MY ROSE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 4860, 9 March 1887, Page 4

MY ROSE.

—♦ A. Jttemory of the Commune.

[itY F. W. L. Adams.]

IV. Ido not think I am a coward by nature, but, if I had been, the courage of M. and Madame Belot, and, for the matter of that, of Laurent, would have made mo brave. M. Belot was a republican, a middle-class ie- - ---pnblican of the dogmatic stern type. When Napoleon was leaving Paris, M. Belor, happening to meet tLe procession, did not take off his hat, but stood, as he said, sternly staring at the man ; this was noticed, and M". Belot was hustled, and his hat torn from him. " The pale-faced scoundrel," said M. Belot, iii recounting the incident to me. "I knew it was the last time we should see him here, and he knew ! He docs well now to leave us to quell tho tempest he has raised." M. Belot was out most of tho day passing from house to house, seeking any whs were not too panic-struck to attempt to resist tho anarchy that was upon us. Madame Belot and I went more than once to meet him at different places later on in the day. We were stopped at a- barricade hero and there, and told that we could not proceed unless we piled up a .stone on it. Madame Belot at once quietly refused, and we made a circuit—the men and women who had asked us were surly and angry, but did nothing to us. Luurent, too, was moving about, trying to do some good. Both ho and M. Belut described the state of 2>auio as appalling. A few days later I, for the first _ time, saw a man killed. I was standing in the middle of a crowd that was being fiercely harangued by a wild socialist, when suddenly, just above us, we heard the crack of a rifle, and a puff of smoke rose from a second-story window of a neighbouring house. A man, not half a yard from me, ■was hit. We were too closely packed to let him fall. His back was to me ;he kept quickly throwing his head forward. Then I saw his face; it was twisted with pain or effort, and he was blowing blood and foam from his mouth. "Thus," thundered tho Socialist, " thus they assassinate the people! Revenge ! Let U8 take our revenge !" There was a shout and rush, and I and the man who had been shot were separated, but not before I had seen that he was killed. I came back home, and had tea with Madame Belot. M. Belot had not yet returned, and she was anxious about him. At twelve o'clock, however, he arrived unhurt. "It is a nightmare." were the first words lie said, " they will lay the city in ashes rather than surrender, and, what is heart-rending, is that so many of them have noble hearts. Let us speak of it no more to-night. Give me something to eat, my foiend, I am hungry." It was indeed, as he said, a nightmare. And yet, or so it seemed to me, the whole affair was being carried on by a small but determined minority in the face of a panicstricken and imbecile majority. I waudered about the city fearlessly. What struck me most, was the number of women who were actively engaged in the revolution, and their courage and ferocity. I was told that they would go out to the guns and bribe the gunners with drink or kisses or let them shoot. Perhaps it was. Nothing was too extravagant either for the saying or tho doing at this time. Coming back one afternoon from one of my walks, it occurred to me to enquire after the singer, as I used to call her to myself. Her window had been closed for several days. It was a small "poor furnished hotel" in which she lived. The waiter informed me that tho young lady after whom I was enquiring was called Mademoiselle Rose. No other name J , "But no, sir; Mademoiselle Rose," quite short. And it was evident from the waiter's manner of speech, that he had small, if any, belief in the personal disinterestedness of my enquiries. There was more yet to learn, it appeared, after an interchange of a fivefranc piece. Mademoiselle Rose had been out most of the week, only coining in now and then for a few hours, and, besides, Mademoiselle Rose had not been back since yesterday morning, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I was interested in all this, more interested than either I cared at tho time to admit or could quite explain to myself. I went away, and, happening to see some roses for sale in a courageous shopkeeper's window, bought them, and took them home, intending to throw them to her if I had the chaucu. I was, I think, beginning to look on this girl as a sort of incarnation of my past life, and the might-have-been of it. I could not. get her face and form out of my mind. I dreamt about her. I dreamt that I loved her, and was married to her, that we were living together in an English country village in June, that I found her plucking roses, tb^t I came and plucked one, and gave it to her saying—" This—this is my rose ''" And she smiled, and kissed it, and p/vit it into her ._ breast. And I awoke. I could not get'out «Slieinfluence of my dream for the rest of II (morning. This was the last day of the siege. Tho Versailles troops broke in, 1 was told, at Auteuil and drove th* revolutionists before thorn. with, fearful slaughter. The noise of rifle-shots, now oJoso, now far, continued, off and on, all day. At Madame Belot's request, I stayed with her and M. Belot, who ■was ill in bed, his exertions having been too muchforhim. "Thisfinishes, tliisfinishes," he kept saying, " but afterwards 'r" what shajl xc do afterwards i" At last the oven3Pg came, and then tho night. Occasional shots closo to us could still bo heard at times. Once a bullet came through the wile-α-mangcr window and buried itself in tho ceiling, a wanton shot probably. [to be continued.]