Paris and the Social Revolution Part 14

In the _Revue Bleue_, a publication which can hardly be accused of having a revolutionary bias, M. Paul Mimande wrote of Duval: "Well, to my thinking, this thief, this incendiary, is _honnete_.... I believe him incapable of robbing and killing to satisfy his cupidity. He worked for the collectivity alone. Duval has the serenity of the _illumine_ who suffers for a holy cause. He is logical in submitting, without murmurs or protestations, to the hard rules of the _bagne_. Very sincerely, he refuses to find himself disgraced by the livery of the convict; and he shows it by his bearing and his talk. His conscience cries out to him that he has acted well. What does the rest matter!

"I had a long conversation with Clement Duval. I questioned him searchingly; and I discerned in his phrases, ardent, but hollow, a sort of atavic duplicate of the times of John Huss."

Duval had neither instruction nor the gift of eloquence, and succeeded ill in explaining his theories to the jury of the Seine. Pini, on the other hand, who had been at great pains to educate himself, was an orator and philosopher as well as a student. His defence-less a defence of himself than of his theory of the right to steal (_le droit au vol_)-was as splendid a bit of impertinence as was ever delivered in a court-room.

Calmly, cynically, with a control of voice and charm of gesture that would have done credit to the most gifted advocate, he said (in part):-

"As to us anarchists, it is with the untroubled a.s.surance of performing a duty that we make our attacks on property. We have two objects in view: first, to claim for ourselves the natural right to existence which you bourgeois concede to beasts and deny to men; second, to provide ourselves with the materials best suited for destroying your show, and, if it becomes necessary, you with it. This manner of reasoning makes your hair stand on end; but what would you have? This is the state of the case. The new times have come. There was a time when the starving wretch who appropriated a morsel of bread, and was arraigned before your plethoric persons therefor, admitted that he had committed a crime, craved pardon, and promised to perish of hunger (he and his family) rather than touch again the property of another. He was ashamed to show his face. To-day it is very different. Extremes meet; and man, after having sunk so low, is retrieving himself splendidly.

Arraigned before you for having smashed the strong boxes of your compeers, he does not excuse his act, but defends it, proves to you with pride that he has yielded to the natural need of retaking what had been previously stolen from him; he proves to you that his act is superior in morality to all your laws, flouts your mouthings and your authority, and in the very teeth of your accusations against him tells you that the real thieves, _messieurs les juges!_ are you and your bourgeois band.

"This is precisely my case. Be a.s.sured I do not blush under your charges, and I experience a delicious pleasure in being called thief by you."

Maitre Labori's eloquent pleading, though it did much to establish his reputation as an advocate, proved as vain in the case of this refractory _proletaire_ as it did later in the case of his bourgeois client, Dreyfus; and Pini was given twenty years of hard labour for his thieving and his impertinent impenitence.

Pini whose thefts were legion, Pini who in the guise of the son of an Italian cardinal paid reconnoitring visits to the archbishopric of Paris, and dreamed the colossal dream of rifling the Vatican, Pini, I say, never stole for himself nor for his friends, but only for the propaganda, for humanity. He was the altruistic thief of the century's close _par excellence_. Every son of his thieving was devoted to the cause. He gave to street beggars freely, but always from his legitimate earnings, never from the proceeds of his expeditions, and never without reproaching them for stretching out their hands to beg when they might steal. "Sometimes, even in winter," says one who claims to have known him well, "Pini, half-clothed and almost barefoot, traversed Paris to carry a.s.sistance to the dest.i.tute _compagnons_. He distributed among them one franc or two francs out of his own pocket; but he did not encroach upon the capital of two or three hundred louis which had resulted from his last exploit. He subsidised several French and Italian presses for the printing of journals, manifests, and placards. The stolen money belonged to the cause, to the idea, to the future."

When he gave of his consecrated h.o.a.rd to individuals, as he sometimes did, it was always because the propaganda was directly involved. Thus he supported for two years at the University of Milan the son of an imprisoned _camarade_, and aided many of the _camarades_ who were in prison or who had been obliged to flee to escape imprisonment. He was blamed by some of his a.s.sociates for having invested a sum of stolen money in an industrial enterprise. The blame was just from the anarchist point of view; and yet, even in this case, the profits were plainly destined in advance for the propaganda.

Within the last two or three years the treasures of the churches have been the greatest sufferers from the pilferers on principle, who have been inflamed by the anti-clerical campaign of the Combes ministry.

As anarchist killings have been very little formidable, viewed in the large, so the aggregate of the anarchist stealings is, in social or criminal statistics, a negligible quant.i.ty. These stealings have not brought expropriation appreciably nearer, and have only served the anarchist cause, if they have served it at all, by keeping before the public mind the fact that the anarchist theory is as much opposed to property as it is to government.

The majority of the thieves who call themselves anarchists in court are thieves first and anarchists afterwards,-eleventh-hour converts, who, having fallen on the misfortune of detection, essay to play anarchist roles, prompted thereto by a sense of humour, a hope of securing the sympathy and support of the _camarades_, or a yearning for the homage of the "_pet.i.t peuple de Paris_", who, as Marcel Prevost has pointed out, "adore all revolutionists."

One other form of _propaganda par le fait_ remains to be mentioned; namely, counterfeiting. But anarchist counterfeiting has not been advocated, it seems, by the accredited anarchist theoricians, and has not been provided with a romantic halo by any master pract.i.tioner, like Pini; in short, has not attained the dignity of a public peril, and calls for no extended notice here. The greater part of the so-called anarchist counterfeiters are common criminals or vulgar charlatans with whom anarchy is a mercenary after-thought, or they are simple police spies.

The most picturesque of the real anarchist counterfeiters who have pa.s.sed through the judicial mill is the _Lyonnais poete-chansonnier_ known as "_L'Abruti_."

"_L'Abruti_" ("The Imbruted"), the uncomplimentary name, intended as a fling against society, is of his own choosing, tormented by that craving for the great road, for s.p.a.ce and liberty which has been the blessing and the curse of the best and the worst of men since time was,-from Abraham, Homer, Cain, Esau, and John the Baptist to Morrow, Salsou,[30]

Ravachol, Richepin, and Josiah Flynt; L'Abruti swore off working for the detested bourgeois one fine day, and, shouldering a little pack in which he had stowed a stew-pan, a coffee-pot, a set of mysterious steel implements, and some sc.r.a.ps of writing-paper, set out from Lyons in true troubadour or, to be more accurate, in true _trimardeur_ style, to make his tour of France.

Sauntering out of the sunrise in the morning, between hedge-rows traceried with the fragrant eglantine, free of fancy and free of limb; ruminating the "_heureux temps d'anarchie_" prophesied by the _poete-camarade_ Laurent Tailhade, "_temps ou la plebe baiserait la trace des pas des poetes_"; casting about for couplets with a mind attuned to Verlaine's poetic precept,-

"_Que ton vers soit la bonne aventure Epa.r.s.e au vent crispe du matin Qui va fleurant la menthe et le thym_";

exploring the motionless blue and the scudding white of the sky for a fresh image; exchanging good words and snuff-pinches with pa.s.sing rustics and smiles and badinage with the rustics' wives and daughters; halting now and again to quaff from a wayside spring, to catch a thrush's liquid note, a magpie's gibe, or a linnet's whistle, to unshoulder his pack, and, using it as an _escritoire_, to fix on paper a just-discovered rhyme, or, using it as a pillow, to enjoy the discreet fellows.h.i.+p of a pipe and out of its curling smoke-fantasies fas.h.i.+on Utopias; beguiling the hours of the short shadows with alternate scribblings and siestas; and sauntering into the sunset when the long shadows came,-L'Abruti pa.s.sed the days.

He dined and supped by the roadside under spicy limes or voluptuous acacias, lavis.h.i.+ng his omelettes, his coffee, and his _chansons_ on all chance pa.s.sers-by.

With his mysterious implements and the aid of flame, in some dusky forest thicket where a witch might weave a spell, he fabricated the wherewithal to buy his eggs and coffee; and he pa.s.sed the nights, according to the weather, under the stars or in some hospitable grange.

The idyl was rudely interrupted-a fig for civilisation!-by the Philistine-minded gendarmes. L'Abruti was tried, and condemned to prison, though he had never gone beyond the fabrication of the ten-cent piece, instead of being decorated, as certain bourgeois are who deserve no better of society, and counterfeit talent instead of dimes.

Served him right, perhaps, for violating his country's laws! Served him right, unquestionably,-delicious, whimsical minstrel that he was,-for departing from the good old begging tradition!

It seems a pity, all the same. He was such a jolly good fellow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A RAID BY THE POLICE]

_"He [Souvarine] was going out into the unknown. He was going, with his tranquil air, to his mission of extermination wherever dynamite could be found to destroy cities and men. It will be he, no doubt, when the expiring_ bourgeoisie _shall hear the street pavements exploding under every one of its steps._"-EMILE ZOLA, in Germinal.

CHAPTER VI

THE CAUSES OF PROPAGANDA "PAR LE FAIT"

"_For so persecuted they the prophets which were before you._"

JESUS CHRIST.

_"As soon as an intelligent workingman says, 'I ought to earn so much,' he is denounced as a leader of a band, and is discharged._"

J.-H. ROSNY, in Le Bilateral.

"_On the pavement in mid December-a mother with her two months' child still at the breast!_

"_But this is forcing her to beg, it is condemning the children to death. And I am well, and I am strong, and I am courageous; and they refuse me work. Ah! I am under the ban of society._"

Journal d'un Anarchiste (AUGUSTIN LeGER).

"_You, Meyrargues, will speak, others will act. But let it be understood that this blood [Vaillant] calls for blood._

"_They were silent, reconciled, baptized in the fluid of this death. A state of heroic grace possessed them, effaced their differences, their quarrels, and their gibes._"-VICTOR BARRUCAND, in Avec le Feu.

"_John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, His soul goes marching on._"

American Popular Song.

A study of the various manifestations in France of the _propagande par le fait_ shows that the greater part of the overt anarchist acts, whether counterfeitings, stealings, or killings, have proceeded from a more or less well-grounded desire for personal or party vengeance; they have been committed by persons who have either suffered unjustly themselves at the hands of government or society or have lived very close to those who have so suffered.

The sensational killing of the a.s.sistant superintendent, Watrin,[31] by the striking miners of Decazeville (1886) was a horrible crime or a wholesome act of popular justice, according to the point of view. The fury of the mob is explained, if not excused, by the fact that this Watrin was allowed a premium of five per cent. upon every reduction of wages he was able to accomplish, coupled with the other fact that his brutal and insatiate rapacity had forced wages down thirty per cent. in eight years.

The anarchist house-breaker, Clement Duval, had been seriously handicapped in the struggle for existence. In the Franco-Prussian war he had received two wounds which had rendered him permanently unfit for his trade of iron worker, and had contracted a disease which had forced him to spend nearly four years out of ten in various hospitals. He had experienced real want in the course of his many periods of enforced idleness.

Pini had suffered much at the hands of society and the state. Many a time, when out of work, he had been glad to sleep on straw, at two cents a night, in the faubourg of La Glaciere. His autobiography, which he wrote in jail, while awaiting his trial, is, like every formal utterance Pini ever made, exceedingly illuminating. Of his early life he says:-

"Son of a poor pariah, I began my career surrounded with the luxuries which the _bourgeoisie_ heaps upon us from our very cradles. I saw six of my brothers die of want. One of my sisters wore herself out in the service of a stingy family of bourgeois.

"My old father (an ancient Garibaldian), after a painful existence, in which he had given to the _bourgeoisie_ sixty years of his sweat and enriched a good number of employers, died like a dog in a charity hospital.