A Tatter of Scarlet: Adventurous Episodes of the Commune in the Midi 1871

The last hours of the Black Band in Aramon were marked by many exploits still remembered in the town. Citizens, even men marked for their former devotion to the cause of the wor...

Among the panelled mirrors and gilt splendours of the Hotel de Ville of Aramon I opened my eyes. A doctor had been attending me. My head was tightly bandaged and my left hand wa...

At the house in the garden the new servants stood ready, neat and smiling. My father had written to a Protestant pastor at Grenoble to send him two maids of his religion. Accord...

The weather changed brusquely during the day of the 7th April. Till now it had been lovely spring weather--indeed, save for the shorter days, comparable to our finest summers in...

Hugh Deventer and I reached Orange only to hear that the recruiting parties of the Garibaldians had gone away north. But on the railway, hundreds of wagons laden with supplies w...

It was about this time that Matteo le Gaucher--Matteo the Left-handed--began to interest himself in our concerns. At first sight nothing was more unlikely than that Matteo could...

The street lamps had not been lighted when I landed on the left bank of the river, well above any outposts of the new revolt. I pulled my skiff safely under shelter of some bush...

Deventer and I came upon Rhoda Polly while we were getting our breath after the rush upstairs. We were old friends, and Rhoda Polly did not even put aside her rifle to greet us.

It was indeed high time that I went away from the perils of Aramon-les-Ateliers. Indeed, Keller Bey was in greater danger and condemned to greater isolation owing to my stay. At...

It was the evening of the 27th of January, and we were back in Autun. The Milanese were later than most in getting inside the gates. We had pushed far forward after the retreati...

We occupied the two big gable rooms looking east on the second floor of the Kellers' house in the market square of Autun. This suited us admirably, though we were obliged to kee...

"I am going to help _my_ father," he whispered. "Don't you run off without telling yours what you mean to do. He can't prevent you, if you have made your mind up."

The station-master was right. I saw how things were tending and how the revolt was sure to end. Yet I was by nature so curious of the oddities of the business that I put off spe...

"I am sure she has not the least idea of that. She was in the very thick of a discussion upon the possibility of factories and ateliers being run entirely by working men. The wh...

"These are our potential Troppmanns," said Gaston Cremieux, as we passed through the grounds of the riding-school. "We must not blame them too much. It is partly our fault. We h...

There was strangely little exultation. Each man felt the tussle was yet to come and nerved himself for it. The big square lay out silent under the moon, splashed with the shadow...

On my return I was, as I had expected, put to the question, with lenience by Keller Bey, but with biting irony and something like personal dislike by the Procureur Raoux. Then s...

After a while Deventer and I went back to our joint study, where we essayed to do some work. But mostly we spoke apart, with lips that hardly moved, of our plans and all that la...

Deventer and I leaned on the parapet and watched the curious things which were happening in Aramon across the river. We were the biggest boys in the school and kept even the Sen...

The black day which was coming upon Aramon was not long in dawning. Barres and Imbert were the leaders of the anarchist party, which had always secretly opposed the Marxian comm...

We were hard put to it before we got the madman in, and then it was worse than ever. For he, our master, the bravest man that I ever saw or think to see, sat down beside his fri...

The beaten wolves had slunk back to their lairs, but the fierceness of their hate may be guessed from the fact that they would neither bury their dead nor permit us to do it. Th...

I met Rhoda Polly by arrangement made openly on a post card, which could be discussed in conclave and passed from hand to hand. I should be walking over to the restaurant of Mer...

I might have thought much more about Gaston Cremieux and the dark fatality of his eyes, if other things had not immediately distracted my attention. The garrison had had its noo...

Garden Cottage was occupied on the eleventh of March, 1871. For several days before that, the great discharging lorries lent by Mr. Deventer had toiled up the hill, the four sto...

We slept late the next morning, Hugh and I. Indeed, Hugh always slept late unless he had the luck to be awakened. We did not breakfast till Linn had returned from her watch-dog...

I now enter on the final struggle, but before doing so I must recapitulate if only to remind myself of where stands the tale and how much yet remains to be told.

At Chateau Schneider I was received with tumultuary questioning on my return from the reed-beds. Where had I been? What had I been doing? I might easily have got my throat cut a...

Keller Bey came to Aramon ten days after the time of our return. Before letting us go Alida decided that I must write her every day, and Hugh once a week. She had never seen a l...

"The gentleman has perfectly recovered," he announced with sympathetic gravity in answer to Alida's questions. "Matteo of Arqua has long been subject to such attacks, but the be...

Rhoda Polly was on her way to see her friend Alida, and knowing well that parental permission would be refused her in the troublous state of the neighbourhood, she had taken it...

On the third morning after our entry into the Ricciotti's first foreign legion, both Hugh and I awoke stiff and chilled by the frost. The lucky among us had early found quarters...

The first Commune of Aramon had fallen. Its place was taken by a Committee of Public Safety sitting at the Riding School. Of these the chiefs were Georges Barres, the Catalan, w...

Hannah and Liz Deventer came in arm and arm. Hannah grave and sweet, with her air of taking admiration for granted and being rather bored by it; Liz dimpled and glancing from on...

The 18th of March dawned clear and bright, the wind still a little chill, but the whole land, as we looked down upon it from our Gobelet watch-tower on the front of St. Andre's...

"The Children" were young men, some of them hardly more than boys, who had followed the Dictator from Italy. They came from all parts of the Peninsula, but the wide windy Milane...

I need not tell at length of the wonderful talk, so new and strange to me, in which men and things were judged wholly from a revolutionary point of view. But all the same I bega...

I admit that I was gloomy and disappointed as I turned to walk back with Rhoda Polly--disappointed in the turn things had taken, in the ill success of my cherished diplomacy, an...

Afterwards I found that I had been mistaken, but perhaps not more than most. For it is the rarest thing in the world to find a son entering upon life, able to do justice to his...

I suppose this is as good a place as any to bring in and explain the daughters of the house of Deventer. I had known them ever since I could remember. First as "kids" to be prop...