Part 2

On the other side the village of Argenteuil seemed as if it were dead. The hills of Orgremont and Saumons commanded the whole country round. The great plain stretching out as far as Nanterne was empty as air. Nothing in sight but cherry trees, and stretches of grey soil.

Monsieur Sauvage pointed with his finger to the heights above and said, "The Prussians are up there," and a vague sense of uneasiness seized upon the two friends.

The Prussians! They had never set eyes upon them, but for months past they had felt their presence near, encircling their beloved Paris, ruining their beloved France, pillaging, massacring, insatiable, invincible, invisible, all-powerful, and as they thought on them a sort of superstitious terror seemed to mingle with the hate they bore towards their unknown conquerors. Morisot murmured, "Suppose we were to meet them," and Sauvage replied, with the instinctive gallantry of the Parisian, "Well! we would offer them some of our fish for supper."

All the same they hesitated before venturing into the country, intimidated as they were by the all-pervading silence.

Eventually Monsieur Sauvage plucked up courage: "Come along, let's make a start; but we must be cautious."

They went through the vineyard, bent double, crawling along from bush to bush, ears and eyes upon the alert.

Only one strip of ground lay between them and the river. They began to run, and when they reached the bank they crouched down among the dry reeds for shelter.

Morisot laid his ear to the ground to listen for the sound of footsteps, but he could hear nothing. They were alone, quite alone; gradually they felt reassured and began to fish.

The deserted island of Maranthe hid them from the opposite shore. The little restaurant was closed, and looked as if it had been neglected for years.

Monsieur Sauvage caught the first gudgeon, Monsieur Morisot the second. And every minute they pulled up their lines with a little silver object dangling and struggling on the hook. Truly, a miraculous draught of fishes. As the fish were caught they put them in a net which floated in the water at their feet. They positively revelled in enjoyment of a long-forbidden sport. The sun shone warm upon their backs. They heard nothing--they thought of nothing--the rest of the world was as nothing to them. They simply fished.

Suddenly a smothered sound, as it were underground, made the earth tremble. The guns had recommenced firing. Morisot turned his head, and saw above the bank, far away to the left, the vast shadow of Mont Valerien, and over it the white wreath of smoke from the gun which had just been fired. Then a jet of flame burst forth from the fortress in answer, a moment later followed by another explosion. Then others, till every second as it seemed the mountain breathed out death, and the white smoke formed a funeral pall above it.

Monsieur Sauvage shrugged his shoulders. "They are beginning again," he said.

Monsieur Morisot, anxiously watching his float bob up and down, was suddenly seized with rage against the belligerents and growled out: "How idiotic to kill one another like that."

Monsieur Sauvage: "It's worse than the brute beasts."

Monsieur Morisot, who had just hooked a bleak, said: "And to think that it will always be thus so long as there are such things as Governments."

Monsieur Sauvage stopped him: "The Republic would not have declared war."

Monsieur Morisot in his turn: "With Kings we have foreign wars, with the Republic we have civil wars."

Then in a friendly way they began to discuss politics with the calm common-sense of reasonable and peace-loving men, agreeing on the one point that no one would ever be free. And Mont Valerien thundered unceasingly, demolishing with its cannon-balls French houses, crushing out French lives, ruining many a dream, many a joy, many a hope deferred, wrecking much happiness, and bringing to the hearts of women, girls, and mothers in France and elsewhere, sorrow and suffering which would never have an end.

"It's life," said Monsieur Morisot.

"Say rather that it's death," said Monsieur Sauvage.

They started, scared out of their lives, as they felt that someone was walking close behind them. Turning round, they saw four men, four tall, bearded men, dressed as servants in livery, and wearing flat caps upon their heads. These men were covering the two fishermen with rifles.

The rods dropped from their frightened hands, and floated aimlessly down the river. In an instant the Frenchmen were seized, bound, thrown into a boat, and ferried over to the island.

Behind the house they had thought uninhabited was a picket of Prussian soldiers. A hairy giant, who was sitting astride a chair, and smoking a porcelain pipe, asked them in excellent French if they had had good sport.

A soldier placed at the feet of the officer the net full of fish, which he had brought away with him.

"Not bad, I see. But we have other fish to fry. Listen, and don't alarm yourselves. You are a couple of French spies sent out to watch my movements, disguised as fishermen. I take you prisoners, and I order you to be shot. You have fallen into my hands--so much the worse for you. It is the fortune of war. Inasmuch, however, as you came through the lines you are certainly in possession of the password. Otherwise you could not get back again. Give me the word and I will let you go."

The two friends, livid with fear, stood side by side, their hands nervously twitching, but they answered not a word.

The officer continued: "No one need ever know it. You will go home quietly, and your secret will go with you. If you refuse it is death for you both, and that instantly. Take your choice."

They neither spoke nor moved.

The Prussian calmly pointed to the river and said: "Reflect, in five minutes you will be at the bottom of that water. I suppose you have families."

Mont Valerien thundered unceasingly.

The two Frenchmen stood perfectly still and silent.

The officer gave an order in German. Then he moved his chair farther away from the prisoners, and a dozen soldiers drew up in line twenty paces off.

"I will give you one minute," he said, "not one second more."

He got up leisurely, and approached the two Frenchmen. He took Morisot by the arm and said, in an undertone: "Quick! Give me the word. Your friend will know nothing. I will appear to give way."

Monsieur Morisot did not answer.

The Prussian took Monsieur Sauvage aside and said the same thing to him.

Monsieur Sauvage did not answer.

They found themselves once more side by side.

The officer gave another order; the soldiers raised their guns.

By accident Morisot's glance fell upon the net full of fish on the ground a few steps off. A ray of sunshine lit up their glittering bodies, and a sudden weakness came over him. "Good-bye, Monsieur Sauvage," he whispered.

"Good-bye, Monsieur Morisot," replied Monsieur Sauvage. They pressed each other's hands, trembling from head to foot.

"Fire," said the officer.

Monsieur Sauvage fell dead on his face. Monsieur Morisot, of stronger build, staggered, stumbled, and then fell right across the body of his friend, with his face turned upwards to the sky, his breast riddled with balls.

The Prussian gave another order. His men dispersed for a moment, returning with cords and stones. They tied the stones to the feet of the dead Frenchmen, and carried them down to the river.

Mont Valerien thundered unceasingly.

Two soldiers took Morisot by the head and feet. Two others did the same to Sauvage. The bodies swung to and fro, were launched into space, described a curve, and plunged feet first into the river.

The water bubbled, boiled, then calmed down, and the little wavelets, tinged with red, circled gently towards the bank.

The officer, impassive as ever, said, "It is the fishes' turn now."

His eye fell upon the gudgeon lying on the grass. He picked them up, and called out, "Wilhelm." A soldier in a white cap appeared. He threw the fish towards him.

"Fry these little animals for me at once, while they are still alive and kicking. They will be delicious."

Then he began smoking again.

_Babies._

It is what a simple young writer once called "a beautiful truism" that baby is one of oldest subjects in the world--indeed, it is almost as old as man--and yet it has seldom or never been treated with completeness. No doubt one reason for that is the fact that baby has never been able to make itself heard except in inarticulate cries, and no doubt also another reason is that people in general have not been until lately interested in any babies but their own.

The difference between ancient and modern times is remarkable in nothing more than in the treatment of babies. Human life, merely as such, was considered less sacred then than now, and the average view of the baby was simply utilitarian. Was the baby, male or female, a healthy baby? Was it likely to become a sturdy citizen or a stout soldier, or to be the capable mother of strong children? Then let the baby live. Babies that did not satisfy these conditions were disposed of much as we dispose of superfluous puppies or kittens. And not even now, moreover, is baby life considered throughout all the world as something in itself delightful and valuable. Savage people and tribes are not such sinners in this regard as half-civilised nations like those of India and China.

"What is the use of rearing daughters?" asked an intelligent Chinaman not long ago of an inquiring Englishman. "When young they are only an expense, and when grown they marry and go away. Whereas a son----."

What a world of difference there is between that sentiment and this of "A Cradle Song," a recent poem by the young poet W. B. Yeats, where the mother addresses her baby thus:--

"I kiss you and kiss you, my arms round my own; Ah! how I shall miss you, my dear, when you're grown!"

To us, in these later times, and with all the sentiments of Christian civilisation fostered in us, it is almost incomprehensible that any grown human beings could have the heart to extinguish the first struggling life of babies; most of all does it seem incomprehensible that the mother, whose nature is wont to well up and flow out at the first helpless cry of her infant, and the father, whose instinct is to hover over and protect and "fend for" both mother and child in their weakness, could ever surrender, or with their own hands destroy, the creature whom they have brought into the world. But, strong as are the natural instincts, stronger still in many is religious fanaticism, stronger is a national or tribal tradition. And when we consider that it has taken ages of Christian culture and feeling to bring us to our present height of imaginative sympathy with all forms of life, till now we are agreed that no more beautiful, sacred, or divine sight is to be seen under the sun than that of a mother with a child in her arms, then we can understand that, while it is an outrage, a sin, and a crime to destroy a child among the taught of Christendom, it is but a hideous barbarism among the uninstructed of heathendom.

Turning to consider particularly the treatment of babies in various lands, by various peoples and tongues, we are compelled to note that even where infanticide or "exposure" is not practised, a similar result is worked out through the hardships--sometimes unconscious, sometimes designed--of infant life. The conditions of existence among many savage tribes are so severe that only the "fittest," the sturdiest, and wiriest constitutions can survive. There is, for instance, a very fine and intelligent tribe of blacks in the neighbourhood of the Cameroons, named the Duallas, which imposes from the first a very violent test upon the constitutions of their offspring. Like the ancient Germans, the Duallas take a child when only four or five days old and plunge it in the river. This is repeated every day till the child is strong and hardy enough to bathe itself, or till it has succumbed beneath the treatment. Other less intelligent and more savage tribes of Africans train their children to endure torture from a very early age. Even the average nursing of the negro mother is enough to try the toughness of the child's constitution. When the child is being fed he is set astride his mother's hip; and he must hold on how he can and get what nutriment he can, while his mother moves about her ordinary duties. When he is not thus attached to his mother he lies on a little bed of dried grass on the ground, in all the simplicity in which Nature brought him into the world, and crams himself with earth or whatever he can lay his little black hands on.

Akin to the negro's treatment of children--though considerably in advance as regards tenderness and picturesqueness--is that of the Red Indians of North America. The father and mother combine to make a very curious and ornamental close cradle or bed for the "papoose." In shape it is not unlike the long oval shield of the Zulu. The father cuts it out of wood or stout bark with his tomahawk and scalping-knife, and covers it with deer or buffalo skin, or, if he has not these, with matting or the softest bark of trees, leaving the upper side loose and open. The mother then adorns and embroiders it with beads and grasses, and lines and pads it with the softest grass or moss or rags she can find. The "papoose" is lightly strapped in with soft thongs fastened to the board and passing under his arms, and then the covering is laced over him as one laces up a shoe, and nothing but the face of the "papoose" is left exposed. Thus done up, baby can be hung (with a thong attached to his cradle) on the branch of a tree, or from the pole of the wigwam, or set in a corner out of the way. It may seem to us that the close confinement and the upright position of these nests cannot be very comfortable, but it is said that after tumbling about a while on the grass or among the dogs of the wigwam the Indian baby frequently cries to go back to his solitary nest. In this wise, too, is he carried, slung over his mother's back, when the tribe is on the march. The oval thing we have described is the prevalent pattern of cradle among American Indians, though in the extreme north or in the extreme south modifications of the style obtain. The Flat-head mother, for instance, makes her papoose into a round bundle, with folds of bark and thongs of deer-skin, and carries it in a wooden receptacle something like a canoe, slung on her back, with a little pent-house or shade projecting over the baby's face.

It is worth noting that this complete swaddling of infants is almost universal among both barbarous and civilised peoples who dwell in sub-tropical or temperate climates. It is done not so much (or not only) to keep the child warm, but to prevent it from scratching itself, from moving about and hurting itself, and from bruising itself or breaking its tender bones if it should chance to fall. A baby, however, that is done up tight and flat as a Red-skin baby is, must be almost as safe on a top-shelf as on the ground. The close swaddling and padding of baby is found, the more we consider it, to be the fashion among both civilised and barbarous kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, where women are very hard-worked. It is easy to understand how that must be. When the mother digs and plants the soil, and grinds the corn, draws the water and cooks the food for her husband and children--as does the savage woman of every clime--when she spins and brews, and makes and mends, and cooks and cleans, as does the house-wife of almost every degree in almost every country of Europe; when the mother has thus her hands full of toil or occupation from morning till night, and when the expense or the convenience of a nurse is not available, what can she do, what must she do, with baby, but contrive some means of keeping him from troubling her and at the same time from damaging himself? Therefore the American Indian papoose is bound and laced in the thing we have seen; therefore the Amazon Indian child is slung in a close net-like hammock from tree to tree; therefore the New Guinea child hangs like a bunch of onions in a bag-net either from a jutting bamboo of his father's hut or on his mother's back by a strap passed across the forehead; and therefore the European baby of several countries is wrapped and padded in the ways we are about to describe.

Of all house-wives in Europe, probably the German is the hardest worked, and of all European mothers the German practises most completely the art of swathing and padding her baby, and of putting it on the shelf. The German baby is swaddled in a long, narrow pillow, which is made to meet completely round him, being tucked up over his feet and turned under his solemn chin. Three bands of gay blue ribbons are then passed round the whole bundle and tied in large, florid bows about where his chest, his waist, and his ankles may be supposed to be. In this guise he can be deposited as an ornament either on the sumptuous best bed, or on the kitchen dresser, or on the drawing-room table. How fond the Germans are of this presentment of baby may be guessed from the fact that it figures largely in their picture-books, among their dolls, and even in the bakers' shops at Easter-time, made of dough and covered with sugar to be devoured by greedy live babies.

The German mother has the completest confidence in the safety of her baby when swaddled thus. But the confidence is sometimes betrayed by the wrappage, as witnesseth the following story. A party of peasants set out for the christening of a new baby, the baby being swaddled and wrapped in the usual manner. The way was long to the church, and the weather was cold; indeed, snow lay on the ground. The anxiety of the christening over, the whole party--parents, sponsors, and friends--adjourned to the village inn to warm and cheer themselves with _schnaps_, or what the Londoner terms "a drop of something short." They then set off on their return home lightly and gaily, and their hearts being merry within them they essayed a snatch or two of song and a step or two of dance. Home at length was reached, and the interesting christened bundle was laid on the table. The whole party--parents, sponsors, and friends--stared agape and in silence; there was the pillow, the ribbons, and the bows all complete, but where was the baby? Someone ventured to raise the bundle; it was quite limp and empty! Baby was gone! Back the whole party hurried on its lonely track, and baby was found asleep in the snow, about midway between the church and the village. He was a sturdy child, and the story runs that he escaped with a violent sneeze or two, which, it is said, the anxious parents strove to allay by popping him into the oven. There can be no doubt that the German child that could survive the pillow, and the snow, and the oven, must have been sturdy indeed.

Like the German mother in her treatment of infants is the Austrian--the real Austrian, that is, who is of Teutonic origin; for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy includes so many nationalities, so many kindreds and peoples and tongues, that it would need a whole article to write of them all. And like also, with a curious difference, is the Swedish and Norwegian mother. The Swedish child, or _barn_--(compare the Yorkshire _barn_, and the Scottish _bairn_)--is swaddled in more complex fashion than the German. It is wound about with six-inch-wide bandages, sometimes with the arms free and sometimes not, sometimes the legs included in the whole bundle, but usually swathed separately. The bandages are traditionally supposed to make the limbs and figure grow straight. The bandaged _barn_ is then wrapped in a pillow and tied about with ribbons and bows like the German child, except that frequently his arms are free and his legs are shortly and stoutly suggested by the tucking in of the pillow. After that he may be fastened flatwise to another pillow, and slung perpendicularly from a supple pole stuck in the wall, so that he looks like a very queer fish indeed, fit to be shown outside the shop of an angling-tackle maker. Like the German, the Swedish child always wears a cap, which is borderless and of special fineness for its first Sunday, when it is christened. Then, also, it wears beads upon its neck, and gorgeous garments with gay bows of ribbon, all which are provided by the godmother. In the remoter parts of both Sweden and Norway it is still the custom every Sunday to carry these swaddled infants to church, which is probably a long way off. They are not taken _into_ church, however, but buried for warmth in the snow, in which a small hole is left for them to breathe through.

In less primitive parts of Sweden and Norway, however, and among the better-off, the pillow-bundle often gives place to a wooden cradle, shaped like a trough or a French _baquet_, which is usually suspended by a spiral spring from the roof. The elastic motion can scarcely be of the most delightful kind to baby we should think, for there is nothing to prevent the cradle from spinning or twisting round at its will, and so producing dizziness. In Russia, too, a similar cradle is used--contrived, however, more rudely as to both structure and motion. It is an oblong box or wicker basket, with a cord from each of its four corners converging to the hook or the rafter from which it is hung, and with a looped cord underneath, in which the mother puts her foot to swing her baby. In winter--which in Russia is long and severe--the cradles or, sometimes, the hammocks in which the youngest children sleep are slung round the great stove upon which the parents and other adult members of the family pass the night, wrapped in their sheep-skins.