obliged to give

lectures on the Commune for several days, so that I could use the fees

for my trip. He preferred to send me with twenty others on the <em>John

Helder</em>, which was leaving for London.

I don’t know the inward nature of the consul at Sydney, but in

Holland I have seen a painting of a Flemish burgomaster, peaceably

seated in front of a beer mug. It is exactly the consul’s portrait: his

coloring, his pose, his profound calm. Standing in front of that portrait I

understood him better than I had in front of his person in Sydney. I

understood how our ideas appeared subversive to him, and the goodness

which was hidden deep in his face would have made him prefer to

allow me to leave as quickly as possible, so that I could see my mother

again.

With Mme Henry as my guide I was able to see a bit of the territory

surrounding Sydney before I sailed. There are great expanses of solitude

cut by wide roads. Only the forest can be seen, the forest full of

gum trees and eucalyptus. They say the whip-snake and others are

common there, but we saw none, perhaps because it was the end of the

southern winter and those animals feared the cold. I saw no kangaroos

either, and they would have interested me much more. Those wide,

beautiful roads cutting through the forests must keep wild animals away.

Sydney is already an old city; when the **John Helder** put into Melbourne

even that place seemed like a European town, one washed by waves. I

still have a notebook on which Mme Henry and her children, Lucien

Henry, and other friends wrote inscriptions to me. When I stopped in

Melbourne, some strangers came to visit us, and they wrote their names

there, too. My twenty traveling companions on the **John Helder** also

inscribed their names in that notebook, and those are the only pages left

in it. The other pages were plucked out on the **John Helder** for sketches

of my fellow passengers.

A large proportion of those sketches were ones I made of the frail and

darling English babies, of which the third-class passengers had a great

collection. The poor always have swarms of children; nature makes up in

advance for young shoots mowed down by death. The mothers, Englishwomen

as blonde as the children, asked me for the sketches, and it was

only proper for me to give them away. A few sketches of sailors with

enormously wide shoulders met the same fate. I have only one sketch

left, one I made near the Isthmus of Suez, looking over a sandy desert

where the rocks seem like a sleeping Isis. In my sketch is the eternal

sand, and then rocks whose corrugated surface looked like the bark of a

niaouli. They form walls against which there is a caravan at rest, and

camels stretch their necks out on the sand.

On that trip there was one English lady who took special care of some

unfortunate girls who had been turned into prostitutes. People heaped

shame on them because they were prostitutes, as if the victims and not

the assassins deserved that shame.

I brought five of my oldest cats with me from Nouméa, giving three

others that were younger and more beautiful to friends. They had made

the crossing from Nouméa to Sydney on the bare deck, sheltering from

the cold in a crate. As we sailed into cold regions where the wind blew

harsh and icy—it was winter in the antipodes—they rubbed up against

each other, probably missing the warm sun of their homeland. They had

some sort of comprehension that they had to abstain from loud demonstrations

either there or aboard the **John Helder**, onto which I smuggled

all five of them, crowded into a parrot cage. They spent the whole

crossing attached like ornaments to the shelf that formed my bed. They

never cried out, and were satisfied with fussing over me sadly.

Once in London, in front of a fire, with an enormous bowl of milk my

friends brought them, they began to stretch out, yawning. Only then did

the large red tom and the old black female express their unfavorable

impression of the Dutch ship. As for the three little cats, they looked at

the fire with adoration.

The **Figaro** and other ludicrous newspapers, instead of taking as much

trouble as they did to add burlesque episodes to my return, would have

done better if they’d opened their eyes wide enough to see that when we

came down the gangplank in London, my friends and I each had

something under our arms disguised to look like briefcases. Well hidden

in our coats were five cats.

Three of them are still alive, the old black female and two of the little

ones. Let anybody laugh who wants to; they are something alive left

from home. For me they have become a cherished souvenir—as much as

anything could be to the heart of someone who has before him only a

solitary life and a destroyed home. But perhaps it’s better that it is so,

because when there is nothing, you don’t look back anymore.

The exiles in London welcomed us warmly. We hadn’t seen each other

for ten years, and meeting that way, it seemed as if we were reliving the

days of the Commune.

While en route I had gotten a letter from Marie that my mother had

recovered somewhat when my return was announced. I was happy to be

among my friends again, but I was in too much of a hurry to see my

mother again to linger in London, and I left immediately for Paris.

With my tickets paid for and ten francs in my pocket, my London

friends took me to the railroad station, from where we were to take the

train that connected with the boat to Dieppe. The London railroad

station had been set ringing by our singing of the Marseillaise. We

continued to hear its echo as our train left, and English sensibilities

weren’t offended by it. So long as we could hear it we responded, and no

one reproached us for our song. At Dieppe friends were waiting for us

at the station, and at the first stop after Dieppe my dear Marie and Mme

Camille B— joined us.

I have a few documents concerning my return that Marie kept for me.

Here is a letter I sent to Rochefort and Olivier Pain, which describes my

arrival in Paris:

Dear Citizens Rochefort and Pain,
I have received a telegram from Pain asking for some details concerning
my arrival [on November 9].
I don’t remember much of my arrival at Paris. I do remember that I
embraced all of you, but because I was disoriented at the prospect of
seeing my mother again, I didn’t wait to listen to any speeches, and I didn’t
really understand anything of what was going on before we came to the
Saint-Lazare station. I saw only that great rumbling crowd that I used to
love so much and which I love even more now that I have returned to
civilization. I heard only the Marseillaise, and a new and strange idea came
to me: that instead of sending this beloved crowd to another slaughter it
would be better to risk only one person. The nihilists were right.
I also hasten to express my gratitude and to say that, with the ten other
deportees who also returned yesterday, we had a similar welcome in
London from the exiles there which nearly prepared us for yesterday. It
proves what good friends we are and how well we remember each other
across time, exile, and death.
I’m writing to Joffrin about the meeting in Montmartre at the same time
that I’m writing you. I can attend no other meeting before that one. It was
in Montmartre that I marched before; it is with Montmartre that I march
today. But you know very well that if I agree to be the object of one of
those receptions—which really isn’t a high reward for a whole lifetime—I
don’t want it all addressed to me personally. I want it in honor of the Social
Revolution and all the women of the Revolution.
I embrace you with all my heart.
Louise Michel

I had come home.

Chapter 16. Speeches and Journalism, November 1880 — January 1882

I stayed in Lagny with my mother for almost two weeks, and then I

returned to Paris to my first formal meeting. When I had come back to

France the Social Revolution had been strangled. It was a France whose

rulers mendaciously called themselves republicans, and they betrayed

our every dream through their “opportunism.”

It had begun ten years before in the drawing rooms of the Elysée,

when Foutriquet [President Adolphe Thiers] went in front with the

Duke de Nemours. In the course of the evening the Count and Countess

of Paris, the Duke of Alengon, and the Prince and Princess of Saxe-Co-

burg-Gotha all came. The presence of these princes of Orleans was the

occasion for that reception, the third dinner party that M. Thiers, the

Orleanist President of the Republic, had given. After him as president

came MacMahon, Marshal of the Empire. The more things change, the

more they remain the same.

That was the situation after my return, when I made my first speech. I

gave it in the early afternoon of November 21 at the Elysée-Montmartre.

Today at one o’clock, the first meeting in honor of Louise Michel took
place.
At one-thirty, Louise Michel went to the rostrum and cried out: “Long
live the Social Revolution!” Then she added: “The Revolution was killed,
but now it is reborn.” The audience responded with “Long live Louise
Michel!” and “Long live the Revolution!” and people brought several
bouquets to the heroine.
Citizen Gambon declared that the Commune was more alive today than
ever, and that France would always be at the head of revolutions. Joan of
Arc, he said, was a victim of the ingratitude of a king, and Louise Michel
had been the victim of the ingratitude of the Republic.
Louise Michel then spoke again. “Let us hope that we will never again
see Paris transformed into a river of blood. When all those people who
maligned the Commune are no longer here, we will have been avenged.
When the Gallifets and all the others have fallen from power, we will have
served the people well. No longer do we wish vengeance through blood.
To shame those men will suffice.
“Religions vanish in the blowing wind, and when they do we become
masters of our own destinies. We accept the ovations given us, but not for
ourselves. We accept these ovations for the Commune and those who
DEFENDED IT. . . .
“So that the Revolution will triumph, we will accept into our ranks all
those people who want to march with us, even if they opposed us in the
past.
“Long live the Social Revolution!
“Long live the nihilists!”
Those cries were repeated by the audience, and people added:
“Long live Trinquet!”
“Long live Pyat!”
“Long live the Commune!”

I remained, and will always remain, faithful to my principles. Here is

the report of another speech ten days later.

1 December 1880. Yesterday a private lecture to benefit those persons
who had received amnesty took place in the Graffard hall.
Citizen Gerard thanked Louise Michel for the assistance she had given
in organizing this meeting. He saluted the “principle of hate” in her
“which alone makes great revolutionaries and great events,” and presented
her with two bouquets.
Louise Michel responded that she accepted the bouquets in the name of
the Social Revolution and for the women who had fought for their
freedom. “It is the people that I salute here,” continued Citizen Michel,
“and in the people, the Social Revolution.”
Applause and cries of “Long live the Commune!” interrupted her.
“The time when they machine-gunned people at Satory is now in front
of our eyes. We still see the men who judged us, as well as the murderer of
Transnonain, the Bazaines, and the Cisseys.
“At the end of the road those men whom we believed lost forever are
now coming back, holding their heads higher than ever. The Reaction is
no more than a corpse the government lifts up, and we will crush it like a
snake when it tries to pass among us.
“Today it is destiny that is advancing. It is the people, still convicts
dragging their chains, who will deliver us from the men who have been
corrupting us, and the people themselves will win their liberty.”

In 1881 a general election took place. Paule Mink and I were proposed as candidates, though as mere women we were forbidden to vote

or hold office. Even if men had voted for us, we would have been

ineligible to take office and our candidacy, therefore, was a dead

candidacy. I wrote about that subject.

**The Illegal Candidacy**
Citizens, you ask Paule Mink and me what we think of dead candidacies.
Here is my answer, and I think Citizen Mink will agree with me.
Dead candidacies are both a flag and a demand. They are pure idea, the
idea of the Social Revolution soaring without individuality, an idea that can
be neither struck at nor destroyed, an idea as invincible and implacable as
death.
Illegal candidacies are just. Dead candidacies are great, like the Revolution itself. As for women being candidates, that is a claim, a demand that
comes from the eternal slavery of the mother who must raise men and
make them what they are. But what does that matter? We are all part of the
same slavery, and we fight the same enemy.
For my part, I do not bother with particularist questions. I stand with all
groups which attack the cursed edifice of the old society, whether with
pick-axe, land mine, or fire.
I salute the awakening of the people, and I salute those who by dying
have opened wide the gates of the future so that the Revolution can pass
whole through those gates.
Louise Michel

Here is a second article on my being a candidate.

Seeing my name among those proposed as candidates, I feel obligated to
respond. I cannot oppose the candidacy of women, because for women to
be candidates affirms the equality of men and women. But, faced with the
seriousness of the situation, I must repeat that women ought not to
separate their cause from that of the rest of humanity; instead, they must
take a militant part in the great revolutionary army.
We are combatants, not candidates. We are brave and implacable
combatants—that’s all there is to it.
To propose the candidacy of women is enough to do in support of the
principle. But because those candidacies won’t come to anything—and
even if they should come to something, <em>they would change nothing in the
situation</em>—I must ask our friends to withdraw my name.
What we want is not a few scattered outcries asking for a justice that will
never be accorded without force. We want the entire people and all
peoples to stand up for the freeing of all the slaves, whether they call those
slaves women or workers.
There are three possible courses of action. Those who still hope for a
favorable outcome through the ballot can vote for workers. Or they can
abstain. But those whose heart is full of a seething disgust for this
empire-in-miniature, this government that is called a republic, should
acclaim the sacred principle of the Social Revolution. They should revive
the names of their representatives who were assassinated in 1871.
It is still a question of waking from sleep. It is a sinister sleep, in which
we will not allow the people to remain, because when the people sleep,
empires are created and opportunism increases. Certain persons find it
expedient that the daughter of the people should be in the street, exposed
to rain and shame, so that the daughter of the rich is safeguarded; it
pleases them to lead men in herds to the slaughterhouse and women in
herds to the brothel. We want no more buying and selling of human flesh
that is to be stuffed into the mouths of cannon or used to sate the appetites
of parasites.
We proclaim very clearly: no more questions of personalities, not even
questions of sex; no more egotism; no more fear.
The brave must go to the front of our march, and the faint-hearted, when
they realize where we are going, can fall away.
Louise Michel

I had no interest in cooperating with the opportunist republicans,

even when their motives were good. Shortly after my return from New

Caledonia, the Chamber of Deputies requested me to give testimony on

conditions there, and I refused.

Paris, 2 February 1881
Chairman, Board of Inquiry into the System of Convict Deportation in
New Caledonia
Chamber of Deputies, Tenth Committee
Dear Sir:
Thank you for the honor you do me in calling me as a witness concerning prison conditions in New Caledonia.
While I approve of shedding light on those faraway torturers, I will not
go to the Chamber of Deputies to testify against those bandits Aleyron and
Ribourt as long as M. de Gallifet, whom I saw shoot prisoners, dines with
the President of the Republic at the Palais-Bourbon.
In New Caledonia, if the jailers deprived the deportees of bread, if
overseers with drawn revolvers insulted them at roll call, if guards shot at a
deportee returning to his garden plot in the evening, still, those officials
were not sent over there to put us on beds of roses.
But at this time when Barthelemy-Saint-Hilaire is a cabinet minister and
Maxime du Camp is in the Academy; when Cipriani and young Morphy
are expelled and so many other iniquities are being committed; when M.
de Gallifet can draw his sword over Paris again; when the same voice that
called for every severity of the law against the “bandits of la Villette” asks
for the absolution and glorification of Aleyron and Ribourt—I’ll wait for
true justice to come first.
Sincerely,
Louise Michel

In January 1881 I wrote a letter to **Le Citoyen** which they published on

January 28. The problem was that the amnestied, heroic defenders of

the Commune could find no work, and no work meant that they were

starving. I helped with efforts to relieve their terrible suffering. The first

part of my letter, however, did not talk about soup kitchens for the

exiles.

The first part of my letter talked of a paltry thing, but it might amuse

the reader. Various newspapers were repeating a stupid phrase they

attributed to me: “When the pigs are fattened, you kill them.”

Amidst several other images, I had said that when a wild boar is

degraded by being fattened, it becomes a domestic porker. That’s all I

said. But now every time that anyone made an allusion to pigs, the

reactionaries claimed that a personage in the government was being

insulted. It was forbidden to name anything fat. I couldn’t even mention

Vitellius, and sometimes I wasn’t even thinking of the personage in

question. If he were alive, I wouldn’t say so little about him.

Anyway, here is my letter to **Le Citoyen**:

It has now become an historic phrase: “The pigs shouldn’t get fat.” At
least that was how the newspaper **Le Gaulois** quoted me. They did not get
their money’s worth, because when they reported what I said—although
they got more than half, I admit—they made it almost polite, while my
intention was to be worse than the original offense. That offense is
committed by the friends of a certain high personage who say that their
master is attacked each time the name of the animal in question is
pronounced. They express themselves crudely, while we are giving them a
good example by using the proper word for a domesticated wild boar.

That was the first part of my letter. The second part became more

serious.

Let us not forget those who are hungry and cold, the brave people who
prevented the return of the Empire in 1871 and who are walking the
ice-cold pavement without work and without shelter.
Some devoted citizens are talking about establishing a soup kitchen to be
kept in operation until next March. There every amnestied person could
find one meal daily to keep from dying of hunger. The project would be
financed by a speech at which an enormous audience would raise the
money.
In addition, if a hundred or two hundred families or men by themselves
could each give an unemployed amnestied person a place to sleep until
next March, then the people themselves would save the lives of their
brothers returning from prison or exile.
That would be a first step in the people’s learning to act for themselves.
Louise Michel

This second part of my letter, the part about founding a soup kitchen

for the exiles, put on paper a dream we hoped to make real even though

we had no money. All we had were speeches and the devotion of those

who had work and would help those who were not working. And then

from among those people who would find in our midst the few crumbs

that occasionally save a life, some might have helped others in their turn.

I had no money myself. A few idiots invented lies about my having

horses and carriages, or that I got income from lands and so forth. I had

to put up with that sort of nonsense during the entire three years I was

free after my return from New Caledonia. My mother and I would get

insulting letters after people had asked me, futilely, for three or four

hundred francs, or even for several thousand francs—when there

weren’t even a hundred sous in the house. My mother often cried about

it. But my account book is open, and it has always been open.

To make money, I would have had to sell my writings, and I had no

time to run from publisher to publisher. I was dividing my time between

staying near my sick mother and going to meetings. That is why I used to

collaborate with people who had the time to find a publisher.

I wrote a letter alluding to these matters to M. Fayet: “As for the fears

you express about my future, don’t worry. I won’t need charity.”

Then I continued my letter with a comment on how tyranny might

come to an end at last. “You have enough of my verses from the old days

to recognize that I have always thought that it was better for one person

to perish instead of a whole people.”

The last few lines of this excerpt are and always will be true. As for

thinking that one person is nothing compared to all the people, I have

always believed that way. Tyrannicide is **practical** only when tyranny has

a single head, or at most a small number of heads. When it is a hydra,

only the Revolution can kill it.

Perhaps ‘practical’ is the wrong word to use. We are nothing more

than bullets more or less well adapted to the struggle and are not worth

the trouble of being considered as anything more. There is no prohibition

against wanting to live only as long as one is useful and to prefer

dying upright rather than in bed.

Although we are still savages ourselves, we are nevertheless trying to

make the world clean for those who are coming. The Revolution will be

the flowering of humanity, as love is the flowering of the heart.

Those who will be alive then will march in the epic, and they alone will

know how to tell it, because they will have done it; and they will have the

artistic skill to tell it, because the sense of the arts which is now

rudimentary will have developed in everybody.

In those years just after my return from New Caledonia I was

concerned with more than indicting opportunist politicians and trying to

ease the destitution of returned deportees; I also speculated about the

power of strikes. I wrote a series of articles on strikes and what their

effects would be. Among my favorites was a piece I wrote on conscripts

going into the army. I have always dreamed of sheep refusing to become

wolves, and in this article I wrote of conscripts who would refuse to

become assassins.

**The Strike of the Conscripts**
As if there weren’t a social question here! Little children are born in the
same beds where their fathers are dying, and to relieve that horrible
misery Public Assistance sends one franc per person. To print up and
display one single speech costs the people thirty-four thousand francs. It is
the people who pay, always the people.
The people should be satisfied, however, because they are told they are
“sovereign,” an opportunistic word in which to hide the other phrase that
is really being spoken no less opportunistically, “the vile multitude.”
Trick election laws are applied when it is a matter of getting the herd to
elect Badinguet the Third or Opportunist the First, and not used when the
question concerns some right by which the “sovereign” multitude could
solve social questions.
If “majority rule” were applied properly there would be a way to resolve
social questions other than by selling the daughters of the people to
brothels or by slitting the throats of the sons of the people on some
battlefield to satisfy some opportunistic pleasure. There would be a better
way to resolve social questions than by starving old workers as if they were
worn-out horses at Montfaucon.
As if there weren’t a social question here! Now the people are enchained
through having been made to believe that they are free. The social
question could be summed up in one single act of will by the people. That
act need be no more than a passive one, and would bring no repression,
for although an army can be shot, or all the inhabitants of a city can have
their throats cut, no one would dare to attack an entire nation.
If every one of a heroic people were to use his full authority to shut
down the vice squad lists, the lists that make certain girls commit suicide—
properly!—rather than have their names put down...
If an entire people were to refuse to send its sons into hazardous
undertakings that might end up as future Sedans; if the conscripts were to
strike, it would silence the potentates who claim they are fertilizing the soil
with blood. It makes the land fertile only for them. If the conscripts were
to strike, they would force kings and dictators to take Boulogne’s flag,
Membrin’s helmet, and Marlborough’s saber and go off to war by themselves.
Rather than do that, those potentates would solve the problems they had
hoped to exploit to maintain themselves in power. The authorities would
solve them so they would not have to leave their peace and quiet and their
lives at the trough.
Now that the wind is at war, if the authorities, using the new law on
“freedom of the press,” came to arrest me at the bedside of my sick
mother—to arrest me when I have seen the Franco-Prussian War, in which
generals were bought and sold and in which great battalions had their
spirit broken by forced marches—I would still scream out the cry that fills
my soul:
Conscripts, strike!
Louise Michel

Marie Ferré stayed with my mother when I went to meetings, and in

the spring of 1881 I was able to travel through France to speak to the

various revolutionary groups that had invited me. On April 211 spoke to

the Workers’ Union of Amiens, and one newspaper reported it this way:

The Workers’ Union of Amiens had delegated fifty of its members, led
by Citizen Delambre, to welcome Citizen Louise Michel at the railroad
station. More than five hundred persons joined the delegation. The
Workers’ Union had organized a meeting at the Longueville Circus for
that afternoon, and fifteen hundred persons attended.
Louise Michel went to the speaker’s platform after a few words from
Citizen Hamet, who was presiding over the meeting. She described the
sufferings of the working class, and condemned the conduct of those who
govern us.
“The men in power today,” she said, “are Jesuits masquerading as
republicans. They send soldiers to Tunis to kill them, as was done at
Sedan.
“I claim the rights of women and not of men’s servants. If some day our
enemies catch me, they must not let me slip away, for I don’t fight like an
amateur. I’m fighting as people do when they are absolutely determined
that it is time for social crimes to end. That is why I will be pitiless during
the struggle and why I wish no mercy for myself. I am fooled by neither
the lies about universal suffrage, nor the lies about the concessions they
appear to be giving to women.
“We women are half of all humanity. We fight on the side of all the
oppressed, and we will keep our share of equality, which is only just.
“The earth belongs to the peasant who cultivates it; the mine to those
who dig it; all belongs to all—bread, work, science. The freer the human
race is, the more it will draw riches and power from nature.
“The ‘vile multitude’ has the numbers, and when it decides to do it, it will
be the force which sets people free instead of overburdening them.”
Following Louise Michel’s speech Citizen Gauthier explained his ideas
on the question of capital and labor.

During that same spring I went through the Midi. At Bordeaux, I was

with Cournet, and I remember that at one small meeting where various

groups were represented, someone raised the question of death.

“We shall die standing,” Cournet cried out. He alluded to the commotion

that would ensue when the Revolution attacked the old, empty shell

from all sides. The day when that happens, everyone will give of

himself—the young, those returning from the slaughter, probably the

last Blanquistes. These persons bound together will all support the

revolutionary forces like an army. At the head of their march, those of

1871 will take their place along with the anarchist groups. “We,” said

Cournet, “have the right to die standing, too.”

Those who were mown down on the red anniversary at P&re Lachaise

should not complain. They were following the blood-speckled flags, and

they died without ever stopping the struggle. They died standing.

I knew only vaguely what had happened at P£re Lachaise on May 26,

because I hadn’t read the newspapers for two years. Nothing other than

what happened was possible. The prohibition against displaying the

forbidden flags foreshadowed what was to come.

O my friends, I hope that none of you is crazy enough to dream of

having any power whatever after the people are victorious. Every time

someone possesses power, every single time, it leads to events like those

at Pere Lachaise. When authority has been dressed in the cloak of

Nessus, you smell the stench of Charenton.

This time the people must be the masters. The feeling for liberty will

develop. Perhaps it would be better for the people if all of us who lead

the fight now should fall in battle, so that after the victory, there will be

no more general staffs. Then the people could understand that when

everyone together shares power, then power is just and splendid; but

unshared it drives some people mad.

A friend quoted a newspaper passage to me that he wanted me to

know about. Savages, drunk with wine and blood, are applauded just as

the assassins were applauded in 1871. People egg them on because not

enough murders have been committed yet.

I hope that our side, the day after our victory, or even at the very

moment when we attain it, will have other things to do than to duplicate

those shameful acts.

The Revolution is terrifying, but its purpose is to win happiness for

humanity. It has intrepid combatants, pitiless fighters, and it needs

them. The Revolution is pulling humanity from an ocean of mud and

blood, an ocean in which thousands of unknown persons serve as feasts

for a few sharks, and if the Revolution has to cause pain to achieve its

victory, it is necessary. To pull a drowning person from the water, you

do not choose whether you are pulling him by the hair or in some way he

finds more comfortable.

One item deserves prominent notice in my memoirs: the affair of the

newspaper **La Révolution sociale**. Because of the revelations people have

made, it is a matter of honor for me to bring up the matter.

What none of us knew at the time was that the Prefect of Police, Louis

Andrieux, had financed a revolutionary newspaper by supplying funds

to a Belgian named Serraux. Andrieux did this to give himself a way to

watch over revolutionary groups more closely. His idea was stupid. His

plan to destroy us by founding **La Révolution sociale** destroyed him as

much as us. It was a strange thing for an intelligent man to do, to fight us

this way. If we followed his example and established a reactionary

newspaper the way he established a radical one, people would think we

should be sent to the madhouse at Charenton.

I knew the ostensible program of **La Révolution sociale** from the

editorial printed in its first issue, and it was most attractive. Anarchy is

not a new idea; writers long before Saint-Just believed that a person who

makes himself a leader commits a crime.

Here is a fragment from the editorial statement printed in the first

issue of **La Révolution sociale**. Who would have believed that the Prefect of

Police, M. Andrieux, was on the paper’s editorial committee?

The Revolutionary party ought to organize itself solidly on its own
ground, with its own arms, without borrowing anything from its enemies’
institutions, sophistries, or procedures. It ought to prepare itself so that
once the “heroic times” have returned, it can lay siege to the State, lay siege
to the fortress which defends and protects the avenues of privilege, and
not leave one stone upon another.
From each according to his strength, to each according to his
needs. We believe that society is neither innate nor immanent, but is a
human invention whose purpose is to struggle against the deaths that
nature brings otherwise. Above all, society ought to benefit the weak and
surround them with a special solicitude to compensate for their inferiority.
Consequently, the goal we propose and hope for is the creation of a social
order in which the individual, so long as he gives all he can give of devotion
and work, will receive all he needs.
Let the table be set for everyone, and let each person have the right and
the means to sit down to the social banquet. Let everyone eat at that
banquet as his choice and appetite direct without anyone measuring out
his serving according to the amount he can pay.

Before the Congress at London in July 1881, Emlle Gautier and I got

some anonymous warnings about agents of M. Andrieux, but who

believes anonymous letters? To be sure, I had asked some of my London

friends to go to see a woman who, they said, had advanced money to M.

Serraux. Our friends found the lady in an apartment that gave them the

impression of having just been furnished, but with only that impression

and no other proof, they could not support the accusation. The lady

gave them some reasonable explanation, and neither my London friends

nor I were led to believe she represented M. Andrieux. But it doesn’t

matter; the trap he set for us did more harm to those who set it than it

did to us.

Now, even though M. Andrieux has confessed his deception publicly,

I still need to clear the air. When I found an anarchist paper after my

return, I blindly accepted an invitation to participate in writing it. M.

Serraux offered me the chance to write for **La Révolution sociale**, but if he

had not, I might have tried to submit my material to the paper anyway.

I admit I had great confidence in M. Serraux, and it was only recently

that I learned of the trap. I must say, however, that M. Andrieux could

have lied and accused my friends and me, but he did not do it. He was

far less opportunistic than many others in his party.

Let me quote from one article published in **La Révolution sociale**. My

original title was “To M. Andrieux.” I did not know that it was unnecessary

to publish it for him to read it. Someone, perhaps Andrieux

himself, retitled it “Silence the Villain.”

**Silence the Villain**
The traiter Andrieux, when he named me at the inquest that took place
at Arbresles, has inspired a rejoinder. The villain made some costly
admissions. He admitted that he let my companions and me return to
France so that he could have us under his butcher’s paw. He wanted to
dishonor us with degrading charges so he could murder us an inch at a
time.
Nouméa is too far away for Andrieux to be able to satisfy his hatred
against the wrecks of the Commune. On his own authority at Lyon he had
people arrested or murdered by his soldiers. But he ran out of victims and
he had to get some new flesh for his club-wielding helpers. That was the
reason he voted for the amnesty. He said so. He prides himself on it.
We must have justice against the one who is kept as a public executioner,
the one who serves as the butchers’ valet for all sorts of repression. Does
anyone believe that the French people will put up with what the Russian
peasants refuse to accept? No. Like the Russian peasant we know how to
die, but not how to live under the whip. It is a question of wounds that men
who call themselves political realists do not feel; otherwise, that gallows
salesman would have been hit as many times as there are fists on the city
council. Because it is impossible for the men who work for the government
to do anything about him, it is up to those of us who are independent to get
justice done.
Louise Michel

I do not have the last issue of **La Révolution sociale**. I would like to have

the last two or three articles I did, especially the last one. That one I did

with the intention of having the authorities break up the newspaper. I

told M. Serraux that was my idea, and now 1 understand why they did

not want to. Who the devil could have guessed that the Prefect of Police

was behind it all?

I have said enough to make it clear that I was above questions of

personality. The affair of Foutriquet’s statue left me completely indifferent,

also. [Andrieux was aware of, or instigated, a plot to blow up a new

statue of President Thiers; the plan came to nothing when the explosives

failed to go off.] To keep the misfire from being blamed on a man, I

wanted to attribute it to a child. At that age, if the hand is unsure, the

child is corrected, and then it doesn’t matter. If Andrieux deceived us,

our frankness will break the trap, and it will not sully the Revolution.

The most perfidious part of Andrieux’s plan failed. Like other comrades,

I had inserted in the newspaper several letters in which I declared

I would write insults only against the government and I would refuse to

deal with any insults stupidly addressed to other groups scattered along

the path of revolution.

I have always made war against bad principles. As for particular men,

they do not count. Andrieux and his lackeys who tried to set traps for us

are having the trap turned on them.

Only this morning did I become aware of a little maneuver they had.

When there were articles that especially attacked personalities instead of

ideas (which is completely opposed to the way I see things), they would

put a few adroitly cut words of mine in an epigraph. Then people were

led to attribute the rest of the article to me. Personal hatreds were

generated by that technique.

The rest of 1881 I spent making speeches, attending an international

meeting in London, and writing for various newspapers. In January

1882 the silent poor spoke out on the anniversary of the great Blanqui’s

death, and I was arrested. I have copied the story of the trial from

<em>L’Intransigeant</em> of 7 January 1882, because the affair was not reported in

the **Gazette des tribunaux**.

**Police Court**
Louise Michel was the first accused called. The valiant citizen was
entirely self-possessed, and in her own voice she answered the judge’s
questions in a very precise manner.
“You are charged with insulting policemen,” said M. Puget, the judge.
“On the contrary, it is we who should bring charges concerning brutality
and insults,” Louise Michel said, “because we were very peaceful. What
happened, and doubtless the reason I am here, is this: I went to the
headquarters of the police commissioner and when I got there, I looked
out a window and saw several policemen beating a man. I did not want to
say anything to those policemen because they were very overexcited, so I
went up to the next floor and found two other policemen who were
calmer. I said to them, ‘Go down quickly. Someone is being murdered.’ ”
The judge said, “That story does not agree with the depositions of
witnesses we’re about to hear.”
Louise Michel answered, “What I’ve said is the truth. When accusations
against me have been true, I’ve admitted things far more serious than
this.”
The first witness called was a police constable named Conar. He said that
when he got to the police commissioner’s he found two women, one of
whom was Louise Michel. He testified that she said to him, “You are hoods
and deadbeats.”
“That’s a lie,” said Louise Michel. The police constable persisted in
claiming his account was true. Louise Michel repeated that she was telling
the truth and could say nothing more.
Regardless of the police constable’s story being a lie, the court sentenced
Louise Michel to two weeks in prison for violating Article 224 of the Penal
Code.

My friends were right to believe that I could not have said the words

attributed to me. I said, “Someone is being murdered,” not some slang

phrase, and the word “deadbeat” isn’t in my vocabulary. Nevertheless, I

spent two weeks in the middle of January 1882 in jail, while my mother

waited for me.

Chapter 17. The Death of Marie Ferré

Marie Ferré had lived for a decade after the horrible events surrounding

the arrest of Théophile. Persons whose brothers or fathers were sent to

New Caledonia or to exile elsewhere know her devotion and indefatigable

courage. At London the refugees had spoken to me about a few days

she had spent there as if, by seeing her, they saw friends again who had

disappeared during the slaughter. I believe they loved Marie more than

I did, but none of us has her any longer.

After I was arrested for the incident on Blanqui’s anniversary, Marie

Ferré fell ill. Her heart had been weak for ten years, any emotion was

dangerous for her, and after she suffered a short illness, death came for

her on the night of 23-24 February 1882.

At 47, rue Condorcet in Paris, there is a red room shaped like a

lantern. Marie, when Mme Bias rented the room, told me about it. “It’s a

real nest,” Marie said. “You’ll see how peaceful it is there.” It was a

nest—the nest of her death.

Her illness had not seemed serious at first. We did not suspect it was

going to have such a terrible conclusion, but it was in that little red room

shaped like a lantern that we lost her.

After I had served my two-week sentence, I was released. When I

found that Marie was ill, I was a little upset that she didn’t come to stay

with me until she recovered, but she told me, “I shall be well in my little

red room. After a few days it will all be over.”

It was indeed all over. If God existed, he would be truly a monster to

strike such a blow.

Her bed was opposite the door, with its head against the wall. During

the two days while her body was laid out there, someone across the hall

who didn’t know what was happening never stopped playing the violin.

That’s the way it is in cities where each building is a city in itself. The

sound of that violin sank into my heart.

In front of her bed we laid Marie in her coffin, well wrapped in my

large red shawl, which she used to like. Someone had given it to me in

case I needed to make a banner, and it made her shroud. It’s the same

thing now.

Here is the way the newspapers of 28 June [**sic:** February] 1882

described the funeral of Marie Ferré.

Yesterday morning at 9 o’clock, the funeral of the courageous Citizen
Marie Ferré took place. She was the sister of Théophile Ferré, who was
murdered by the reactionary bourgeoisie for his participation in the
Commune.
The life of Marie Ferré was one of self-abnegation and devotion to the
cause for which her brother died. Thus it was with respectful admiration
that a great number of friends yesterday followed this martyr to the
revolutionary faith to her last resting place...
The cortege was made up of a thousand persons, among whom were
Henri Rochefort, Clovis Hughes, Hubertine Auclert, Camille Bias, Ca-
dolle, and Louise Michel...
When the funeral procession reached the cemetery at Levallois-Perret,
several persons made speeches: delegates from revolutionary groups,
social studies circles, free thought associations, and the Committee of
Vigilance of the Eighteenth Arrondissement...
“History,” Jules Allix said, “will associate the memory of Théophile
Ferré with the great and sublime devotion of his sister Marie, and it is her
simple and great life that we salute here.
“Frail and gentle like all women, she was as strong as the most courageous man.
“We salute you, Marie Ferré. Your memory will live in spite of the care
you took to hide yourself. We the tortured, we the banished and exiled,
form a procession here for you. It will last until the day when we will
glorify our martyrs who died to make liberty grow for those who remain.
“The crowd that is pressing around your tomb, dear citizen with the
wonderful spirit, is making a greater eulogy to your life than all the
speeches today. May you be honored, Marie Ferré. We ask that we may
imitate your example, so that instead of martyrdoms alone, we will win the
final triumph. Long live the Republic! Long live the Revolution!”

The sad moment ended with a few words from Emile Gautier and me.

I said to the crowd: “Citizens, we place this tombstone over the very

heart of the Revolution. Let us remember. Let us always remember!”

Gautier concluded the ceremony: “You have said it very well, Louise.

Let us remember. May memory come back to life and make us glimpse

the dawn of the days when liberty, equality, and justice will reign.”

When Marie Ferré died, the revolutionary women of Lyon who had

been calling themselves the Louise Michel Association took the name

Marie Ferré Association. Thank you, just and valiant women of Lyon.

Among the fragments of 28 February 1882 there are many touching

pages written about the heroic and impressive friend whom we had lost.

Henri Rochefort reminisced about her at length.

When I saw Marie again after my return from exile, I had been keeping
in my mind an ineradicable memory of the young girl from my days in
prison, and her unexpected death brought it back to my attention.
I see her again, gliding like a shadow in her black clothing along the
corridor that led to the visiting room in the jail. Rossel, Théophile Ferré,
and I were usually all together in a set of cubicles which were arranged like
a sort of prison wagon. Because all three of us were marked for execution,
we were locked up next to each other on the first floor of the prison with
two guards who had uneasy eyes staring curiously at us through open
spy-holes.
In the visiting room Mlle Rossel, Mlle Ferré, and my children waited,
sharing their common anxiety. When they found out I had been sentenced
only to deportation for life, I shall never forget the look of sympathetic
longing the two young girls gave my children. It seemed to say, “Your
father is only going to have to end his days six thousand leagues from here
among man-eating savages. You’re fortunate!”
Like Delescluze’s sister, Ferré’s sister struggled bravely against the
bitterness of regrets, and then she fell, vanquished.
When the clerical calendar that the mailman brings us each year is
replaced by the republican calendar, the name of this martyr will shine
there among the most memorable. If ever civil baptism replaces religious
baptism, decent women will honor her virtue and her memory by dedicating their children to her.

The last fragment I want to give is a poem I wrote to Marie’s memory

just after her death.

**In Memory of Marie Ferré**
We have to admit that she is dead.

From the gates of jail, we’ll see her no more.

The door to cold nothing will never reopen.

These words shall go where tears can’t reach.

To speak her name will take us back

To all those we have lost.

Marie was modest, brave, and proud,

A contrast of charm we often admired.

It’s over now; and in her tomb

She sleeps forever; our last smile

Held in her heart; and beneath the stone

My heart is buried alive.

Betwixt bleak skies and stony earth

A few rare treasures are fleetingly ours

Before pale death swoops in to steal.

We stand beneath our crimson flags

And mourn the loss of those we love,

Too soon taken to the tomb.

Revolution; beloved mother who devours us

Giving equality, take our broken destinies

And make of them a dawning. Make liberty

Fly above our cherished dead. When the bells

Of ominous May ring out again, wake us

To your luminescent clarity.

Louise Michel

February 1882

After the terrible blow of Marie’s death, I thought I would die. My

mother still remained alive then, my mother and the Revolution. As I

write these lines, I have only the Revolution.

Chapter 18. Women’s Rights

All the women reading these memoirs must remember that we women

are not judged the same way men are. When men accuse some other

man of a crime, they do not accuse him of such a stupid one that an

observer wonders if they are serious. But that is how they deal with a

woman; she is accused of things so stupid they defy belief. If she is not

duped by the claims of popular sovereignty put forth to delude people,

or if she is not fooled by the hypocritical concessions which hoodwink

most women, she will be indicted. Then, if a woman is courageous, or if

she grasps some bit of knowledge easily, men claim she is only a

“pathological” case.

At this moment man is master, and women are intermediate beings,

standing between man and beast. It is painful for me to admit that we

are a separate caste, made one across the ages.

For many years the human race has been lying in its cocoon with its

wings folded; now it is time for humanity to unfold its wings. The

human race that is emerging from its cocoon will not understand why we

lay supine so long.

The first thing that must change is the relationship between the sexes.

Humanity has two parts, men and women, and we ought to be walking

hand in hand; instead there is antagonism, and it will last as long as the

“stronger” half controls, or thinks it controls, the “weaker” half.

How marvelous it would be if only the equality of the sexes were

recognized, but while we wait, women are still, as Molière said, “the soup

of man.” The strong sex condescends to soothe us by defining us as the

beautiful sex. Nonsense! It’s been a damned long time since we women

have had any justice from the “strong” sex.

We women are not bad revolutionaries. Without begging anyone, we

are taking our place in the struggle; otherwise, we could go ahead and

pass motions until the world ends and gain nothing. For my part,

comrades, I have refused to be any man’s “soup,” and I’ve gone through

life with the masses without giving any slaves to the Caesars.

Let me tell men a few truths. They claim man’s strength is derived

from woman’s cowardice, but his strength is less than it appears to be.

Men rule with a lot of uproar, while it is women who govern without

noise.

But governing from the shadows is valueless. If women’s mysterious

power were transformed into equality, all the pitiful vanities and contemptible

deceptions would disappear. Never again would there be

either a master’s brutality or a slave’s perfidy.

The worship of force which exists today reminds me of savages and

dawn-age peoples. In New Caledonia I saw warriors loading their

women as if they were mules. Whenever someone might see them, they

posed haughtily, carrying only their warrior’s spear. But if the gorges

and mountains closed up and hid them from view, or if the path were

deserted, then the warrior, moved by pity, would unload some of the

burden from his human mule and carry it himself. Thus lightened, the

woman breathed deeply; now she had no more than one child hanging

on her back and one or two others hanging on her legs. But if a shadow

appeared on the horizon—even if only a cow or a horse—quickly the

load went back on the woman’s back, and the warrior made a great

pretense of adjusting it. Oh dear, if someone had seen him—a warrior

who thinks women are worth something! But most women after a

lifetime of being treated like this no longer wanted anything more.

Is it not the same everywhere? Human stupidity throws old prejudices

over us like a winding-sheet over a corpse. Are there not stupid arguments

about the inferiority of women? Maternity or other circumstances

are supposed to keep women from being good fighters. That argument

assumes people are always going to be stupid enough to butcher each

other. Anyway, when a thing is worth the pain, women are not the last to

join the struggle. The yeast of rebellion which lies at the bottom of every

woman’s heart rises quickly when combat stirs it up, particularly when

combat promises to lessen squalor and stinks less than a charnel house.

Calm down, men. We are not stupid enough to want to run things.

Our taking power would only make some kind of authority last longer;

you men keep the power instead, so that authority may wither away

more quickly. I must add that even “more quickly” will still be too long.

We women are disgusted, and further villainies only inspire us to act.

We jeer a little also. We jeer at the incredible sight of big shots, cheap

punks, hoods, old men, young men, scoundrels—all turned into idiots by

accepting as truth a whole heap of nonsensical ideas which have dominated

the thinking of the human race. We jeer at the sight of those male

creatures judging women’s intellects by weighing the brains of women in

their dirty paws.

Do men sense the rising tide of us women, famished for learning? We

ask only this of the old world: the little knowledge that it has. All those

men who wish to do nothing are jealous of us. They are jealous of us

because we want to take from the world what is sweetest: knowledge and

learning.

I have never understood why there was a sex whose intelligence

people tried to cripple as if there were already too much intelligence in

the world. Little girls are brought up in foolishness and are expressly

disarmed so that men can deceive them more easily. That is what men

want. It is precisely as if someone threw you into the water after having

forbidden you to learn to swim or even after having tied your arms and

legs. It is all done under the pretext of preserving the innocence of little

girls.

Men are happy to let a girl dream. And most of those dreams would

not disturb her as they do now if she knew them as simple questions of

science. She would be in fact more truly innocent then, for she could

move calmly through visions which now trouble her. Nothing that comes

from science or nature would bother her. Does a corpse disturb people

who are used to the dissecting room? When nature, living or dead,

appears to an educated woman, she does not blush. There is no mystery,

for mystery is destroyed when the cadaver is dissected. Nature and

science are clean; the veils that men throw over them are not.

Englishmen have created a race of animals for slaughter. “Civilized”

men prepare young girls to be deceived, and then make it a crime for

them to fall, but also make it almost an honor for the seducer. What an

uproar when men find an unruly animal in the flock! I wonder what

would happen if the lamb no longer wanted to be slaughtered. Most

likely, men would slaughter them just the same, whether or not they

stretched their necks out for the knife. What difference does it make?

The difference is that it is better not to stretch your neck out to your

murderer.

There is a roadside market where men sell the daughters of the

people. The daughter of the rich is sold for her dowry and is given to

whomever her family wishes. The daughter of the poor is taken by

whoever wants her. Neither girl is ever asked her own wishes.

In our world, the proletarian is a slave; the wife of a proletarian is

even more a slave. Women’s wages are simply a snare because they are so

meager that they are illusory. Why do so many women not work? There

are two reasons. Some women cannot find work, and others would

rather die of hunger, living in a cave, than do a job which gives them

back less than enough to live on and which enriches the entrepreneur at

the same time.

Prostitution is the same. We practice Caledonian morality, and men

don’t count women for much here either. There are some women who

hold tight to life. But then, forced on by hunger, cold, and misery, they

are lured into shame by the pimps and whores who live from that kind of

work. In every rotten thing, there are maggots. Those unfortunate

women let themselves be formed into battalions in the mournful army

that marches from the hospital to the charnel house.

When I hear of one of these miserable creatures taking from a man’s

pocket more than he would have given her, I think, “So much the

better.” Why should we close our eyes? If there were not so many buyers,

that sordid market would not exist. And when some honest woman,

insulted and pursued, kills the scoundrel who is chasing her, I think,

“Bravo, she has rid others of the danger and avenged her sisters.” But

too few women do it.

If women, these accursed—even the socialist Proudhon said they can

only be housewives and courtesans, and indeed they cannot be anything

else in the present world—if, as I say, these women are often dangerous,

to whom does the blame belong? Who has, for his pleasure, developed

their coquetry and all the other vices agreeable to men? Men have

selected these vices through the ages.

We women have weapons now, the weapons of slaves, silent and

terrible. No one has to put them into our hands. It is done.

I admit that a man, too, suffers in this accursed society, but no sadness

can compare to a woman’s. In the street, she is merchandise. In the

convents, where she hides as if in a tomb, ignorance binds her, and rules

take her up in their machinelike gears and pulverize her heart and

brain. In the world, she bends under mortification. In her home, her

burdens crush her. And men want to keep her that way. They do not

want her to encroach upon either their functions or their titles.

Be reassured, “gentlemen.” We do not need any of your titles to take

over your functions when it pleases us to do so. Your titles. Bah! We do

not want rubbish. Do what you want to with them. They are too flawed

and limited for women. The time is not far off when you will come and

offer them to us in order to try to dress them up a little by dividing them

with us.

Keep those rags and tatters. We want none of them. What we do want

is knowledge and education and liberty. We know what our rights are,

and we demand them. Are we not standing next to you fighting the

supreme fight? Are you not strong enough, men, to make part of that

supreme fight a struggle for the rights of women? And then men and

women together will gain the rights of all humanity.

Beyond our tormented epoch will come the time when men and

women will move through life together as good companions, and they

will no more argue about which sex is superior than races will argue

about which race is foremost in the world. It is good to look to the

future.

This chapter is by no means a digression. As a woman, I have the right

to speak for women.

Chapter 19. Speeches Abroad, 1882-1883

During the year after Marie’s death, I made speeches not only in France

but also in Belgium, Holland, and England. More or less true accounts

exist of the speeches I gave in Brussels in October 1882. They went very

well except for the third or fourth speech. At that one some young fool

who claimed his name was Fallou caused a disturbance. To explain why

no one knew him in Brussels, he declared ingenuously that he had come

from Paris the same time I did. To the crowd he stated that I had written

an article in **La Révolution sociale** proposing the erection of a statue to M.

Thiers!!! He claimed he had the issue that proved his allegations, and a

large number of people believed his nonsense, even though the only

article I had ever written about Thiers was one that began, “The little

squirt has been castrated.”

In spite of the objects that “friends of order” threw at the rostrum, I

finished my speech. The incident showed by the very example people

had before their eyes that those “friends of order” understood “order”

to mean their right to knock down people like myself who claim that bees

should not have to work forever for hornets.

Reactionaries have raised two questions about my foreign speeches

which would be laughable if our principles were not involved. One

question is, Where did I get the money for my trips? and the other was,

What did I do with the money I made?

The money for the trips came from Henri Rochefort when whatever

group that invited me did not furnish it. He lent me the money, which I

have never paid back, and any money I received over my expenses I

gave to the sponsoring group. Other friends bought my railroad tickets.

Receipts? Both in New Caledonia and since my return, I have made it a

practice to keep receipts or documents which would establish, if necessary,

what I have done with the various sums I have been given to

dispense, but the revolutionary groups know what was done with the

money. They know I kept nothing for myself.

I’d like to quote a piece from **L’Intransigeant**.

We’ve seen a report in the magazine Voltaire which reads: “Revolutionary
propaganda brings in a great deal of money. Mlle Louise Michel’s
three speeches at Brussels each got her 500 francs, or 1500 francs for all
three. At prices like those, calls for revolt have become a pretty good deal.”
Not only have we seen that report, but one of our kind readers,
astonished at the princely gifts Citizen Louise Michel is giving to Chagot’s
victims through us, has asked us for information about her means of
support. That gentleman feels Louise Michel has a knack for uttering
“charming bits of nonsense” and making “pleasure trips at the expense of
fools exploited by a committee of scoundrels.” . . .
To this gentle reader we shall limit ourselves to submitting a few figures
which the **Voltaire** is also at liberty to use for its own purposes.
Over and above the cost of the first speech and independently of what
was earmarked for the work of revolutionary propaganda, **L’Intransigeant** received a hundred francs to give to the exiles of 1871.
Over and above the cost of the second speech, a hundred francs were
given to the Barinage miners. Another hundred francs went to the socialist
press in Antwerp, and the remainder, three hundred francs, the “princely
gift,” was featured yesterday at the head of the list of contributors for the
accused of Chalon-sur-Saone and their families.
There certainly was no less democratic or worthwhile use made of the
proceeds of the third speech.
Is our gentle reader satisfied?

I’m obliged to get quotations from friends because I can find the truth

nowhere else. I delete things that are too flattering to me when I can;

they are only exaggerations in response to the exaggerated hatred my

enemies express, and I do not deserve that flattery—although I’m not a

monster. I just follow my own inclinations, the way everybody and

everything does.

We are the product of our own times, that’s all, and each of us has his

good side and his bad. It does not matter what we are so long as our

work is great and covers us with its glory. In the midst of the things we

begin, what our own lives are does not matter. What counts is what will

be left for humanity when we have disappeared.

Two weeks after my speeches in Brussels, I spoke at Ghent. Our

friend Deneuvillers has told the story of what happened that day in

Ghent. I’m going to quote his account from revolutionary pride, not

personal pride. It shows the conduct of the people compared to the

conduct of those who are their exploiters, consciously or unconsciously.

**Louise Michel at Ghent**
Louise Michel gave a speech Wednesday at the Mont-Parnasse hall, the
proceeds from which were earmarked for the socialist cause. Three
thousand comrades were present and gave an enthusiastic welcome to the
speaker, who talked on “Revolutionary Proselyting.”
Then she left to go to deliver a speech at the Hippodrome in a bourgeois
and reactionary setting. The brave and courteous people of Ghent wanted
to form a procession around her to protect her from hecklers, but Louise
Michel told them: “We must not allow the enemies of the people to believe
that any one person from our ranks is an idol. We should form processions
only for the Revolution. That’s why I ask you to let me go on by myself.”
The workers who heard her at Mont-Parnasse were composed and
enthusiastic, but the reactionaries at the Hippodrome were wild and
furious. For three days the delirious Catholic clerics had been preparing
howling choristers to prevent people from hearing her. Only wide open
mouths yelling out furious cries could be seen, along with enough raised
clubs to make Pietri envious.
There was a comic side to the Hippodrome speech; as a souvenir of the
clerical arguments the speaker was able to keep a two-kilogram piece of a
bench which had been thrown at her head.
The Catholic packs gathered in the streets where they bayed after the
trail of socialists. They tried to murder the person the Catholics thought
was their leader, the courageous Anseele, and he escaped from their hands
only because we intervened in the fight...
Deneuvillers

In Ghent after I had witnessed the magnificent spectacle of the guilds

marching, I saw during the night, which added to the setting, a medieval

scene in a medieval city. It came after my speech that caused so much

furor. One part of the hall in which I was speaking was occupied by

policemen sent from Paris, and a person, like the conductor of an

orchestra, signaled them when to make a racket. Students from Catholic

universities occupied the upper parts of the hall, and with their ears

conspicuous against the shadows, they howled out in unison every time

the conductor raised his baton. If only there had been some real

bellowing at that concert, but all the police and students did was yelp.

My friends forced me to leave that concert, and their decision was

wrong. Those raucous little fellows would finally have lost their voices,

and the reasonable parts of the room would have been able to judge

their conduct at the end. To my regret, I obeyed the wishes of my

friends and left, but it was painful.

They pushed me into a cab which immediately pulled away, but

Jeanne, a friend who was accompanying me, had been separated from

me in the turmoil. I kept trying to make the cab driver turn back for her,

but for half an hour he whipped on his horses without answering me or

admitting he heard me or even felt me pulling on his arm.

I finally prevailed upon the driver, and he turned back, driving

through “Messieurs the scholars,” who were throwing stones at the

meeting hall. The windows of the cab were broken, the horse was hardly

able to move, and now and again outlined against the black night, a

young head, flushed with the drunkenness of the chase, pushed its way

through the fragments of the carriage’s windows and howled out some

insult. The old phantom city behind them opened out dead black to my

view.

Amidst my concern for my friend Jeanne, I thought about the old

Ghent of the fourteenth century, the days of the van Arteveldes, when

the guilds used the axe to kill those they believed were seeking power,

and I looked out at the somber banks of the canal. It all made a

magnificent spectacle, framed between the water and the night. In front

of the meeting hall were the students and those who kept watch over

them, all of them milling around. The Middle Ages were alive still.

Very worried about Jeanne, I got down from the cab to ask them if

they had seen the tall brunette who had been with me and to ask what

they had done with her, because I was the one they wanted to kill. A few

of them became serious and began to make inquiries. Then a police

superintendent helped me to search for Jeanne.

He was a police superintendent from Ghent, and not at all like the

policemen who had migrated from Paris to bellow at my speech. He told

me not to get involved in any way with what was going on other than to

look for Jeanne, and in fact it was he who located her. I remember that

when he found that the students were acting improperly he placed

himself in front of me, to my great astonishment, and he helped me

move through the packed mass. That surprised me, because I fully

expected to be led off to prison for having been insulted. That’s what the

police would have done in Paris.

The newspapers recognized the evenhanded honesty of those Belgian

police.

The spectacle of fevered madness lasted until evening. The mob
thought that by stifling a speech they had saved religion and society.
Without the protection of the burgomaster and the police chief, who
proved they had truly heroic devotion to principle by intervening in the
fight at the Circus and even up to the railroad station, we do not know
what might have happened to our friend, Louise Michel.

I traveled to Holland, also. Besides our friends, of whom I have such

good memories, there were scholars who were curious to see close up

what species of animal we revolutionaries are.. They undertook their

studies in good faith. I also met enemies who were sincere because they

knew about us only through gossip in reactionary newspapers. They

were astonished at having been deceived and ended up by understanding

revolutionaries.

In Holland, the motherland of the brave, I also saw Freemasons, and

it seemed to me that Freemasonry had undergone a rejuvenation.

During the courageous proceedings of the Freemasons in 1871 I had

gotten the impression of an assembly of specters drawing themselves up

on the ramparts in front of the royalists who were butchering the

Revolution. It was grand and coldly beautiful. Later in New Caledonia I

saw the Freemasons again; there they had been revitalized by the

influence of the tropics. They seemed to be moved by a great desire for

progress and were going to a lot of pains to take part in it, there where

the sun was warm.

But more and more, it is clear that societies based on rites, or

hampered by any rites whatever, will not last until the emergence of the

only viable fellowship—that of revolutionary humanity. Rite-bound societies

will assist that birth only as ghosts.

An isolated life can be interesting only as it relates to the multitude of

lives that surrounds it. Only crowds, with each person free in the

immense harmony, are worthwhile now.

Two months after this northern trip, just after the beginning of 1883,

I went to London to give a series of speeches. The travel expenses were

paid by Citizens Otterbein of Brussels and Mas of Anvers, and I have not

paid them back yet.

At London, I lived with our friends Varlet, Armand Morceau, and

Viard the way I had done during the conference of 1881, and as always

they spoiled me a bit. It is impossible for me to spend money when I go

to London; they spend it. As for the proceeds from the speech, our

friends know what was to be done with them. For a gathering of

revolutionary groups, the hall we rented was very expensive, and what

we came up with had to be supplemented. **L’Intransigeant** added more

yet, because we had promised our friends of ’71 who had become infirm

that there would be a small remembrance for them.

The proceeds were small. Some time ago we made a plan to create a

very modest refuge where old and starving former exiles could find a

little bread and a few drops of broth. With no qualification other than

destitution, those poor people who had become unable to work or to

whom people had refused work could receive food and find shelter.

Many of the Communards are proud, and some of them had already

taken the path of Père Malézieux. With the proceeds from our meetings,

we hoped to support a home for these exiles, owned by the exiles

themselves, and if we had received sufficient funds, perhaps we could

have saved a few desperate persons.

Even the most aristocratic and reactionary English newspapers reported

my London speeches quite impartially. Perhaps that relative

kindness was owed to the bad faith of the bourgeois gutter press of

France. Nothing puts people in a better light than to say too many bad

things about them. After a good round of violent criticism, exaggerations

are immediately noticeable.

As for the accounts of my London speeches in the opportunistic press

of Paris, they were all based on the same stereotype. They did not need

to send reporters. It was enough for them to know the name of the

meeting hall where I was speaking, the subject treated, and the group

that had organized the meeting to permit them to fix up their accounts

of the “revolutionary craze” in their good old-fashioned way.

Because my London lectures were given in rich neighborhoods where

people knew about me only through the legend my enemies had

invented, my British audience was quite astonished at finding me neither

so ill-mannered nor so ridiculous as it had heard. Those who saw me in

England did not recognize in the slightest the horrible portrait of me

they had been given. Also, all the newspapers, even the aristocratic <em>Pall

Mall Gazette</em>, were extremely courteous to me.

One thing that surprised them was that I did not share the current

British ideas on workhouses, but they were incorrect when they thought

they saw me contradict myself on on this point. They thought I was

enthusiastic about the workhouses, and that’s not what I think of them. I

only stated the pleasure I felt over England’s considering it a duty to be

concerned about people who have neither food nor shelter. The thing

that struck me—and I immediately said so—was the care with which in

some workhouses, Lambeth for example, they soften the refuge where

old Albion piles its poverty.

The English will wait on their own little island until the rest of Europe

has had its revolution, and then, not imitating the stupid mistakes others

have committed, England will do everything at once. Albion will rise

suddenly and light the sacred fire. The winds from abroad will cause the

sacred fire to burn more brightly and will make it a dawning.

So that their antiquated institutions will last longer, the English warm

them up with the enthusiasm of women. Women direct the workhouses

now, and in the future there will be women in Parliament. But the green

branches on the old tree cannot rejuvenate the rotten trunk.

There is one workhouse where the old and the poor are happy; it is

one in which the woman who directs it feels that liberty is necessary if the

destitute are to stay alive like other people. “There are no rules” is

written in big letters on the wall, and the place is more orderly than

anywhere else. The clock directs people. At the time for meals or work

or a walk, everybody goes freely where he must, the same way a person

in his own house goes to his own meal or his own work.

I will not name the people in England who showed me their sympathy.

They will remember that evening of the black London winter on which a

cloud of fog floated. Raindrops condensed in an unceasing mist and now

and again came in broad sheets. They will remember a frozen evening in

the large, cold meeting hail in front of a cold and correct audience

drawn from a grand neighborhood of immense palaces under which the

wretches have holes like animals. But despite that, I felt an impression of

human honesty persisting regardless of the accursed chains that people

interminably fasten on each other.

The audience did not share my beliefs, but they were sincere. I do not

know why, but they seemed like a family to me, even as serious and cold

as they were. Then, as I had done long ago during my childhood at

Vroncourt, as I had done when I was a young schoolmistress and sat on

the hearth-stone at Mme Fayet’s while I let everything in my heart break

free, I began to talk unrestrainedly. In this large, cold meeting hall in

London, I spoke freely about the scenes of my life which came to

mind—from Vroncourt to New Caledonia, and at that moment those

past things were truly present.

My English friends, Miss M---, Miss X---, Miss F---, do not

believe for a minute that I have forgotten you. Do you really believe,

Miss M---, that the book in which you wrote the words of the old

Jacobins—“neither God nor master”—could ever have been destroyed?

I certainly still have it. I also have “The Song of the Shirt” translated into

French so well by you, Sir T. S---.

London! I love London, where my exiled friends have always been

welcomed, London, where old England, standing in the shadow of the

gallows, is still more liberal than the French bourgeois republicans are.

Maybe those French opportunists really think they are liberal. Do you

suppose that everybody who commits crimes against the people is

conscious of what he is doing? Among them are persons who are

deluding themselves and who wish to reward themselves for virtue and

intelligence. Intelligence, nonsense! Wisdom is found in the people.

It is quite true that today the people do not know any science, but

considering the mess science is in now, that’s all right. Science today is

only opening its buds. Tomorrow it will be wonderful, and tomorrow

science will belong to everybody. Today, if the people do not know this

or that little bit of information, at least they are not stubborn about

believing, for example, that glowworms are stars. That’s something.

Chapter 20. Speeches in France, 1882-1883

In the summer of 1882 I made a lecture tour through northern France

with Jules Guesde, in connection with a strike. The trip had some merry

moments. In one cafe a dozen men came over and made a circle around

us, looking at us the way curious animals do. I took out my sketch pad

and began to draw their mugs. I wrote underneath the sketches “Skillful

Stool-pigeon,” “Fool,” and “Spiteful Stool-pigeon.” They weren’t informers

any more than we were, but they were so stupid, looking at us

the way they did. One of them came and peeked over my shoulder; the

others did too, and then we were rid of them.

During the journey, there was another moment of comedy when one

fellow went on and on telling another man about the burials of famous

men he had seen; nobody could have been as complete a fool as this

fellow was. I wondered if he was in earnest. When I realized he was, I

became fearful that Guesde would find a way to disturb the bird, but he

didn’t, and the fellow ended his recital of hopes for funeral processions

with the wish that Victor Hugo, whose age he worked out, would soon

give him another spectacle.

After having stirred that prospect around for a long time he began on

another subject: Thiers. That mournful crow certainly had a gift for

conversation. He was talking to a man who had a neck as red as a

turkey’s and who was watching him admiringly, and so was a young

woman with big, round eyes. Then a traveling salesman who was neither

affected nor boastful straightened him out by telling some truths to the

fellow who was deploring the miseries of the “poor bosses.”

At the meeting we had come to attend, the chief of police, all dressed

up with his sash of office, placed himself near Guesde and me. Clearly

believing the tales the reactionaries were telling about us, he seemed

astonished at how calm our friends kept the meeting. It is true that the

four sergeants-at-arms appointed to keep order in the hall were all the

size of Hercules, and one of them picked up a lower-middle-class

troublemaker and put him under his arm the way you carry a cat. That

troublemaker was giving a signal for the start of a racket, but the

Hercules carried him out before anyone did anything. The other reactionaries

calmed down magically.

In September 1882 there was a meeting at Versailles. Quite a group of

us anarchists went there together. We were prepared for the worst, but

we thought it was our duty to go to Versailles and memorialize there the

execution grounds at Satory and the wall at Pdre Lachaise. I still have a

letter I wrote about this meeting which was published in **L’Intransigeant**.

<right>

24 September 1882

</right>

Concerning the incidents which occured at the meeting organized last
Sunday at Versailles by a revolutionary socialist group, Louise Michel
sends us the following note:
Did our friends expect us to get a different reception? We don’t need to
talk about the Revolution to people who are revolutionaries; we need to
tell people who aren’t revolutionaries about it.
Since we began at Versailles, I don’t see any obstacle to our ending up in
some place like Brittany, which is even more reactionary. Soon we will go
to all the royal provinces. Maybe some of the people there will greet us
with pitchforks, but our publicity will win others over to the Social
Revolution. All their Breton obstinacy will turn toward the truth, and all
their fanaticism will be directed toward the future instead of the past.
I’ve thought about conquering Brittany for a long time, ever since 22
January 1871, when I stood in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Ville. That
day, more than ten years ago, I looked up indignantly at the broad, pale
faces of the Breton boys glued against the windows of the building which
once had been and again would be the home of the democratic Commune.
In accordance with Trochu’s plan, they fired at us then from those
windows with great conviction, but we will recruit those Bretons too, like
all the others, for the Revolution. We will recruit the king’s faithful, just
like all other proletarians.
Louise Michel

That article in **L’Intransigeant** went on to print another of my letters:

Yesterday our friend, Citizen Louise Michel, addressed a letter to the
editor-in-chief of **L’Intransigeant**, commenting on an article entitled “Memories of Satory.”
To Citizen Rochefort.
My dear traveling companion,
I congratulate you for your article today. How could those people
imagine that the pursuit and cries of an ignorant pack of dogs could alarm
me when I have the image of Satory in my mind? It would be just like
amusing myself by grumbling when I was on the Ducos Peninsula, as I
looked at Nou Island visible at the horizon.
Once again we are able to declare that our adversaries have no serious
arguments. They use shouts, which is an admission that they have lost.
Still, the crowd was picturesque. The most striking figure was a limping
beggar who stretched himself out on his crutches like a spider and
screeched against the enemies of property. You’ve seen Callot’s painting
“The Beggars,” haven’t you? You would have thought that the fellow had
been pulled out of the frame. There were also a few big, funny-looking
creatures that looked like the monsters that form the retinue of the
goddess of the sea, and some street urchins, among whom there was more
than one future insurgent. All in all, they made up the whole tableau of
human stupidity.
No matter. This scene will have made its contribution by bringing us
more than one listener. Things have an eloquence that words lack.
Louise Michel

At another meeting, this one at the de la Perle meeting hall, I believe,

someone managed to break a window and throw a smoke-bomb behind

the speaker’s rostrum. If we had not dealt with it immediately and told

the audience it was a trick of the police or of idiots, it would have caused

the crowd to rush toward the one very small exit, and there would have

been some accidents. It turned out to have been the work of idiots.

Ashamed of what they’d done, they later sent me their apologies, which I

read publicly, of course without mentioning their names.

There were many other meetings; accounts of them are in one of

Marie’s notebooks. Among them was one at the Graffard meeting hall.

Speaking of that, there is a painting of me in the Grévin Museum

entitled “Louise Michel at the Graffard Meeting Hall.” Why the Graffard, I don’t know; that title is given to other portraits and caricatures. I

certainly have been at the Graffard hall, as I have been at almost every

other meeting hall in Paris, but it seems to me that your face does not

change from one speaker’s platform to another.

“Louise Michel at the Graffard Meeting Hall” is again the inscription,

I believe, under the portrait that a very young painter, the son of Mme

Tynaire, stubbornly persisted in doing for the Salon. I let him do it in

spite of the distress I felt at posing during that time, for it was immediately

after Marie’s death. I did not want to thwart a child who had talent,

and I was sure the Salon would accept it for two reasons. The first and

foremost was that he painted very well. The second, and the one on

which I counted, was that his portrait of me resembled, feature for

feature and especially expression for expression, not me, but an old

prisoner named Mme Dumollard whom I had seen in 72 at the Auberive prison.

I’m aware of my own ugliness, but between my ugliness and the

portrait I’m speaking of—a portrait which was magnificently painted

and which doesn’t resemble me at all—there is a difference that can be

checked simply by comparing it to any of my photographs.

The reactionaries must have rubbed their paws together and said,

“What a fright.” It made me laugh until someone was stupid enough to

tell my mother about several incidents, the knowledge of which pained

her, but her distress was relieved when a simple-minded man, absolutely

dressed to the teeth, a stupid man as stiff as a wooden doll, appeared at

the door of 45, boulevard Ornano, where my mother and I were living.

“Mlle Michel?” he asked, forgetting to take off his stove-pipe hat and

beating his right hand with a small stick.

“I am she,” I said.

“No, you aren’t her.”

“I’m not me?”

“Well! I know Louise Michel. I saw her portrait in the Salon.”

“So?”

“So! Try not to make fun of me. A woman who has horses and

carriages doesn’t open her own door. Go and get her for me. I repeat: It

isn’t her who is opening this door.”

“It’s she who is closing it,” I said. Whereupon, as this stupid man

wasn’t all the way inside, I pushed him completely outside and slammed

the door in his face. He blustered a little from the other side of the door,

and then I heard him going down the steps, still shouting insults.

People did say that I had horses and carriages, and people appeared

to believe that I made money from my speeches. Because the persons

who organized the meetings know what was done with the profits, I

confess that I spent hardly any time worrying about that spiteful, stupid

talk.

In October 1882 I went to Lille to speak in connection with the strike

of the women spinners there. They were all around us at the speaker’s

platform, all those female workers from the cellars of Lille, whose cheap

shoes protect their feet so little from the water, and who are killed by

work before their time. They were asking for only ten or fifteen

centimes more a day to continue their horrible life. Those ten or fifteen

centimes for bread would be sufficient for those who work so hard to

support the rich.

Those poor workers are just like the silkworm, which is boiled when it

has spun its cocoon. When their labor is finished, those workers, too,

must die. Like the silkworms, their lives must stop with the thread. How

will they exist in their old age? Won’t their daughters be chained to the

same torture before they are scarcely out of their cradles?

The rich must use and abuse their flocks. Both the silkworms and the

daughters of the people are made for spinning; the worm will be boiled,

and the girl will die or become twisted like green wood that has been

bent. All they wanted was ten or fifteen centimes for a little bread, and

they earned billions for others.

All the strikers had to do was hold out for one week more and the

exploiters would have given in, but to last a week longer the strikers

needed two thousand francs. That was why I went to Lille to make a

speech. Thanks to the reactionaries who paid for their seats so that they

could come to insult me, we made the two thousand francs in one lecture

alone. I asked the organizers of the speech to put that money away

safely, and then I was able to announce to the gentlemen who had

bought tickets that we had what we needed. Thus, they were free either

to listen to me or to spend their time howling, either of which was

perfectly all right with me because we already had the two thousand

francs that we needed.

That frank explanation calmed them down, and the speech took place

without further incident. Around one in the morning I was able to take

the train and return to my mother. For the tomb of Marie Ferré I

brought back a sacred souvenir—a bouquet the workers of Lille had

given me.

Unfortunately, at the end of the week a few evil persons made some

gullible workers believe that others had gone back to their workshops,

and they believed it was their duty to do the same. Once back in their

capitalist prison, they saw they had been fooled, and then it was too late

for them, but the lesson will not be lost.

Just after the turn of the year, in January 1883, was the trial of the

sixty-eight anarchists in Lyon, fifty-four of whom were prisoners, the

other fourteen being tried in absentia. Because the reactionaries could

not figure out a crime to accuse them of, they were indicted for being

affiliated with the International, which had been dissolved in 1876. The

trial was a travesty.

It began on January 9 and Prince Kropotkin, Emile Gautier, Bordat,

Bernard, and forty-three others of the accused issued a manifesto which

Gautier had written.

**Manifesto of the Anarchists**
What is anarchy and what are anarchists?
Anarchists are citizens who, in a century where freedom of opinion is
preached everywhere, have believed it to be their right and duty to appeal
for unlimited liberty.
Throughout the world there are a few thousand of us, maybe a few
million, for we have no merit other than saying out loud what the crowd is
thinking. We are a few million workers who claim absolute liberty, nothing
but liberty, every liberty.
We want liberty; we claim for every human being the right to do
whatever he pleases and the means to do it with. A person has the right to
satisfy all his needs completely, with no limit other than natural impossibilities and the needs of his neighbors, which must be respected equally with
his.
We want freedom, and we believe its existence incompatible with the
existence of any power whatsoever, no matter what its origin and form, no
matter whether it be elected or imposed, monarchist or republican, inspired by divine right, popular right, holy oil, or universal suffrage.
History teaches us that every government is like every other government
and that all are worth the same. The best are the worst. In some there is
more cynicism, in others more hypocrisy, but at bottom there are always
the same procedures, always the same intolerance. There is no government, including even the ones that appear the most liberal, which does not
have in the dust of its legislative arsenals some good little law about the
International to use against inconvenient opposition.
Evil, in the eyes of anarchists, does not dwell in one form of government
more than any other. Evil lies in the idea of government itself. The
principle of authority is evil.
Our ideal for human relations is to substitute a free contract, perpetually
open to revision or cancellation, in place of administrative and legal
guardianship and imposed discipline.
Anarchists propose teaching people to get along without government as
they are already learning to get along without God.
Anarchists will also teach people to get along without private ownership.
Indeed, the worst tyrant is not the one who locks you up; it is the one who
starves you. The worst tyrant is not the one who takes you by the collar; it is
the one who takes you by the belly.
No liberty without equality! There is no liberty in a society where capital
is monopolized in the hands of an increasingly smaller minority, in a
society where nothing is divided equally, not even public education, which
is paid for by everyone’s money.
We believe that capital is the common patrimony of mankind because it
is the fruit of the collaboration between past and present generations, and
that it ought to be put at the disposal of everyone in such a way that no one
is excluded and in such a way that no one can hoard one part of it to the
detriment of other people.
In one word, what we want is equality. We want factual equality as the
corollary of liberty, indeed as its essential preliminary condition.
To each according to his rights; to each according to his needs.
That is what we want; that is what our energies are devoted to. It is what
shall be, because no limitation can prevail against claims that are both
legitimate and necessary. That is why the government wishes to discredit
us.
Villains that we are, we claim bread for all, knowledge for all, work for
all, independence and justice for all.

That was the manifesto of the anarchists. I was in London when the

trial began, but I arrived in time to go to several of the last sessions and

to see the prosecutor, M. Fabreguettes. When I looked at his angular

profile, with his arm raised and the wide sleeve of his robe rolled up, and

heard his biting words, I thought of an engraving I had dreamed in

front of during my childhood, an engraving of the Grand Inquisitor,

Tomas de Torquemada.

I have only one account of the speeches I gave at Lyon during the

trial, and I no longer remember which newspaper it was taken from:

<right>

Telegraphed from Lyon, 19 January 1883

</right>

Yesterday evening in the Elysée meeting hall, Louise Michel gave a
lecture for the benefit of the families of the detained anarchists.
The meeting proclaimed Kropotkin and Bernard as honorary chairmen.
When Louise Michel started her speech, she stated that only force can
transform society, since force is being used to destroy it.
At Lyon, she said, anarchists are in the dock. In England they are
members of the House of Commons,
Louise Michel said she had brought back a resolution signed by the
French refugees in London protesting against the trial at Lyon and
declaring their solidarity with the accused and their theories. But because
she knew she was under police surveillance, she had destroyed the piece so
as not to compromise anyone.
Louise Michel developed at length her ideas on the situation of women
in present society.
The chairman put the order of the day—the taking up of arms to
defend oneself against the bourgeoisie—to a vote. It was adopted.
At this point a person named Besson requested that the journalists
present be expelled. Louise Michel protested, saying that liberty must be
equal for everyone.
Another speaker requested the assembly to pass a motion in favor of
acquitting the anarchists. The chairman answered that that matter was the
business of the court and not of the assembly. Such a resolution could not
be passed without the consent of the persons accused.
The meeting adjourned in the midst of cheering by those present.

Of course, the court found Kropotkin and all the others guilty. The

idiocy of the charge was no defense, and Kropotkin and the main

defendants were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.

With all this in my mind I returned to Paris at the end of January

1883.

Chapter 21. The Trial of 1883

Several weeks after the trial at Lyon, it seemed to me that I would have

been an accessory to cowardice if I did not use the liberty I was

allowed—I don’t know why—to call up a new and immense International

which would stretch from one end of the earth to the other.

<em>On 9 March 1883 there was a mass demonstration at the Esplanade of les

Invalides, after which Louise Michel led a number of demonstrators across Paris.

For that, she was accused of rioting and looting. A massive police hunt for her in

Paris and throughout Europe ensued while she remained comfortably hidden at

the home of the editor of</em> L’Intransigeant, <em>M. Vaughan. On March 30 she

surrendered herself in a farce designed to make the police look as foolish as

possible.</em>

I stayed in hiding for three weeks. While certain reporters claimed

they were chatting with me in a house where I wasn’t present, others saw

me at a pleasure party in the Bois de Boulogne, where I wasn’t either. I

was living with the families of my friends Vaughan and Meusy, from

where I made my way to my mother’s, dressed as a man. In those clothes

I would have been able either to stay hidden in Paris or take my mother

abroad. I would even have been able to continue to publicize the

Revolution. Wearing men’s clothing, I had often gone to meetings from

which women were excluded. Dressed in a National Guard’s or soldier’s

uniform during the Commune, I went many times to places where

people hardly expected to have to deal with a woman.

You, my friends, who gave me hospitality after the demonstration at

les Invalides as if I were a family member, when you read this, remember

that I was sorry to cause you so much trouble. Your true spirit was

revealed when you sheltered me from the searchers, but I had to face

trial. We must be implacable, especially concerning ourselves. Lies are

too shameful.

Louise and Augustine, remember that you agreed, and you told me

that I was right. I haven’t forgotten, and I know you will feel that same

way always. If your brothers will need courage for the things they’ll see,

you will need a hundred times more. Women must have dry eyes today

where men might cry.

And you, you other little boys and girls, do you really believe I have

forgotten you? If Paul and Marius one day become what I believe they

will, they, too, will need courage. May the one who is a poet and the one

who is a musician go their way in sunlight.

And you, Marie and Marguerite, you, too, my little ones, you are

coming to that great moment when humanity is on the march, and you

must not weaken. It will be so much the worse for you, but the better for

humanity.

Let me get back to my trial. Several of our friends offered to defend

me, but each one of us must explain his own thought himself. Then, too,

it was impossible for me to choose between those who had already

defended our friends the way free men should be defended, and

Locamus, who had defended the deportees called before the colonial

courts at Nouméa.

So many times we saw Locamus pass by us, going away to prison in

handcuffs, with his clients having been acquitted at the cost of his being

sentenced for insulting the judiciary. He prized those theatrics and

made the courts do it to him so that the whole process would look

ridiculous. As he was being taken away, Locamus used to laugh in a way

that made you laugh, too. He swaggered, just like Lisbonne in his

convict’s uniform. The only difference was that Locamus, standing

straight, used to shake his great curly head, and Lisbonne, striking out

with his crutch, raised his head under his mane. Both of them looked

like lions.

As the trial progressed, I was conscious of how bothersome it was to

speak to a court when you are only one of several persons accused. You

have to be very careful, because the prosecutors wait in ambush over

your sentences to get them to serve, when possible, as ammunition for

prosecuting the others. I hope I avoided that trap.

There were a number of young people disguised as lawyers—perhaps

they were newly created lawyers—who gathered together like a classical

chorus to stare at me and laugh or do other things like that. I hope that

the three or four who stopped shouting insults themselves have not

allowed themselves to be reenlisted in the band that insults the dead. I

hope that they won’t look at things through the wrong end of their

opera-glasses again, and that the names of Vallès, Rigault, Vermorel, de

Millière, Delescluze, and so many others who have been students just like

them will sometimes come to their minds.

At my trial I used to think of Erasmus’s **Praise of Folly**. The scepters of

fools were missing, but the sound of the little bells that dangle from

them tinkled in your ears. The obtuse jurors were bewildered by the

indictment, in which they had been told that if they did not convict me

their shops would not be safe. I was accused of the burlesque charge that

I had laughed on their doorsteps. Youngsters came to insult me, but

some of them were pacified and left—perhaps captured by the Revolution,

which blows through the courts.

It is not me, messieurs, whom you condemned. You know very well

that I was not acting from motives of personal gain. It is my old mother

whom you condemned to death—and she is dead now.

Let me give myself justice here. The accusation that I laughed was

only a decoy. They did not want to accuse me of anything else because a

woman is killed more quickly by ridicule. Let’s get the facts straight.

What people prosecute me for is my ideas. That is why I quoted the

complete Manifesto of Lyon in the last chapter. I share **all** of the ideas

written there.

This is justice. Now that I have quoted that manifesto and confessed

that the ideas in it are the same as my beliefs, justice is done. I therefore

have no need to worry any more about commenting on the details of my

trial, although I will quote the transcript.

At my trial it was agreed that I laughed on a doorstep one day when

people were asking those inside for work. I did this, although my mother

had begged me to wait until she was dead before I took part in any more

demonstrations.

Here is the record of the trial taken from the **Gazette des tribunaux**.

<center>

**Superior Court of the Seine District

M. Rame, Presiding Judge

Session of 21 June 1883**

</center>

Louise Michel, Jean-Joseph-Emile Pouget, and Eugène Mareuil are
charged:
1. With having been the leaders and instigators of looting committed
by a band in Paris in March 1883, the said looting having been committed by force and the loot consisting of loaves of bread belonging to the
married couple Augereau, who are bakers;
2. With having been, at the said time and place, the leaders and
instigators of forceful looting committed by a band, the loot consisting of
loaves of bread belonging to the married couple Bouché, who are
bakers;
3. With the similar looting, the loot consisting of loaves of bread
belonging to the married couple Moricet, who are bakers.

<strong>The Questioning of Louise Michel</strong>

<em>Question:</em> Have you ever been prosecuted?

Louise Michel: Yes, in 1871.

<em>Question:</em> That can’t be mentioned any more. Those deeds were covered

by the amnesty. Have you been convicted since then?
Michel: I was sentenced to two weeks in prison for the Blanqui
demonstration.

<em>Question:</em> Do you take part in every demonstration that occurs?

Michel: Unfortunately, yes. I am always on the side of the wretched.

<em>Question:</em> Because of that habit you went to the demonstration at the

Esplanade of les Invalides. What result did you hope for?
Michel: A peaceful demonstration never produces results, but I
thought the government would follow its usual policy and sweep the
crowd with cannon fire, so it would have been cowardly of me not to go.

<em>Question:</em> You recruited your followers for that demonstration. Did you

know Pouget?
Michel: I had met Pouget at some meetings.

<em>Question:</em> Pouget was your secretary. He was supposed to distribute

brochures propagating your ideas in the provinces. He acquired a name
as one of your followers.
Michel: They are not, properly speaking, followers. Some people are
curious about our ideas.

<em>Question:</em> You were the leader of a small demonstration that followed the

general demonstration, but let’s take care of your participation in the
general demonstration first. You went to les Invalides and you met
Pouget there?
Michel: Yes, monsieur.

<em>Question:</em> Had you planned with Pouget and Mareuil to go to the

Esplanade?
Michel: No, monsieur. We met by chance.

<em>Question:</em> Wasn’t the demonstration only for unemployed workers?

Michel: Yes, monsieur.

<em>Question:</em> Did you think that this demonstration could provide work?

Michel: I’ve already told you, no. I went there out of duty.

<em>Question:</em> The demonstration was dispersed. Isn’t it true that at that

moment you decided to make your own little demonstration?
Michel: It wasn’t a demonstration. I wanted to make people hear the
cry of the workers.

<em>Question:</em> You asked for a black flag?

Michel: Yes, and someone brought me a black rag.

<em>Question:</em> Who gave it to you?

Michel: A person I didn’t know.

<em>Question:</em> You don’t find a flag so easily and accidentally on the Esplanade of les Invalides.

Michel: All you need to do is find a broomstick and a black rag.

<em>Question:</em> It was easy to find because the demonstration had been

prepared in advance. Who had prepared that flag?
Michel: No one. Even if somebody had, you know quite well that I
wouldn’t point him out.

<em>Question:</em> Didn’t you leave the Esplanade with the intention of making a

disturbance?
Michel: I simply put myself at the head of a group.

<em>Question:</em> Were Pouget and Mareuil part of it?

Michel: Yes, they were determined to protect me.

<em>Question:</em> What was your purpose in crossing Paris with a black flag? Did

you believe you could get bread for the workers that way?
Michel: No, but I wanted to make people see that the workers didn’t
have any and that they were hungry. The black flag is the flag of strikes
and the flag of famines.
The judge ordered the bailiff to go to the table of exhibits and pick up
a black flag, which Louise Michel identified as the one she carried on
March 9.

<em>Question:</em> You came to the boulevard Saint-Germain. Why did you stop in

front of Bouche’s bakery?
Michel: I kept on walking. The kids told me that someone was giving
them bread. I didn’t bother with the details.

<em>Question:</em> You claim that the bakers were voluntarily giving bread away?

Michel: Yes, monsieur. The kids told me they were being given bread
and some small change. I was very humbled by that.

<em>Question:</em> And the men who were armed with clubs. Was anyone giving

them bread voluntarily?
Michel: We didn’t have anyone with us armed with a club. They are not
among the accused.

<em>Question:</em> You can’t challenge the facts. The witness Bouché saw you

arriving at the head of a mob, and fifteen or twenty individuals moved
away from it to pillage his shop. They were chanting, “Bread and work
or lead.”
Michel: They weren’t with us. That was something the police staged.

<em>Question:</em> You said during one interrogation that you didn’t look on

taking bread as a crime.
Michel: Yes, I said that, but I have never taken any, and I never shall
take any, even if I were dying of hunger.

<em>Question:</em> When you were stopped on the place Maubert, did you say to

the police officer, “Don’t hurt me. We are only asking for bread”?
Michel: I didn’t say, “Don’t hurt me.” Perhaps I said, “We are only
asking for bread. You won’t be hurt.”

<em>Question:</em> In short, M. Bouchd’s bakery was completely looted.

Michel: I did not see the bakery, nor do I know M. Bouché.

<em>Question:</em> The shop sticks out into the street and stares you in the face.

Michel: I was thinking only about poverty; I wasn’t thinking about
bakers’ shops.

<em>Question:</em> You then arrived in front of M. Augereau’s shop?

Michel: I don’t know M. Augereau.

<em>Question:</em> Did you raise your flag in front of that shop?

Michel: I could have raised and lowered it many times.

<em>Question:</em> Did you say “Go”?

Michel: I could have said it. I must have said “Let’s go”: or “Let’s move”
many times. I don’t remember it.

<em>Question:</em> How many persons did you see around you?

Michel: I don’t know.

<em>Question:</em> To be brief, the shop of M. Augereau was completely wrecked.

Michel: I didn’t know that, and I am astonished that M. Augereau is
concerned with trifles like that. I have seen something else plundered
and killed.

<em>Question:</em> Then you are absolutely indifferent to the looting of his shop?

Michel: Yes, absolutely indifferent.

<em>Question:</em> Then you moved out into the boulevard Saint-Germain and

stopped in front of Moricet’s shop?
Michel: I don’t know, and I don’t understand why you’re asking me
such a question.

<em>Question:</em> Did you start to laugh in front of Moricet’s shop?

Michel: What could have made me laugh? Would it have been the
distress of the people around me? Would it have been the sad state of
things which takes us back before 1789?

<em>Question:</em> In short, you claim to be unacquainted with all those events I’ve

mentioned.
Michel: Yes, monsieur.

<em>Question:</em> But those three merchants who were robbed assert that the

crowd was obeying a signal.
Michel: That’s absurd. To obey a signal, it would have to be agreed
upon in advance. Therefore, it would have been necessary to make it
known throughout Paris that I would raise or lower a flag in front of the
bakeries.

<em>Question:</em> Then the looting was an instinctive movement of the populace?

Michel: It was the work of a few children. The reasonable people
around me did not bother with it.

<em>Question:</em> You left the demonstration at the Place Maubert, leaving

Pouget and Mareuil, who had gotten themselves arrested to save you, in
the hands of the police. Then you disappeared.
Michel: My friends demanded that I not let myself be arrested at that
time.

<em>Question:</em> Did you know about Pouget’s having distributed a brochure

entitled **To the People’s Army** in the provinces?
Michel: At the time when the Orleanists were openly inciting people
against the Republic, I wanted to incite people to support the Republic,
and that brochure was distributed at my suggestion. It was a cry of
anguish.

<em>Question:</em> Did you know about the special studies of incendiary materials

to which Pouget devoted himself?
Michel: Today, everybody is interested in science. Everybody reads the
Revue scientifique and tries to better the lot of the workers through the
information there.

<em>Question:</em> We aren’t here to make theories. Were you informed about the

studies Pouget was making?
Michel: I do not pay any attention to whether someone reads or does
not read scientific journals.

The court then proceeded to question M. Pouget. [The account of his

questioning is not included in the **Gazette des tribunaux**. The other

witnesses were examined next.]

**The Witnesses**
Jules Bouché, baker, rue de Canettes: On March 9, around one o’clock
in the afternoon, a score of people invaded my bakery. They were
armed with leaded canes and demanded “bread or work.” I told them,
“If you want bread, take some, but don’t break anything.”

<em>Question:</em> Do you recognize the accused?

Bouché: No, monsieur.

<em>Question:</em> Did you let them take your bread because you couldn’t do

otherwise?
Bouché: There was no way to do anything; any resistance was impossible.

<em>Question:</em> Was it children who came into your shop?

Bouché: No, sir. They were of the age of reason. (Laughter)
Louise Michel: The persons armed with leaded canes weren’t ours. I
know where they came from.

<em>Question:</em> Where?

Michel: The police. (Laughter)
Mme Augereau, wife, baker, rue du Four-Saint-Germain: During the
afternoon of March 9 Mme Louise Michel stopped in front of my door.
Someone yelled, “Bread, bread!” These men entered my store and stole
some bread and baked goods. They broke a platter and two window
panes.

<em>Question:</em> Was it youngsters who plundered your shop?

Mme Augereau: Oh, there were more grown-ups than youngsters.

<em>Question:</em> Where was Louise Michel while they were plundering your

shop?
Mme Augereau: She was stationed exactly in the middle of the street.

<em>Question:</em> Did you give your bread away voluntarily?

Mme Augereau: Oh, no, monsieur.
The Wife of Moricet, baker, 125, boulevard Saint Germain: Last
March 9, a crowd gathered in front of my shop. At its head was Louise
Michel. She stopped in front of my shop, struck the ground with her
flag, and started to laugh. The crowd was asking for bread or work. I
began to give them bread, but they didn’t wait for it. They took it
themselves and broke up everything.

<em>Question</em> (to Louise Michel): What do you think of that testimony? Is it

clear enough?
Louise Michel: So clear I have never seen anything like it. (Laughter)
How was I able to laugh in front of her store? She dreamed all of it.
Mme Moricet: I’m here to say what I saw.
Louise Michel: You are free to say what you want, but I’m free to say
that you dreamed it.

<em>Question</em> (to the witness): You didn’t give your bread to those people

freely?
Mme Moricet: No, monsieur, I did it because they were making such
frightful gestures when they came in; they were yelling, “Work and
bread!”
Louise Michel: Oh, they were very frightful. I, too, was frightful. These
women were hallucinating from fear. They saw Louise Michel as a
monster.
Cornat, a municipal police officer of the VI e Arrondissement: On last
March 9 when I learned that a gang was crossing the arrondissement
yelling out seditious slogans, I went in pursuit and caught up with it at
the Place Maubert. The gang was led by Louise Michel, with Pouget and
Mareuil at her side. I arrested the latter two, and Pouget called me a
coward and a scoundrel. As for Louise Michel, she was able to slip away.
All those people were yelling, “Long live the Revolution! Down with the
police!”

<em>Question:</em> Did not Louise Michel say something to you?

Policeman Cornat: She said to me: “Don’t hurt me.”
Blanc, a policeman in the VI e Arrondissement: Last March 9 a policeman came to inform the municipal police officer that a bakery on the rue
de Canettes was being plundered. We set off in pursuit of the gang, and
we caught up with it at the Place Maubert. The municipal police officer
stopped Louise Michel, who said to him, “Don’t hurt us; we’re only
asking for bread.” Pouget called the municipal police officer a coward
and a scoundrel. Mareuil yelled out, “Down with the police! Down with
Vidocq! Long live the Social Revolution!” The assailants had leaded
canes, revolvers, and knives.
Louise Michel: I never said, “Don’t hurt us,” but only, “You won’t be
hurt.” Both those men were very disturbed.

<em>Question</em> (to Louise Michel): No one but you was showing any self-control?

Louise Michel: We have seen so much of it! For the sake of the honor
of the Revolution, I protest. I surely have the right to point out
discrepancies in the witnesses’ testimony. I have never prostrated myself
in front of anyone, and I have never asked for mercy. You can say
anything you want to about us, you can sentence us to prison, but I do
not want you to dishonor us.

<center>

**Session of June 22

Witnesses for the Prosecution (Continued)**

</center>

Young Mlle Moricet: Last March 9, I was in the shop with my sister
and mother when I saw a gang stop in front. They were led by a woman
armed with a black flag. That woman stopped in front of the shop,
struck the ground with her flag, and **began to laugh.**
Immediately the gang rushed into the shop, and took all the bread
and cakes there; then they broke the platters and windows. I went
quickly to get my father.

<em>Question:</em> You are very sure you saw Louise Michel stop in front of the

shop and laugh while she struck the ground with her flag?
Young Mlle Moricet: Yes, monsieur.
Louise Michel: I would be ashamed to respond to testimony like that. If
little Mlle Moricet brings in her sister, her cousin, her little brother—
whomever she wants—I will not hold matters up to answer charges as
frivolous as those. I shall wait for the prosecution’s summation before I
answer them.
Young Mlle Moricet, the sister of the preceding one: I was in the shop
with my mother. Suddenly I saw a whole gang headed by a woman. It
was madame. She **began to laugh** as she looked at the shop, and I even
said to my mother, “Hey, she knows you?” At that moment all those
people rushed into the shop and started to take everything.
Louise Michel: I will repeat what I said a moment ago: It is shameful to
see children reciting in this court the lessons that their parents have
taught them.
**[Witnesses for the Defense]**
Chaussadat, a painter, quai de Louvre, was heard at the request of the
defense: On March 9, I was at the corner of the rue de Seine opposite
the Moricet bakery. From a distance I saw the crowd arrive. Mlle Louise
Michel went by without stopping. Later I heard talk about the looting of
the bakery, or rather I saw bread thrown about.

<em>Question:</em> You don’t call that plundering?

Chaussadat: I saw that bread was being thrown about, and some poor
people were gathering it up.
Louise Michel: I must thank the witness for rendering homage to the
truth.
[Three witnesses, Rochefort, Vaughan, and Meusy, testified concerning a sum of money in Pouget’s possession, declaring that it came from a
collection taken up at the demonstration. That testimony is irrelevant to
Louise Michel’s trial, and it has been omitted.]
Rouillon, a neighbor of Louise Michel’s mother: Citizen Louise Michel
had absolutely no faith in the result of the demonstration. She told me
that before she went to it. The citizen went only out of duty.
The witness Rouillon then went into lengthy details about the violence
and threats to which Louise Michel and her family have been subjected.
Louise Michel: You can see very clearly that our families are being
murdered in our homes, and the authorities are allowing it to happen.
That was the last witness for the defense. Then Avocat-g£neral
Quesnay de Beaurepaire was called on. Then Maitre Balandreau, the
counsel appointed for Louise Michel, declared that she intended to
defend herself.
**Louise Michel’s Statement**
What is being done to us here is a political proceeding. It isn’t we who
are being prosecuted, but the anarchist party through us. For that
reason I had to refuse Maitre Balandreau’s offer to defend me and also
the offer made by our friend Laguerre, who, not long ago, undertook to
defend our comrades at Lyon so warmly.
M. l’Avocat-général has invoked the Law of 1871 against us. I won’t
bother to find out whether this Law of 1871 wasn’t made by the victors
against the vanquished, made against those whom they were crushing as
a millstone crushed grain. Eighteen seventy-one was the time when the
National Guard was being hunted on the plains, when Gallifet was
pursuing us in the catacombs, when the streets of Paris had heaps of
corpses piled on either side.
What is surprising you, what is appalling you, is that a woman is
daring to defend herself. People aren’t accustomed to seeing a woman
who dares to think. People would rather, as Proudhon put it, see a
woman as either a housewife or a courtesan.
We carried the black flag because the demonstration was to be absolutely peaceful, and the black flag is the flag of strikes and the flag of
those who are hungry. Could we have carried any other flag? The red
flag is nailed up in the cemeteries, and we should take it up only when we
can protect it. Well, we couldn’t do that. I have told you before and now
I repeat: It was an essentially peaceful demonstration.
I went to the demonstration. I had to go. Why was I arrested?
I’ve gone throughout Europe saying that I recognize no frontiers,
saying that all humanity has the right to the heritage of humanity. That
inheritance will not belong to us, because we are accustomed to living in
slavery; it will belong to those persons in the future who will have liberty
and who will know how to enjoy it.
When we are told that we are the enemies of the Republic, we have
only one answer: We founded it upon thirty-five thousand of our
corpses. That is how we defended the Republic.
You speak of discipline, of soldiers who fired on their officers. Do you
believe, M. l’Avocat-général, that if at Sedan the soldiers had fired at
their leaders, who were betraying them, they would not have been doing
the right thing? If they had done that, we wouldn’t have had the filth of
Sedan.
M. l’Avocat-général has talked a lot about soldiers. He has boasted
about those who carried the anarchist manifestos to their superiors. How
many officers, how many generals reported back the bribes of Chantilly
and the manifestos of M. Bonaparte? I’m not putting [the Due d’]
Orléans or M. Bonaparte on trial; we’re putting their ideas on trial. M.
Bonaparte has been acquitted, and we are being prosecuted. I pardon
those who commit the crime, although I do not pardon the crime. Isn’t it
simply a law of might makes right which is dominating us? We want to
replace it with the idea that right makes right. That is the extent of our
crime.
Above the courts, beyond the twenty years in prison you can sentence
us to—beyond even a life sentence—I see the dawn of liberty and
equality breaking.
Knowing what is going on around you, you too are tired of it,
disgusted by it. How can you remain calm when you see the proletariat
constantly suffering from hunger while others are gorging themselves?
We knew that the demonstration at les Invalides would come to
nothing, and yet it was necessary to go there. At this time in history we
are very badly off. We do not call the regime that rules us a republic. A
republic is a form of government which makes progress, where there is
justice, where there is bread for all. How does the republic you have
made differ from the Empire? What is this talk about liberty in the
courts when five years of prison waits at the end?
I do not want the cry of the workers to be lost. You will do with me
what you wish, but it’s a question of more than me alone. It’s a matter
that concerns a large part of France, a large part of the world, for people
are becoming more and more anarchistic. People are sickened when
they see power used the way it was under M. Bonaparte. The people
have already led many revolutions. Sedan relieved us of M. Bonaparte
and the people revolted again on the eighteenth of March.
There is no doubt that you will see still more revolutions, and for that
we will march confidently toward the future.
When one person alone no longer has authority, there will be light,
truth, and justice. Authority vested in one person is a crime. What we
want is authority vested in everyone. M. l’Advocat-général has accused
me of wanting to be a leader; I have too much pride for that, for to be a
leader is to lower oneself, and I do not know how to lower myself that
way.
Here we are very far from M. Moricet’s bakery, and it is difficult for
me to return to those details. Do we have to talk about the breadcrumbs
distributed to children? It wasn’t bread that we needed; it was work that
we were asking for. How can you think that reasonable men trifled by
taking a few loaves of bread? Some youngsters were gathering up
crumbs, yes, but it is difficult for me to discuss things that are so trivial. I
would prefer to return to serious ideas. Young persons should work
instead of going to cafes, and they will learn to fight to ease the plight of
the unfortunate and to prepare for the future.
People recognize homelands only to make them a foyer for war.
People recognize frontiers only to make them an object of intrigue. We
conceive homelands and family in a much broader sense. There are our
crimes.
We live in an age of anxiety. Everybody is trying to find his own way,
but we say anyhow that whatever happens, if liberty is realized and
equality achieved, we shall be happy.

The session adjourned at five o’clock and the proceedings were

continued the next day.

<center>

**Session of June 23**

</center>

The presiding judge asked the accused if they had anything to add in
their defense.
Louise Michel spoke as follows:
I wish to say only a word. This trial is a political trial. It is a political
trial you are going to have to judge.
As for me, you have given me the role of the primary person accused.
I accept it. Yes, I am the only person responsible. I sacrificed myself a
long time ago, and what is pleasant or unpleasant to me is no longer a
standard to judge by. I see nothing more than the Revolution, and it is
the ideal I shall always serve. It is the Revolution I salute. May it rise up
over men instead of rising up over ruins.
At two forty-five, the jury withdrew into a room for its deliberations. It
came back at four-fifteen.
The foreman of the jury read the verdict. It was ‘guilty,’ but mitigated
by extenuating circumstances as far as Louise Michel, Pouget, and
Moreau (alias Gareau) were concerned. The other accused were found
‘not guilty.’
After deliberating half an hour, the court passed a sentence by which
the two accused who had been tried in absentia, Gourget and Thierry,
were condemned to two years in prison. Louise Michel was sentenced to
six years of solitary confinement, Pouget to eight years of solitary
confinement, and Moreau (alias Gareau) to one year in prison.
Louise Michel and Pouget were also to be placed under police supervision for ten years.
The Judge: Those of you found guilty have three days to petition for
reversal of the sentences just passed.
Louise Michel: Never! You are too good an imitator of the Empire’s
magistrates.
From the back of the room violent protests greeted the sentencing of
the accused. A few cries of “Long live Louise Michel!” were heard, and
the session was adjourned in the midst of noise and the most varied
outcries.
The tumult continued outside the courtroom and citizen Lisbonne,
who called attention to himself by the vehemence of his protests, was
expelled from the Palais de Justice. The crowd continued to stand for
some time on the Place Dauphine. [Here ends the account taken from
the **Gazette des tribunaux**.]
**Note**
Since I am speaking to the crowd today, I shall say what I did not think
was necessary to say in front of the prosecutor because we were not
trying to move our judges. It would have been a useless effort because
we were judged in advance.
I did not start laughing stupidly in front of some door—and having
just left my mother who was begging me to wait until she was no longer
alive before going to demonstrations, I did not feel much like laughing.
As for choosing Moricet’s bakery to be the target of a revolutionary
movement, I do not need to defend myself against such an absurdity.
It is not a question of breadcrumbs. What is at stake is the harvest of
an entire world, a harvest necessary to the whole future human race, one
without exploiters and without exploited.

Chapter 22. Prison

There’s no party without a morning after. Two years ago on July 14, I

was taken to the Centrale Prison at Clermont. Women’s prisons are less

harsh than men’s. I did not suffer from cold or hunger or any of the

vexations our male friends underwent.

As far as I am concerned, my stay in prison was as easy as it would be

for any other schoolmistress. Solitude is restful, especially for a person

who has spent a great part of her life always needing an hour of silence

and never finding it, except at night. That is the case with a great

number of schoolmistresses.

In those silent hours of the night, she hurries to think, to feel alive, to

read, to write, to be just a little free. At the end of the day, at the last

lesson, she feels herself becoming an overworked beast of the fields, but

a beast that is still proud, still lifting its head to go to the end of the hour

without breaking down. When the hour is ended, silence surrounds her,

fatigue has disappeared, and she lives and thinks and is free. In prison, I

found those few hours of rest laboriously paid for over long years.

I’m going to write a book on prisons. I have a lot of pages for it

already, and all I have to do is gather them up. The first pages will be

dedicated to the poor gallant ambulance attendants of the Commune,

the women condemned to death who instead were sent to Cayenne,

where the climate is the murderer. They were convicted because they

had cared for the wounded of the Commune and, in passing, for

wounded men of the Versailles forces. Wounded men belonged to

neither side, and those brave women dressed the wounds of anyone they

found, whereas the leaders of the Versailles forces often opportunistically abandoned their wounded soldiers so they could snipe at us better.

Victor Hugo got pardons for those unpretentious and gallant women,

Retif and Marchais. Following them were Su£tens, Papavoine, and

Lachaise, who had been condemned to forced labor for the same deeds.

After my first pages on the ambulance attendants, the chapters that

followed would belong to the friends met in prison. I would begin with

my own. At Satory the wives of my prisoner friends were not afraid to

embrace me, although I warned them that the authorities were going to

“treat me as I deserved.” By embracing me they risked their lives. At

Chantiers in the great morgue of the living, it was the same, under the

rags hung at night along the walls. I must thank those brave souls for

their friendship.

Many, alas, are now dead. The first to die was Mme Dereure; already

ill, she could not survive the harsh ordeals to which she had to submit. In

the full view of conquered Paris, the colors of the Commune followed

her coffin. Without doubt, others are dead; we have not seen them

again.

How many prisons! Have I said that already? Yes, how many prisons.

From Bastion 37 to New Caledonia, stopping at Satory, Chantiers, la

Rochelle, Clermont, Saint-Lazare...

When my book on prisons appears, grass will have grown up over still

more unknown corpses, but the idea will remain the same. It will still be

on the same subject: that human beings suffering through destitution,

poverty, and ignorance are not responsible for acts against each other.

The old nations are the murderers, the old nations, where the struggle

for existence is so terrible that people turn on each other incessantly,

clamoring for their prey. The only noise that can be heard is the cries of

crows and the flapping of their wings above people who have been

beaten to the earth.

A trap is set all around us, and poor, wretched women get caught in it.

Is it the fault of those poor women that there is a place for some of them

only in the streets or on display? Is it their fault if they have stolen a few

sous to live on or to keep their children alive? Rich people can spend

millions of francs and thousands of living beings on their whims. I can’t

stop myself from speaking about those things with such bitterness.

Everything weighs so heavily on women. I’m well placed to judge that

here at Saint-Lazare prison, this general warehouse from which women

leave in all directions—even to liberty. Someone who stays here only a

few days cannot see things clearly, but after being here for a long time, a

person can sense how many generous hearts beat under the shame that

stifles them.

You know the lines from Hugo:

Lazarus, Lazarus, Lazarus

Rise up.

Yes, like Lazarus, rise up, you poor women. You have fought so long

and you are crying over your shame, and it isn’t you who are guilty. Was

it you who gave the fat, scrofulous, swollen bourgeois their hunger for

fresh flesh? Was it you who gave pretty girls, who owned nothing, the

idea of making themselves into merchandise?

And the others, the female thieves, how guilty are they? When women

are thrown into the street, it is certain that they will go wherever the man

they call their pimp sends them, because he beats them and exploits

them. They will also go into the streets alone. People keep walking when

they are lost. There are also seamstresses who steal. They have kept little

remnants of the cloth they were stitching. Do the great dress designers

carry those remnants home? Other women deceive their husbands.

Haven’t their husbands ever deceived them? If only we let people choose

each other instead of making marriages by matching up fortunes, that

would happen less often.

Still other people, old women most often, when they are dying of

hunger and want to live a little longer, insult a policeman to get some

bread in prison. I saw one old woman who had eaten nothing for such a

long time that after she had a little soup she sank down as if she were

drunk. A few days later she died. Her stomach could no longer accustom

itself to receiving nourishment.

When I was in my cell at Clermont, I was unable to see anybody, but I

heard some scraps of conversations. From a cell you can understand

everything best. Every cell looks out on some kind of courtyard and

voices rise up to it. All you have to do is follow a few of the parts of this

horrible choir of misery. Here are some fragments. I am choosing ones

that tell the sadness at the bottom of misery. Listen to them.

“You’re getting out tomorrow. You’re lucky.”
“Hell, no. It’s too cold and hungry outside.”
“But your mother has a nice place.”
“She was thrown out because I was in prison.”
“Where is she?”
“In the street.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“Big Chiffe made me ask to go back to tricking on the streets. I’ll give
my mother however much the prison sends me out with, and I’ll go back
to Big Chiffe.”
“You’ll be back here again, I bet.”
“What could I do so I wouldn’t be? There’s no work for girls who have
worn-out work permits. People with prison numbers can’t get one.”

Here are some others.

“Where are you from?”
“From Saint-Lazare, naturally, because I’m from Paris.”
“What did you do?”
“How should I know? My pimp stole somebody’s stash, and it looked
like I was his partner.”
“You didn’t know anything about it?”
“Do you think he tells **me** where he’s going to work his fingers to the
bone?”
“Maybe he gives you something.”
“Him? Give to me? He takes my stuff. He has to get fifteen francs a
day off me.”
“What does he do with it?”
“Lady, he isn’t rich. He’s got to pay off a buddy who knows what he
does. If he doesn’t pay him off, his buddy will split on him to the cops.”
“What do you do to make him his fifteen francs?”
“I did the window bit. That’s better than tricking on the streets. You’ve
got to live. When I went looking for real work, I got sent away from the
stores because I wasn’t dressed well enough. One time somebody lent me
a dress, and then it was the other side: I was too well dressed. Then this
john picked me up, and that was that. I had to get a card, and on top of
that, a pimp.”
“Where’d you do the window?”
“At Relingue’s place—you know her, the one that gets herself arrested
so she can recruit for her crib in the prison.”
“That Relingue woman! If you ask me, I’ll take this crib over hers. She
makes too many francs out of our poor carcasses.”
“So where else would I go? Prison grain takes root only on sidewalks.”

And here are some others.

“Hey, you look sad, snub-nose.”
“That’s because I’m just going out to meet up with my bad luck.”
“What’s your bad luck?”
“He’s the father of my children.”
“Are you married?”
“No.”
“Why don’t you leave him?”
“Because he’s the father of my children. The poor dog got upset about
the first ones, but men stand pain less easily than women. When ill winds
blow, they have to lie down.”

And after women prisoners are released, there isn’t any place for

them to seek refuge. There are some asylums for women who get out of

prison, but they don’t have room for everybody. It’s only holding out a

cup to catch a waterfall.

If the women in prisons horrify you, it is society that disgusts me. Let’s

take away the sewer first. When the place is clean with the sunlight

shining on it, then nobody will have to roll around in the sewer any

more. You young girls with sweet, pure voices, here are some girls your

own age with rough, broken voices. Your voices are clear because you do

not live the way they do, drinking to divert your mind, drinking to forget

that you’re alive.

Saint-Lazare. Listen, you young girls who have never left your mothers,

there are some children here like you, children sixteen years old.

But the ones here either don’t have mothers, or their mothers didn’t

have the spare time to watch over them. The poor cannot watch over

their little ones; they cannot even take the time to watch over their dead.

The young girls in Saint-Lazare are pale and blighted. Idiots claim it

has to be that way to protect you nice girls from men hungering for fresh

flesh. If they weren’t able to glut themselves on the daughters of the

people, they would attack you. We no longer eat each other’s flesh the

way our cave-dwelling ancestors did—we aren’t strong enough—but we

eat each other’s lives.

That is equality and justice.

Let’s glance at one of the most terrible human misfortunes. I want the

reader to revolt against the crimes of society instead of only having him

lament the woes of one person.

Bordello-keepers trade women with each other, just as farmers trade

horses or cattle. Women are just herds of livestock, and this human

livestock makes more profit.

When the johns of some city in the provinces decide that some weak

woman is too worn out or they get tired of her, the bordello-keeper

arranges it so the girl owes the house a sum she can never pay off. That

makes her a slave. Then she can be swapped in any horse-trade possible.

The animal has to go into whatever stable will make the most profit for

the swappers.

For other girls it is an enlistment. They come from their provinces too

naive to know any better, or if they are Parisians and aware that there

are ogres for fresh flesh and appetites to feed, poverty makes them

tractable. Then, too, there is false finery to lure them; when they are

once in the lion’s den, they will be charged six times its worth to get them

in debt.

There is also recruiting. Despicable old women find ways to get

themselves imprisoned for a few months, and then they recruit and

entice all the pretty girls who are stranded in prison. They tell the girls

they don’t have to fear being hungry. When they leave there will be a

drinking spree—enough of a spree for the girls to die from it. Their

voices will get hoarse, and their bodies will fall to pieces. It’ll be a

spree—a spree for the hungry bourgeois.

The women on the street are still the least unhappy; those in closed

houses have a life so horrible that it would surprise people who no

longer feel surprise. What I know about it I will write sometime, because

it is so terrible, so shameful, that people must learn about it.

But for the moment I’ll stay with the pathetic stories of the streetwalkers. Won’t anyone ever understand that to allow prostitution is to

support every crime? Once a woman becomes a prostitute, she becomes

numb while she obtains money from idiots; and men thereby become

murderers. Everybody should know that, so why does prostitution

continue to exist?

If the great merchants of the trade in women who crisscross Europe

canvassing orders for their business were each hanging on the end of a

hangman’s rope, I wouldn’t go cut it.

And when a poor girl who believes she has entered an honest house

(there are some) realizes where she is and finds it impossible to leave,

and then with her own hands she strangles one of the despicable persons

who keeps her there, or she sets the cursed place on fire, I believe it is

better to do those things than to wait for court action. So long as

circumstances are as they are, there will be no change.

Will the owls who bite the paws off mice to keep them in their nests

ever stop acting so cruelly? If the captive mouse, instead of uttering his

little plaintive cry from the owl’s nest between earth and heaven, which

are equally deaf, tried to gnaw the throat of the owl that was eating him,

the first mouse to do so would certainly die. But eventually the owl

would become fearful, and as every being wishes to continue living, the

owl would end up keeping itself alive on grain rather than risking death.

That’s the way the poor human livestock must proceed. A woman

should not waste her time demanding illusory rights. The people who

promise them to her have no such rights themselves. She ought to take

her place at the head of the group which is struggling and at the same

time free herself from prostitution. No other person can free her from

it. When she no longer wants to be the prey of appetites and lusts, she

will know that death is preferable to that life, and she will not be so

stupid as to die uselessly.

Here is what I am hearing while I am writing this. It is the story of a

sale.

“There was a fellow who made me sell it on the boul’ de Batignolles.
He wanted to give me only twenty sous, but I was hungry, and then I had
a pimp who had a deal with the cops. I had to pay him or he would have
beaten me up, and I sure didn’t want that.”
“What did you do with the forty sous from the old goat who was so
drunk?”
“I gave twenty to my pimp and twenty to a poor little kid.”
“Why didn’t you try to get away when the cops grabbed you?”
“Because, I told you, I had nothing to drink. Might as well be in
prison. Shit, might as well be dead.”

Yes, those poor girls speaking from the bottom of the pit are right. It

would be better to die than to continue a life where you have to drink so

as not to feel being alive.

I don’t want to believe that a man has to feed himself by gorging

himself with all sorts of orgies. Even if he does, however, a woman,

whoever she is, must not be dirtied by these indecent brutalities.

But let’s look forward, because in the midst of these tortures, the new

humanity will be born. Ferré at the execution post at Satory, the nihilists

from the czar’s gallows, the German socialists with their heads under the

axe salute that newborn humanity as I salute it while I look at life, which

now is more horrible than death.

Chapter 23. My Mother’s Death

For a while during my deportation my mother lived with a relative she

had always been very fond of, at a little woolens shop opposite the

Louvre stores in Paris. After a time she went to live with other relatives

in Lagny, and she was living there when I returned from New Caledonia.

Four months after my return she moved back to Paris where we

lived at 24 [**sic:** 36], rue Polonceau, and at that place we had fleeting

moments of joy. With my mother and Marie near me, I was almost

afraid, because happiness is such a fragile branch, and we break it when

we rest on it. Two old women, friends of my mother, came to see her

every day, and they gave her those little attentions old people love so

much; my dear Marie stayed with her while I was away at meetings.

My mother’s last home was at 45, boulevard Ornano on the fifth floor.

There she underwent the long torture of two years without me before

her death. In the middle room her bed was placed parallel to the hall,

and above the chest of drawers hung a large portrait of me that Mme

Jacqueline had painted. How many times my poor mother must have

had her eyes on it during those two years! In her last moments when it

was difficult for her to speak, it seemed to me that she wanted me to give

that painting to Rochefort, and he has kept it for me ever since.

On sunny days, so long as we could make her believe that I would be in

prison for only one year, she stayed at her window for hours at a time. It

was there where she had waited for me so often, Mme Bias waiting with

her, when I was expected home from my last lecture tours. Each time a

group of prisoners was released my mother would rally because of the

hope I would be among them. Finally it was necessary to admit that

instead of my being sentenced to only one year, I had been sentenced to

six years, and instead of being near her at Saint-Lazare, I was at

Clermont. Personal hatreds unleashed by unscrupulous persons had

contributed to my being sentenced to six years in prison, and from

Bastille Day of 1884 on, when my mother had to be told the truth, she no

longer went to the window. From the moment she learned that news, she

got up from her easy chair only to lie down on her bed, and from her

bed she went only to her coffin.

I could have fled abroad and taken her with me instead of submitting

to trial, but I allowed myself to be put on trial because that is our custom.

I could also have baffled the people who questioned me. They were

trying to find out if I was responsible, and I could have made fun of their

heavy-handed tricks, but we revolutionaries do not avoid responsibility.

I answered the worthy investigators as if I suspected nothing, though I

knew very well where their vengeance came from.

In prison I was well treated. Anybody who believes that simply being

well nourished is enough to make a person happy would have believed

me far happier than I was. Even if I had been poorly treated, I would

have felt nothing but my mother’s affliction.

From prison I wrote several letters to the authorities, some at the

moment when cholera was rife in Paris, and then I had a twofold right:

to be near my mother and to be in the city that I had never deserted in its

days of trial. I wrote other letters when my mother was in her last days,

and I asked to be taken to her. These letters should be in a Book of

Memorial, for they contain two death agonies—my mother’s and my

own.

Here is one letter:

<right>

Prison of Clermont (Oise)

Number 1327

Sunday, 15 November 1884

(Personal)

</right>

Monsieur le président de la République
Here is the truth. If no man’s heart understands it, may it stand alone as
my witness.
For eighteen months I haven’t read one line from a newspaper. But
across the prison wall which separates us from the world a scrap of a
sentence has reached me. Cholera is in Paris. It has been going on for a
long time, and all the denials in the world won’t convince me otherwise.
Not one person has called to mind that in those circumstances my place
is in Paris, even if it be in an underground cell. It is to you, therefore, that I
say: If I am treated like a criminal of the State, remember that I came
forward openly to place myself in the hands of my judges. May they act
similarly towards me.

<right>

Louise Michel

</right>

A week later I wrote:

<right>

Prison of Clermont (Oise)

Number 1327

21 November 1884

</right>

Monsieur le ministre de l’Intérieur
I have only my mother left in this world. My crudest enemies would ask
for my immediate transfer to a prison in Paris if I could speak out, because
under the present circumstances either her illness or cholera could take
my mother from me.
I am not asking for visits or letters in the prison you might put me in. If
you want, I won’t be eligible for release. But I shall be in Paris breathing
the same air that my mother breathes, and my mother will know that I am
there. She can experience that happiness while she is alive and not after
she is dead.
Sincerely,

<right>

Louise Michel

</right>

Here are some fragments of letters I wrote asking to be brought near

my mother:

I shall be absolutely straightforward. In exchange for a release or transfer
to another prison, just so it be in Paris near my mother, I will go to New
Caledonia when she is no longer with us. I have already been useful there,
and I can be so again by founding schools in the midst of the tribes.

The beginning of that letter is missing, but undoubtedly it also was

sent to the Minister of the Interior. Still another fragment contains these

words:

I have not had an answer to my letters and shall probably never have
one. But considering the times we live in, who knows whether one of your
grandsons caught in the same situation won’t be sorry you didn’t answer
me.
It is not a political question. It is a question concerning mothers, and
unfortunately, I shall not be the last prisoner.
Louise Michel

I do not believe that this sorrow inflicted on my poor old mother

increased anyone’s happiness very much, but no one can do anything

about it any longer. You cannot awaken the dead.

For a long time I had no response to the letters I had written to all

those officials. Finally, I was transferred to Saint-Lazare. If the authorities

had only brought me near my mother sooner! Her powerful

constitution immediately rallied at each of my visits, and she would not

be dead.

Even at this point my anonymous enemies threatened to trouble her

last days by claiming that her paralysis was some contagious disease.

Although the public is always credulous in times of cholera, my enemies

failed. Those vipers are consoling themselves now by writing false letters

over my name. I envy the happiness of people who bother with this sort

of thing. I no longer feel them. All the venom in the world could fall on

my head without my noticing it, and those letters are only a few drops of

water where a whole ocean has passed.

The authorities acted very well at the last, and allowed me to go to my

dying mother’s bedside. As always, the rulers were less evil than their

laws, and they allowed me several days near her. Policemen, instead of

tormenting me, helped me move my mother smoothly from one bed to

another each time she wanted. Those policemen were not like the ones

who take care of politicians, and they weren’t among the ones who

savagely beat down the people on May 24 this year at the Pére Lachaise

cemetery. My mother thanked the policemen who helped me to move

her, and I remember it, too.

At 4:57 in the morning of 3 January 1885 my mother died. When I

came down the stairs at 45, boulevard Ornano on the morning of her

burial, I left her lying in her coffin, which had not yet been nailed shut,

and I thought of all her sorrow during the past two years. In my heart I

felt everything she had suffered. Poor mother! How happy she would

have been to spend a few days with me.

I must say that the authorities acted well here, for I had been able to

stay with her until the end. Then, before I left her house forever, I was

able to lay her out on her bed as she used to like to lie down. She no

longer suffered. Let justice be done to everyone in the world, even the

least important person.

Because my mother was no longer suffering, I didn’t ask the authorities

for permission to attend the funeral; with her death I had nothing

more to ask for. Her funeral on 5 January 1885 became the occasion for

a massive outpouring of public sentiment. Here is how it was reported:

**At the Home of the Deceased**
The working-class districts of the city emptied their dark alleys as they
had done during the great days of the popular awakening. From every
direction came the great mass of the people, the true people, from their
dank dens and from their workshops.
In front of 45, boulevard Ornano in the XVIIIe Arrondissement the
crowd was such that no traffic could move.
The coffin was placed on the hearse at 11:00 a.m. precisely—too precisely, because thousands of people arrived in the half hour that followed
the departure of the hearse.
Louise Michel, before her return to Saint-Lazare prison, had placed a
few mementos near the body of her mother: a red-framed photograph of
herself leaning on a rock; a lock of her hair tied with a black ribbon; a
bouquet of red immortelles which she had brought back from the burial of
her friend, Marie Ferré; a portrait of Marie; and finally, some of the
flowers which had been brought to her sick mother during her last days.
Citizen Clemenceau had come to offer his condolences to the family and
to apologize for not being able to be in the funeral procession.
Numerous wreaths had been placed on the coffin and at the rear of the
hearse. Many bouquets of real flowers were mingled with the wreaths.
There was one wreath inscribed: “To the mother of Louise Michel from

<em>L’Intransigeant</em> staff’; one from the <em>Libre-Pensée</em>; one from the Bataille; and

many others. Louise Michel placed a wreath made of black beads; it bore
only the words, “To my mother.”
The funeral procession began. Immediately after the hearse came an
old man with white hair. He was M. Michel, the nearest relative of the
deceased, and he was accompanied by his two daughters, the cousins of the
imprisoned Louise.
Behind them Citizen Henri Rochefort walked with his eldest son,
Vaughn, and the entire staff of **L’Intransigeant**.
Then came Citizen Louise Michel’s comrades in the struggle, those who
followed her in becoming enemies of the state and who were continuing
the revolutionary fight in the press or in the courts. Notable among them
were: Alphonse Humbert; Joffrin; Eudes; Vaillant; Granger; Lissagaray;
Champy; Henri Maret; Lucipia; Odysse Barot; S. Pichon, who is a municipal counsellor of Paris; Antonio de la Calle, a former member of the
revolutionary government of Cartagena; Moi'se, a councilman in his arron-
dissement; Frederic Cournet; Victor Simond and Titard of the Radical;
and still more—many former deportees from the Ducos Peninsula and
convicts from Nou Island.
We must note also the presence of Citizen Deneuvillers, a former exile
of 1871 and now **L’Intransigeant** correspondent at Brussels; Citizen Théleni, the representative of the **Radical des Alpes**; Bariol, the delegate from
the Club of the Rights of Man in Vaucluse; P. Arnal, the delegate from the
Fraternal Association of Republicans of the Basses-Alpes, Vaucluse, and
Var; and many delegates representing groups in the provinces and Paris,
but we regret we are not able to give all their names.
Mingled with this funeral procession of persons who had fought in 1871
and persons who had been tested at other times were fervent young people
from recently founded revolutionary groups. Among them were a hundred anarchists. As soon as the funeral procession began to move, these
young people unfurled three red flags, one of which bore the inscription:
“The Revolutionary Sentinel of the XVIIIe Arrondissement.”
Behind, filling the entire width of the street, came an immense crowd
bringing the tribute of its respect and gratitude to Louise Michel in these
sorrowful circumstances.

**On the Way**
Not since the burial of Blanqui has such an imposing spectacle of a
popular demonstration occurred—nothing so grand and majestic as yesterday.
The funeral procession headed towards the cemetery of Levallois-Perret
by way of the boulevards of Ornano, Ney, Bessieres, Berthier, and the
Porte de Courcelles. The slope of the ramparts on the right of the
procession was occupied by numerous spectators who rose in tiers up the
incline. On the other side, the walls, roofs, and windows were also filled
with the curious.
From every street opening on the main road, a new crowd of workers
and the poor either lined up respectfully for the passing of the cortege or
joined it, making the procession even larger.
The police remained hidden, and thus calm continued to reign and no
clashes occurred. Order was kept by only two constables under the
direction of a corporal, but the authorities had taken extraordinary
measures to throw a hidden army against the demonstrators if the need
arose. The Garde républicaine was to the left of the marchers on the rue
Ordone, and policemen had been put inside all the police stations along
the route. In the courtyard of the La Pépinière Barracks in the Place
Saint-Augustine near the Etoile a battalion of infantry was drawn up with
their packs ready to march.
When the funeral procession reached the Porte Ornano, it was estimated at over twelve thousand persons. From time to time the cry of
“Long live the Commune!” or “Long live the Social Revolution!” came
from the midst of that immense crowd.
As the cortege crossed the bridge over the Western Line Railroad, two
despatch riders appeared. Because the going and coming of official
messengers is never a good omen, shouts of “Long live the Revolution!”
multiplied. The two riders hurried to withdraw as soon as their task was
done.
At the boulevard Berthier, in front of Bastion 49, a couple of dozen
policemen were drawn up. They were under the command of Florentin,
the municipal police chief of the XVIII<supe</sup> Arrondissement, who had just
been given a medal for having protected the police spy and agitator,
Pottery. This Florentin was doubtless looking forward to working wonders
here and winning new stripes and new medals.
The moment the hearse passed in front of the police station, Florentin,
followed by his men, blocked the boulevard and ordered the red flag to be
taken down.
Resounding cries of “Long live the Revolution!” and “Long live the
Commune!” answered him. The demonstrators, keeping a close watch on
their flags, seemed ready to defy this savior of informers. At this tense
moment Citizen Rochefort moved towards the police officer and said to
him: “Your attitude is the real provocation. Up to now, everything has
happened in the most perfect order, and your intervention is completely
improper.”
Visibly intimidated, Florentin answered, “M. Caubet sent me the express
order to stop the parading of the red flag.”
“Those red flags you are speaking of,” Rochefort said, “are the banners
of societies which have the perfect right to choose whatever color suits
them. There were also red banners following Gambetta’s coffin, and no
one dared to oppose their being unfurled.”
These words and the forceful attitude of the citizens present made
Florentin pause. He relented and went with his two dozen men to the head
of the funeral procession in front of the hearse.
But when the police are not ferocious, they are treacherous. They
planned their actions, and at the Porte d’Asnières, as soon as the hearse
crossed the iron bars in front of the tollbooth, they tried to close the gates
quickly. The police intended to cut the hearse off from the funeral
procession and thus prevent the exhibition of red flags, which they had
their hearts set on doing.
They failed to count on the determination of the revolutionaries. The
gates gave way before the pressure of the crowd. A few carriages returning
to Paris while this was happening owed their not being inspected at the
tollbooth to these events.
One last incident occurred while the funeral procession was going along
beside the tracks of the Inner Circle Railroad. A train passed by with all the
passengers at the side doors. Recognizing the funeral procession of Louise
Michel’s mother, a great number of them began to wave their hats and
hankerchiefs.
So the funeral procession arrived at Levallois-Perret, just outside the city
walls.

**At the Cemetery**
The little city of Levallois-Perret was in a state of great excitement; so
many people had not been seen for a long time. Many carriages were
parked at the approaches to the cemetery, and all the residents of Levallois-Perret were standing, forming a hedge along the road where the
funeral cortege was to pass.
The little cemetery had been tidied up. The gates were wide open, and
the more eager citizens had already taken their places around the spot
chosen for the burial.
It was Ferry’s tomb, Théophile Ferré, whom the Versailles forces had
murdered at Satory. He is buried there with his sister Marie Ferré, who
was the close friend and devoted companion of Louise Michel. The
memorial statue is modest. The plot is surrounded by an iron fence, and
the graves are covered by a large flat stone. A marker bears the name of
the martyr and his sister.
The bell at the cemetery rang to announce the arrival of the funeral
procession. In a second, the crowd had invaded the field of the dead. It
was only with great difficulty that the pallbearers brought the body to the
tomb, and the only way the wreaths could be gotten from the hearse to the
coffin was to pass them from hand to hand.
The red flags were unfurled, and the tombs disappeared under a living
tide that rose over them from the ground up to the top of the memorial
statues. The spectacle was one of grandeur and majesty.

**The Speeches**
After a moment of silence and contemplation, the first speaker was our
contributor, Ernest Roche. Here is a summary of his speech, which was
interrupted frequently with cheers and applause from the crowd.
“Who are we, standing here around the coffin of this simple and good
woman who never dreamed of being famous?
“Why is there such a mixture here of so many different sorts of
republicans and socialists?
“What feeling moves all of us?
“What attraction draws us here?
“What unity of spirit inspires in each of us the same respect and gives
each of us the same feeling of indignation in front of this dead woman?
“Let me tell you.
“There is one flag sacred to all of us, the flag that people fly only at
certain solemn times, the flag that inflames us more than any gorgeous
fabric. It is the flag of our martyrs, the flag of our heroes.
“The corpse of Lucrecia overturned the Tarquins and founded the
Roman Republic. The bodies of unknown men who were struck down on
23 February 1848 by Louis Philippe’s soldiers brought on the collapse of
his throne. The corpse of Victor Noir in the spring of 1870 caused the
weakening of Louis Napoleon’s Empire and precipitated its fall.
“The body of Louise Michel’s poor mother is our common bond, for in
each of our spirits it causes the same feeling of horror against the criminals
who have murdered her.
“Don’t take shelter behind the age of your victim, you hypocrites. Her
age doesn’t mitigate the odiousness of your terrible crime.
“Certainly, we know very well it wasn’t she you meant to reach, any more
than the Empire had any particular hatred for Victor Noir. What difference does it make to us whether your ferocity strikes down a simple
person, or an unknown one, or a famous one from our ranks? The
martyrdom with which you crown the person is enough to ignite our anger
and is enough to explain it.
“Those two poor women, Louise Michel and her mother! Those who
have known them know how indispensible they were to each other. The
mother survived on the atmosphere of filial love with which her daughter
surrounded her. By taking away her daughter, you killed her, and her
death, perhaps, will drag along a second victim.
“After her, it will be Peter Kropotkin’s turn; he is dying in prison. Then
will come others, more obscure, but no less unfortunate.
“And you don’t want us to get hold of these corpses, nor for us to rally
around them with the idea of legitimate defense against those thieves who
are stealing billions of francs and ruining our country until they can
auction it off.
“We have come here to sign a compact for danger, vengeance, and
justice. We have come to sign it in front of the tomb of Ferré, who was
assassinated by the bullets of Versailles, and in front of the coffin of this
woman poisoned by sorrow.
“I have one last thing to say: On behalf of our friends and colleagues at

<em>L’Intransigeant</em> in whose name I am speaking, on behalf of those who

fought beside our valiant citizen, Louise, on behalf of those who shared
her agonies at being exiled and her joys upon returning—on behalf of all
these, I must say how much we are moved by the sorrow that afflicts our
friend Louise Michel and how much we would like to lighten its weight, if
friendship and esteem can be any compensation for such a loss.”
Citizen Chabert expressed his feelings in these words:
“Here there is unanimity among the socialists as there will be on the day
of battle, when everyone marches to the battlefield arm in arm.
“All of us agree on the goal we seek; we differ only on our choice of
means. Already we can see the day dawning when we shall claim our
rights, because the bourgeois opportunists are no longer satisfied with
killing only men; now they kill women.
“Let us unite and declare first of all that if we become the masters we will
no longer want any form of government at all. It is necessary for the
people themselves finally to be the masters. Our elected officials who try to
deceive us and set themselves up as governments, we will punish with
death.
“The battle drawing us in foreshadows our victory because the situation
is such that everyone will be involved. The opportunists are letting
themselves slip into inactivity; they are counting on parliamentarism, but
we are battering at parliamentarism, and we are on the verge of breaking
down its door.”
Citizen Digeon spoke next:
“In the name of the anarchist groups, we have come to glorify the
heroine of the demonstration at les Invalides two years ago.
“In front of this tomb, let us bring about the alliance of all revolutionaries.
I am willing to bring all revolutionaries into one alliance on the
foundation of absolute liberty and without any hidden motives.
“I do not wish to end without expressing all the hate I have built up for
the pleasure-seekers who are oppressing us. We are the disinherited of the
social order, which is why we are rushing to see justice come.”
Then Citizen Champy came to give homage to Louise Michel, and he
associated himself with her sorrow.
“The revolution for which she was the apostle must give the people
equality, well-being, and the inviolable rights they have earned through
their work.”
Citizens Tortelier and Oddin spoke, and then the crowd broke up and
streamed out of the cemetery with the utmost calm. It is easy to explain
why they were orderly: no policemen were present.

That is how the newspapers reported the burial of my poor mother.

Thank you, friends, all of you who were there. I shall always picture you

that way around my poor dead mother, united and with no distinctions

between factions, united in a common sorrow and with a common hope.

Your hope is that after our generation, no one will suffer the way a

mother suffered when she was separated from her daughter for two

years of agony.

I want to say a few words about my mother’s life. People who knew her

know how simple and good she was and know that she was intelligent

and even had a certain gaiety in her conversation.

My grandmother used to speak to me about all the troubles my

mother endured so courageously. I saw for myself her inexhaustible

devotion and the horrible sorrows that she bore from 1870 to 1885. I

knew very well that I loved her, but I did not realize the immense scope

of this affection. Death made me feel it when it ended her existence.

Because her mother, Marguerite Michel, was a widow with six children, my mother was reared in the chateau at Vroncourt. She often told

me about her fearful life as a little girl after she was transported from

her nest. But how she loved those two persons who reared her with their

own son and daughter! Perhaps some time in the future I will be able to

relate her laborious and unassuming life.

She helped to keep those kind persons who reared her from knowing

that easy circumstances no longer existed in the house, and she softened

the sadness of death which struck freely around them.

I am what people call a bastard. But the two people who gave me the

poor gift of life were free. They loved each other, and none of the

wretched tales told of my birth is true, nor can they reach my mother

now. Never have I seen a more decent woman.

And never have I seen more modesty and refinement, nor have I ever

seen more courage. She never complained, although her life was one of

sorrow.

Two days before her death she told me, “I have been very unhappy

not to see you any more and to cost my friends so much.” That was the

only time that she spoke to me in such a sad way. Her voice had a small

wail in it and was no more than a breath.

Our friends realized how witty my mother was and how well she

chatted in her simple way. Only I know, in spite of the pains she took to

hide it, how good she was. She liked to appear brusque, and she laughed

about it like a child.

In the last letter to me that my mother dictated, 27 November 1884,

she told me:

My dear daughter,
Don’t be troubled; I’m not getting any worse. What hurts me is that you
are always worrying.
I’m sending you some silk thread for your needlework. Make your
crewel-work. Make me the views of the sea I talked to you about.
Your most recent needlework was not as good as the others. I see that
you are sad and you’re wrong to be.
Don’t make any sweaters for me. I have enough. I need nothing any
more. Too much has already been spent on me.
Above all else, don’t torment yourself. I embrace you with all my heart.

She was lying when she said she wasn’t any worse. She was already in

bed, and she would never get up again. As for the crewel-work, the one

of the sea she spoke about is not done yet. The “most recent” one which

was “not as good as the others” was that way because I sensed that she

was dying. It portrayed a great oak struck to its heart with an axe, and

the axe was left in the wound from whence the sap flowed. It is a sad

souvenir. I have kept the needles my mother sent me. I use them no

longer, but one day I shall obey her and on my mother’s behalf make

those views of the sea.

Chapter 24. Final Thoughts

I come to the end. Now that the black bird of the fallow field has sung

for me, I want to explain what it means when a person no longer has

anything to fear, when a person no longer has anything to suffer from.

From the other side of sorrow, I can watch events coldly, feeling nothing

more than the indifference a trash man feels as he turns over rags and

tatters with his spiked stick.

People wonder how all these things could have happened during the

fifteen years which have just passed. When we are crushed, it only

removes the last obstacle to our being useful in the revolutionary

struggle. When we are beaten down, we become free. When we are no

longer suffering because of what happens to us, we are invincible.

I have reached that point, and it is better for the cause. What does it

matter now to my heart, which has already been torn bleeding from my

chest, if pen nibs dig into it like the beaks of crows? With my mother

dead, no one remains to suffer calumnies. If I had been able to spend

these last two years near my mother and feel her happiness, I, too, would

have been happy. But there is no reason now for my enemies to fear that

I will ever find happiness, for she is dead.

My mother’s death was the signal for both my friends and enemies to

seek my release, as if her death was some sort of certificate. Freedom—as

if they could pay me for her corpse. I’m grateful to the present

government for having understood how odious an insult was the pardon

they would have inflicted on me. The government behaved properly

when it allowed me to go to my dying mother, and it must not tarnish

this generosity by a pardon after her death. Why do I merit a pardon

more than other people?

I don’t have a copy of the letter I wrote to refuse that insulting offer of

a pardon, but I do have a few lines summarizing my feelings in a letter

that I wrote to Lissagaray, who had protested against the government’s

plan to pardon me. I seems that other friends had also protested. Not

being allowed to read the newspapers, I was unaware of their efforts,

and I take the opportunity here to thank them.

<right>

4 May 1885

</right>

Citizen Lissagaray,
I thank you. It seems that you felt I wasn’t able, without being disgraced,
to accept a pardon to which I have no more right than others.
All or nothing.
I don’t want them to pay me for the corpse of my mother. May the
friends who warned me in time be thanked also.
I accept completely the responsibility for refusing the pardon. If my
friends think about it, they will come to feel that if they can’t do anything
more for me, at least they shouldn’t insult me.
My adversaries felt that way.
I clasp your hand.

<right>

Louise Michel

</right>

P.S. If the government hadn’t listened to me and refused the pardon, I
would have left France immediately and gone to Russia or Germany. In
those countries they kill revolutionaries; they don’t besmirch them.
May I just be left alone.

<right>

L.M.

</right>

“All or nothing.” That’s the way I hope I always feel. I also hope that

they won’t repeat the insult that I didn’t merit and which they were kind

enough to take away.

A man who is a prisoner has to fight only against the situation which

his adversaries make for him. A woman who is a prisoner has not only

that same struggle but also the complications caused by her friends

intervening in her behalf. They come to aid her because they attribute to

her every weakness, every stupidity, every folly.

A woman must be a thousand times calmer than a man, even facing

the most horrible events. Although pain may be digging into her heart,

she cannot let one word that is not “normal” escape her. If she does, her

friends, fooled by pity, and her enemies, motivated by hate, will push

her into a mental institution where, with all her faculties intact, she will

be buried near madwomen, madwomen who perhaps weren’t mad when

they were locked up.

Comrades, you have been very good to my poor mother and me. My

dear friends, you have to get used to not passing it off as madness if the

thought of my mother’s death rushes up in front of me and bewilders

me. Remember that once the poor woman was no longer suffering, I

buried her without shedding a tear. Returning to Saint-Lazare, I started

back to work the day after her death without anyone ever seeing me cry

or stop being calm, even for an instant. What more does anyone want? I

shall live for the fight, but I do not wish to live under shameful

circumstances.

During the May Days of 1885 the dead went quickly: Hugo, Cournet,

Amouroux. All three remind us of 1871. Amouroux dragged the ball of

penal servitude in New Caledonia. Cournet was exiled, and exile was the

unhappiest fate of the vanquished. Victor Hugo offered his house at

Brussels to the fugitives from the slaughterhouse.

Three others were mowed down along with the century that is

ending—Louis Blanc, Père Malézieux, and Louis Auguste Blanqui. I

remember Blanqui’s last speech. The hall was bedecked with the Tricolor.

The brave old man stood up to curse the colors of Sedan and

Versailles waving in front of him, the symbols of surrender and murder.

The howls of the reactionaries often covered the words of the old man,

but then his dying chest filled up with the immense breath of the future

and dominated the hall in its turn. After the meeting he went to bed and

never got up again.

Malézieux was a man of both June and of Seventy-one, and when,

upon his return from exile, the bosses found him too old to work, he lost

the will to live. The facial resemblance between him and Victor Hugo

was striking and complete. Their faces had the same nobility, proud in

the old fighter’s, gentle in the poet’s. Their nobility lit up those two old

Homers, and they looked like two old lions lying down observing you.

Hugo was the last of the old bards who sang alone, like Homer. The

new bards will sing from one end of the earth to the other when we

finally drag down the wreck of the old world, and they will have us as

their chorus.

In New Caledonia on an enormous rock that opened its petals of

granite like a rose, a granite rose that was spotted with little black

streams of cold lava like trickles of black blood, I engraved one of Hugo’s

poems for the cyclones:

**To the People**
Paris bleeding by moonlight

Dreams over the common grave.

Give honor to mass murderers.

More conscription, more tribunes:

Eighty-nine is wearing a gag.
The Revolution, terrible to those it touches,

Is buried, a robber-chief doing

What no Titan could do,

And a Jesuit logician laughs crookedly.
Unsheathed against the great Republic

Are all the Lilliputian sabers.

The judge, a merchant clothed

In legal vestments, sells the law.
Lazarus, Lazarus, Lazarus

Rise up.
—Victor Hugo

As a child and all through my later life I kept sending poetry to Victor

Hugo. But I sent him none after I returned from New Caledonia,

because then it was unnecessary to do anything more to honor him.

Everyone was celebrating the master, even those who had been far from

fêting him in the past, and there was no need for me to assist in those

joyful days. That is why I was so horrified to learn that Maxime du Camp

planned to speak to the crowd from the top of Hugo’s tomb.

It was Maxime du Camp—du Camp of Satory—who betrayed himself

and us to the Versailles criminals. He was a purveyor of hot and cold

massacres, besliming all those he pointed out. His forehead is marked

with blood from the six years he spent flushing out citizens for the

courts-martial, and he did it for pleasure. For him to speak under the

blooming trees on the red anniversary would insult our sleeping dead.

Master Hugo, on you shall fall no single word of his voice, nor any noise

of his steps.

We revolutionaries aren’t just chasing a scarlet flag. What we pursue is

an awakening of liberty, old or new. It is the ancient communes of

France; it is 1793; it is June 1848; it is 1871. Most especially it is the next

revolution, which is advancing under this dawn. That is all that we are

defending.

We wish that all the people of the world might be revenged for all the

Sedans to which despots and fools have dragged humanity. Revenge is

the Revolution, which will sow liberty and peace over the entire earth.

When the people gain their full vigor, every person will have to line up

on one side or the other. People will have to choose either to crowd with

their castes into the ruts that moving wheels have left behind or to shake

off the absurd limitations of class and take their places on the human

stage under the light of the rising sun.

At the burial of Vallès there was an emotional multitude over which

the red and black banners waved. Was that the whole revolutionary

army? The advance guard? It was hardly a battalion. When the hour

comes, which ferocious and stupid governments are pushing forward, it

will not be a boulevard that quivers under the steps of a crowd. It will be

the entire earth trembling under the march of the human race.

In the meantime, the wider the river of blood flowing from the

scaffold where our people are being assassinated, the more crowded the

prisons, the greater the poverty, the more tyrannical the governments,

the more quickly the hour will come and the more numerous the

combatants will be. How many wrathful people, young people, will be

with us when the red and black banners wave in the wind of anger! What

a tidal wave it will be when the red and black banners rise around the old

wreck!

The red banner, which has always stood for liberty, frightens the

executioners because it is so red with our blood. The black flag, with

layers of blood upon it from those who wanted to live by working or die

by fighting, frightens those who want to live off the work of others.

Those red and black banners wave over us mourning our dead and wave

over our hopes for the dawn that is breaking.

If we were free to fly our banners wherever we wanted in some

country, it would show better than any vote can show on which side the

crowd was lining up. No longer could men be put in the pockets of the

authorities the way fistfuls of bulletins are stuffed there now. It would be

a good way to assure each other of our unfalsified true majority, which

this time would be that of the people. But we are allowed to fly our flags

only over our dead.

People must continue to fight against the masters who oppress them.

In England, the gallows will probably greet them, but that does not spoil

the vision. They should fight anyway. There was a time when I found

the idea of some poor person grimacing at the end of a rope disagreeable.

Since than I have learned that in Russia they put you in a sack first.

Germany had the headsman’s block, as Reinsdorff and others saw.

These various techniques are only different forms of the same death,

and the more mournful the setting, the more it is wrapped in the red

light of dawn.

At the time when I had a preference, I imagined a scaffold from

which I could address the crowd. Then I saw the execution post on the

plain of Satory, and as far as the manner of my execution was concerned,

the white wall of Pére Lachaise cemetery or even some angle of

the walls of Paris would have suited me. Today I don’t care. I don’t care

how, and I don’t care where. What does it matter to me whether I’m

killed in broad daylight or in a woods at night?

A decade and a half have elapsed since the struggle of the Commune.

Of the living I say nothing. They are fighting hard in the struggle for

life. They have days without work, which means days without food.

When I speak of the survivors of the battle and the exile and the

deportation to New Caledonia, I must speak of the courage of Mme

Nathalie Lemel during all those events. It won’t hurt her, for where she

is working now, all the employees are criminals of the Commune and

convicts returned from the “justice” of Versailles. I shall name only those

to whom an employer won’t say: “Ah, you come from being imprisoned

for the Commune. Well, get out of here. There is no longer any work in

my place for you.” That happened and still happens often.

The court, just for the sake of variety, had sentenced some of us to

hard labor. Some were deemed too weak to stand the trip to New

Caledonia, and several of them are now dead: Poirier, so courageous

during the Siege and the Commune; Marie Boire; and many others who

were no longer alive when we returned from New Caledonia. Mme

Louise was sent to New Caledonia in spite of her age, and she died there

calling for her children, whom she could not see one more time in he

last hours. Of those who were sent to Cayenne, two are dead. One was

Elisabeth Retif, a poor and simple girl, who did a magnificent job of

carrying out the wounded under fire and who never understood how

anyone could find her actions evil. Elisabeth de Ghi, who had married

and become Mme Langlais, died on the ship during the voyage home

from New Caledonia. She would have loved to see Paris again, but we

were still far away from it when, between two cannon shots, her body was

slid through a cargo port into the depths of the sea. Marie Schmidt, one

of the bravest, died last year in the home for the destitute on the rue de

Sèvres. In 1871 she had been a stretcher bearer and a soldier, but work

was hard to find upon our return and poverty kills quickly.

Sleep in peace, valiant ones, whether you be under the storms and

waves, or lying in a common grave. You are the happy ones. Let us

honor the obscure dead who suffered to aid those who will come after

us. Let us honor the obscure dead who sensed only indistinctly the

far-off horizon that will raise up their shades in sprays of stars and let

them see the dazzling light of dawn.

As for the executioners, retribution wasn’t long in coming. The

prosecutor, Major Gaveau, whose passionate indictments were known to

everyone, died insane. It had been necessary to lock him up for some

time before his death, and according to the newspapers of the time, he

had the most terrible death agonies imaginable. During the whole day

before his death he believed that he saw fantastic creatures tumble

around in front of his eyes, and it seemed to him that someone was

beating a hammer on his skull. The expert Delarue, who had testified to

a falsehood against Ferré, was himself later condemned for giving false

expert testimony that sent a man to prison for five years. The cost of

sending one of our comrades to the execution post at Satory wasn’t as

great. The farm of Donjeu, which belonged to M. Feltereau of Villeneuve,

was burned by accident. I don’t know if any accident befell

Colonel Merlin, who had been a judge in the trial of the members of the

Commune and who had commanded the troops which oversaw the

assassinations of November 28. Why do criminals escape the consequences

of their acts more easily than other people? Doesn’t each act

prepare its own destiny?

After the amnesty, I came home from ten years of exile in New

Caledonia only to see my poor mother die. With my own hands I laid my

mother down in her coffin, as I did Marie Ferré, the one in my red

shawl, the other in a soft red coverlet which she liked. So they are for the

eternal winter of the tomb, and people ask me if now I am turning my

attention to liberty and the spring which makes the branches blossom

out again. Am I giving up, now that I have shut my heart under the

earth? No! I shall remain standing until the last moment. I returned

from deportation faithful to the principles for which I shall die.

Yesterday was May 24. From a distance, I heard some kind of rapid

bugle call whose brazen notes sent a chill through my heart. That call

was like an echo of the May Days of 1871. Do they still lead soldiers

against the people?

See the grains of sand and the piled-up hay and in the highest heavens

the crowded stars. Where all that is seen is where we’re going. And here

comes the great harvest, grown in the blood of our hearts. The heads of

the wheat will be heavier because of that, and the harvest will be greater.

In this somber life, cradling sad days, some refrains come back again

and again. They catch at your emotions and rip you apart at the same

time.

Flow, flow, blood of the captive.

The Baguades, the Jacques, all of you who wear an iron collar, let’s talk

while we wait for the hour to strike. The dream emerges from the scents

of spring. It is the morning come of the new legend. Do you hear,

peasant, the winds that pass in the air? They are the songs of your

fathers, the old Gallic songs.

Flow, flow, blood of the captive.

See this red dew on the earth. It’s blood. The grass over the dead grows

higher and greener. On this earth, the charnel house of the people’s

dreams, the grass ought to grow thickly. As long as it pleases you to be

the beef of the slaughterhouse, to be the ox that pulls the plow or the

one dragged to the carnival, people will repeat the terrible refrain:

Flow, flow, blood of the captive.

I don’t know where the final struggle between the old world and the

new will take place, but it doesn’t matter, because wherever it is—Rome,

Berlin, Moscow—I’ll be there. And other revolutionaries will be there,

too. Wherever it begins, the spark will unite the whole world. Everywhere the crowds will rise up. Meanwhile we wait and while we wait,

speeches continue. Those speeches are the rumblings of a volcano, and

when everybody least expects it, the lava will spill out.

The evening will come. They will still be dancing in the palace.

Parliaments will say that discontent has been building up for a long time,

but that the grumbling will go on without anyone being able to do

anything about it.

Then the great uprising will come. The rising of the people will

happen at its appointed moment, the same way that continents develop.

It will happen because the human race is ready for it.

That uprising will come, and those whom I have loved will see it. O my

beloved dead. I began this book when one of you was still living. Now I

end it bent over the ground where you both are sleeping.

Dead, both of them. The stones of my home overturned. I’m alone in

the room where my mother spent her last years. Friends have arranged

my mother’s furniture and bed as it was when she was still alive. A little

bird has slipped between the slats of the blinds to make its nest in the

window, and the room is less forlorn because of it. My mother’s poor old

furniture, which was like part of her clothing, has the wings of an

innocent bird beating over it, and that bird alone hears the ticking of the

old clock which marked her death.

Soon, my beloved mother, Myriam!

If she had lived a few more years, even a few more months, I would

have spent all that time near her. Today, what do prisons, lies, all the rest

matter? What could death do to me? It would be a deliverance because

I’m already dead. Why do people speak of courage? I’m in a hurry to

join Marie and my mother.

Memory crowds in on me. The cemetery at Vroncourt in the upper

turning of the road under the pines. Audeloncourt. Clefmont. And my

uncles’ little, low, dark houses. The little house of Aunt Apolline, dug

into the ground. Uncle Georges’s up on top of the hill. The schoolhouse.

Who hears the noise of the brook there now? Through the open window

comes the smell of roses, of stubble, of hay in the summer sunlight. They

all come to me now more than ever. I smell the bitter odor of the niaoulis

mixed with the sharp freshness of the Pacific waves. Everything reappears in front of my eyes. Everything lives again, the dead and all those

things that have vanished.

Who am I, Louise Michel? Don’t make me out to be better than I

am—or than you are. I am capable of anything, love or hate, as you are.

When the Revolution comes, you and I and all humanity will be

transformed. Everything will be changed and better times will have joys

that the people of today aren’t able to understand. Feeling for the arts

and for liberty will surely become greater, and the harvest of that

development will be marvelous. Beyond this cursed time will come a day

when humanity, free and conscious of its powers, will no longer torture

either man or beast. That hope is worth all the suffering we undergo as

we move through the horrors of life.

Epilogue

Much against her wishes, Louise Michel was pardoned and expelled—

there is no other word for it—from prison in January 1886. By now, she

was legendary. Or as Paul Verlaine put it in his “Ballade en l’honneur de

Louise Michel,” she was “nearly Joan of Arc.” She was “Saint Cecilia /

And the harsh and slender Muse / Of the Poor, as well as their guardian

angel.” Now in her late fifties, Michel was indefatigable; she produced

poetry, wrote several involuted novels, and marched incessantly to the

speaker’s platform. And the summer following her release she was

indicted once again, this time in company with Jules Guesde, Paul

Lafargue, and Susini, for “instigating murder and looting.”

She was accused of saying that the government was composed of

“thieves and murderers. Thieves are arrested and murderers are killed.

Throw them in the water!” Although Michel denied saying those exact

words, she admitted that the tone was correct—which seems likely. The

jury found her guilty, but despite their convicting her, it would have

caused the government grave embarrassment to send her to jail again,

and ultimately she was pardoned without going back to prison.

In January 1888, while Michel was delivering a speech at Le Havre, a

fanatical Catholic Breton shot her. Her injury, a bullet that lodged

behind her left ear, did not heal well, and for a time her health was

precarious. True to her principles, however, Michel entered the trial of

her assailant to plead for him, arguing that he was misled by an evil

society, and he was acquitted.

This period of Michel’s life coincided with the peak of the Boulangist

movement, a political phenomenon that began on the left and moved

over the years to the right, uniting at one time or another all those who

opposed the Third Republic and particularly, at the end, those who

wanted revenge against Germany. Although Michel’s general principles

would seem to dictate her opposing the final stages of the movement, she

avoided involvement, perhaps because her friend Henri Rochefort was a

staunch Boulangist. It is also possible that Michel, like the Marxist

Guesde, saw Boulangism as only a bourgeois struggle and, as such,

irrelevant.

Michel did take the lead in a temporary alliance of anarchists and

monarchists who found a common enemy in the Third Republic.

Through her, the royalists funneled funds to support anarchist activities. Some of the monarchists certainly were using Michel as the Germans would use Lenin in 1917; any trouble the anarchists fomented

would serve the monarchist cause. But Michel, if she was aware she was

being used, was entirely happy with the situation. Her main enemies

now were not monarchists but “Possibilist” socialists, who in her eyes

were no better than the “Opportunist” republicans she loathed.

The Possibilists, usually classified today as evolutionary socialists,

hoped to alleviate the misery of the poor through small reforms and to

work within the system to win power. Michel believed that, in fact, the

Possibilists had no greater aim than to replace the bourgeoisie with

themselves. Moreover, the minor reforms they supported would only

postpone the Social Revolution.

In 1889 the problems in founding the Second International illustrated

these theoretical distinctions. The First International had perished officially in 1876, although it had been moribund for several years prior to

that date, the victim of repression from without and schism from within.

Posthumously, the First International was gaining a reputation for

effectiveness it had not earned during its life, and in 1889, the centenary

of the first French Revolution, there were two international meetings

held simultaneously in Paris to revive it, one of Possibilists and the other

of Marxists, with delegates drifting from one meeting to the other.

Michel played little role in either of those meetings, perhaps because of

her lack of interest in organizations and organizational politics.

But from that chaotic founding of the Second International came the

idea of using May Day demonstrations to show solidarity. By the late

1880s Michel had come to focus on the general strike, **la grande grève**, as

the means by which the poor would achieve the Social Revolution. It

would “interrupt ... all industries and all branches of commerce and

would finally carry the Social Revolution along.” Despite Michel’s

dreams of **la grande grève**, her enthusiasm for the May Day demonstrations was limited; the demonstrations were not intended to incite the

people to rebel but only to publicize the Left. Perhaps Michel was no

longer so sure of crowds, and clearly she was inclining more and more

simply to belief in “propaganda by the deed” and faith in direct action

inspired and led by a small elite.

But Michel believed, as she always had, that it was her duty to

participate in demonstrations, and she was preparing to participate in

the 1890 May Day demonstration when she was arrested the day before

its scheduled occurrence. In a fit of rage and frustration she destroyed

the furnishings of her cell, and officials rushed to use that behavior to

have her certified insane. For reasons that remain unclear, the Minister

of the Interior, Constans, intervened directly to stop the committal

proceedings and to have her released.

Michel immediately left for England, and from 1890 until her death

she spent the greater part of her time there. Perhaps the near-successful

committal proceeding had frightened her; being committed was a fear

she had carried for years. Perhaps she was simply tired. In any event,

England was the traditional home of foreign exiles, and Rochefort,

himself a refugee after the collapse of Boulangism, was there. Rochefort

gave her money to live on, and Prince Kropotkin gave her what aid he

could. During the following years she tried through personal contact to

help the English poor—as always, whatever money she had at any

moment she gave away on request—and she became known in the worst

slums of London as “the good woman.”

She returned to France only once, briefly, during the five years from

1890 to 1895, which were the years of anarchism’s greatest notoriety in

France. It was during those years that France lived in daily fear of

bombings, the most savage period being the months from Ravachol’s

bombings in the spring of 1892 to the explosions in the Chamber of

Deputies in December 1893 and the Café Terminus in February 1894.

Although Michel objected to bombs because they indiscriminately killed

women and children, she continued to approve the use of force. Rava-

chol was, she said, “the hero of modern legend,” and later she approved

the bombing of the Chamber of Deputies.

In 1895 Michel returned to France and for the next seven months

made speeches and wrote poetry. The following summer she returned

to England, presumably so she could attend the scheduled meeting of

the International, the one which confirmed the expulsion of the anarchists. Michel was horrified at the proceedings and the enforcement of

Marxist orthodoxy. The meeting proved, she said, that even the best,

most intelligent, and most devoted Marxist revolutionary “will be worse

than anyone he replaces because the Marxists claim infallibility and

practice excommunication.” The rupture between Michel and the Marxist socialists, like the one with the Possibilists before them, was complete.

In the spring of 1897 Michel, now in her sixty-seventh year, made an

extensive speaking tour throughout France. In France, the Dreyfus

Affair was reaching its height, but Michel took no active part in it,

although she did speak out against secret trials and anti-Semitism.

Maybe her faith temporarily was burning low. She had, after all, been

preaching revolution, or been imprisoned for preaching it, for forty

years. Moreover, her audiences were dwindling.

In spite of her increasingly frail health she began a new series of

speeches in France in May 1902, which continued into 1903 with one

break in London. By then, Russia, which had fascinated her for years,

seemed on the verge of revolution, and events there were rekindling her

enthusiasm, particularly after the outbreak of war in 1904 between

Russia and Japan. A determined antimilitarist, Michel was nonetheless

delighted at the opportunity an unpopular war provided for the onset of

the Social Revolution. She made more speeches in France during February and early March 1904, but then fell gravely ill.

She recovered, and after her well-publicized illness, which the public

had supposed would be mortal, the enormous crowds as of old came to

hear her speak. Perhaps now people were only coming to view a legend,

but come they did in great numbers, and they applauded her. At the end

of the year she went to Algeria; upon her return to France she fell ill in

Marseille. This illness was her last. On 9 January 1905 she died in that

city at the Hôtel de l’Oasis.

Her death became the occasion of one of those spectacles she would

have loved. With red flags, masses of flowers, and two thousand mourners—representatives of labor unions, socialist groups, anarchists, and

antireligious organizations—the funeral procession was a kilometer long

as it wound through Marseille to the cemetery. Memorial services took

place throughout France and in London and elsewhere. On January 20

her body was disinterred, taken to Paris, and two days later buried at her

mother’s side in Levallois-Perret to the accompaniment of another

spectacle, the largest, said the press, since the death of Victor Hugo. Not

only would Michel have approved the spectacle, she would have noted

how strange it was that on that very day a crowd of Russians in St.

Petersburg attempted to deliver a petition to their czar, and the ensuing

massacre marked the day forever as Bloody Sunday.

Today, Michel’s birthplace of Vroncourt has a statue to her, and the

street going through town bears her name. Her grave in Levallois-Perret—not the one in which she was buried in 1905, but a new one to which

she was moved during the Popular Front days of 1936—still has flowers

placed on it by anonymous hands. The authorities have even named a

metro station and a street for her, but both are just barely outside the

city limits of Paris.

She is now a legend. That she invented part of it herself is irrelevant.

Louise Michel was heroic, but as she herself said: “There is no heroism;

people are simply entranced by events.”

Bibliography

Louise Michel discussed her own writings briefly in her memoirs.

Let me record a balance sheet of my writings. I have spoken of the various bits

of poetry from the years before the events of 1870—71 inserted in different

newspapers, in the **Journal de la jeunesse**, in the **Union des poètes**, in Adèle Esquiros’

newspaper, in Adèle Caldelar’s **La Raison**, and other places. Of the verses I sent

to Victor Hugo in my childhood and youth, of which I have cited a few here and

there, two or three pieces which were in the papers that Marie Ferrd and my

mother arranged during my deportation will be found in my volume of verse. I

used the name Enjolras on a certain number of pieces of verse, **Louis** Michel on

others, and my own name on still more. I don’t know what has become of them.

I’ve mentioned an article signed Louis Michel in **Le Progrès** musical in which I

discussed an instrument I dreamed up, a piano with bows instead of mallets.

They make them now in Germany.

There are a large number of signed articles in the **Révolution sociale**, the

<em>Etendard</em>, and a number of other signed articles are scattered. The first part of

my **Encyclopédie enfantine**, which I wrote in New Caledonia, appeared in Mlle

Cheminat’s **Journal d’éducation**.

During my last trip to Lyon I left a drama, **Le Coq rouge**, at the **Nouvelliste**. The

masses of drama for children have all vanished after each awarding of prizes

during so many years.

All my life I have kept working on **La Légende du barde**; there are fragments of

it everywhere. I have some fragments of other prose manuscripts, the <em>Livre

d’Hermann</em>, the **Sagesse d’un fou**, **Littérature au crochet**, the **Diableries de Chaumont**,

and so forth. Perhaps I will put them together some day to search in them, as in

my poetry, for the changes of my ideas across life.

Of the works done at Auberive I have a few pages remaining from the book <em>Le

Bagne. La Conscience and Le Livre des morts</em> are completely lost. The first part of <em>La

Femme à travers les ages</em> was published in H. Place’s **L'Excommunié**. That newspaper

had announced it would publish **Mémoires d’Hanna la nihiliste**, but the paper died.

Under that title I had gathered a great many episodes of my life, along with

Russian episodes. The **Océaniennes** and the **Légendes canaques** have appeared in

fragments in Nouméa and here upon my return.

When I collaborate with someone, I keep the papers which establish the facts

of my collaboration so as to be free not to take part in the profits or losses in any

lawsuits my collaborators attempt. They are at liberty to do as they wish. I

collaborated with Grippa de Winter in a novel, **Le Bâtard impérial**, and took a

play, **Nadine**, from it. Since my return from New Caledonia I have had two

collaborators, one of whom was Mme Tynaire, Jean Guetré. She wrote almost all

the first part of **La Misère**, while the second part, from the chapter on Toulon on,

is completely mine. In a Lille magazine, **Le Forçat**, I had begun to publish this

second part in installments which would form a complete work with the addition

of a few lines of introduction. Mme Tynaire could also make a complete work

out of the first part by adding a few pages.

Mme Tynaire can be my friend, but it turned out that she could not be my

collaborator because we see things differently. Those differences are perfectly

visible in **La Misère**, and the two distinct parts are easily discernible. Mme Tynaire

expects to promote general well-being through means in which I see no effectiveness. I see general well-being promoted only by successive revolutions cutting

through the series of social transformations.

To remain good friends with Mme Tynaire instead of quarreling with our

pens, I gave up a second collaboration with her, the second part of **Les Méprisées**.

If I had taken it on, I would have been obliged to make the remaining characters

undergo changes in character and circumstances which would have been incompatible with the way they were introduced to the reader in the first part. The

novel **Les Méprisées** thus contains only one line I wrote.

I can’t list the sketches in progress, novels begun everywhere which I never

had the time to finish owing to events. Let me end by noting that the complete

text of the **Encyclopédie enfantine** will be published at Mme Keva’s and that the

Legendes canaques has already been published by the same publisher.

[1] E. H. Carr, **Michael Bakunin** (New York: Octagon Books, 1975), p. 434.

[2] George Bernard Shaw, The “Impossibilities of Anarchism,” **Fabian Tract** 45 (1895): 14-15.

[3] “Ballade en l'honneur de Louise Michel,” in **Oeuvres complètes de Paul Verlaine** (Paris: Albert Messein, 1911) 2:39-40.

[4] “Viro Major,” in **Oeuvres complètes de Victor Hugo** (Paris: Albin Michel / Imprimerie Nationale, 1935) 12:82-83; notes, 12: 360-61, 404; and plate, 12:489.

[5] Archives historiques de la préfecture de police, Ba 1183-87, Paris.

[6] Edith Thomas, **Louise Michel ou la Velléda de l'anarchie** (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), p. 42

[7] Résumé du 2e voyage de circumnavigation de la Virginie, to Ministre de Marine et Colonies, 4 May 1874, Ministère de Marine, Paris.

[8] L. Andrieux, **Souvenirs d'un préfet de police** (Paris: Jules Rouff, 1885), 1:175, 337-41.

[9] Thomas, **Louise Michel**, p. 265.

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