THE ROLL OF THE DRUM.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume V, Issue 52, 27 December 1890, Page 7

THE ROLL OF THE DRUM.

AT-a-tat-tat ! The dram ! I suppose you have heard it. Perhaps if you were young and the blood in your veins was liquid fire, it set your fingers tingling and your feet moving ; or if years had drawn the enthusiasm from your heart and left you passive and irritable, you * confounded ’ the stupid noise that disturbed you in your sleep, at your book, or your prayers—eighteen and eighty view the same thing in different lights. We are a military nation, we French. War is our pastime and our glory, but we cannot bear reverses : we are too mercurial, too volatile, as the books say ; when the tide of victory is with us, we are unconquerable. History knows all abou‘ this. Then again, we must have novelty ; nothing contents us for very long. Why, we wanted a Republic when all the rest of Europe was satisfied with the old thing —the king and his right, with the lord and his right, the Church and its right, every right but the right of the People. Tonnerre bleu there I am moralising, when all the world knows that it is the last thing on earth a Frenchman and a

soldier should do. I must tell my tale instead of letting ray tongue rattle on like the old woman of the faubourg up yonder. The roll of the drum. I was going to tell you about the time I first heard it in real earnest. Observe, I carry a rifle for the Republic now, but I have not always been on the side of the established cause. Once I was what they call a rebel —a revolutionist—a red hot one too. Few among you have ever seen a barricade ; of course not. They don't build them now. Perhaps they are no longer necessary. I don’t know, ask the blouses. They are the people to ask. I suppose they have everything they want, thanks to our good laws and our good legislators, who think always of the poor people and never of themselves. Work and wages, good laws, good wine, something for the ‘ pot-au teu ’ and a holiday now and then. It were ungrateful not to be contented. It teas a barricade, lonnerre! I have seen some hot work since—some hard knocks in Algiers and blood flowing in streams among the vineyards by the Rhine, but never anything as sharp as that first fight of mine. The times were very bad, and the fire had been smouldering foralong time. There was trouble among the workmen. You know what that leads to. The debates in the clubs every night became more violent. Threats were heard on every side. Then the students ; they are always in these things ; they get education, plenty of it, education brings advanced ideas, and after that comes revolution. Besides, time hangs heavily on their hands, poor fellows, and they feel the necessity of doing something for * la patrie ’ even if it is only to cry * a has le clericalisnie ’ when the poor harmless old bishop rolls by in his carriage. Well, the explosion came finally and we went out. It was great fun at fiist, pulling up the street to make a barricade ; we took the furniture from some of the houses, and the horses and conveyances that came by, in fact everything we could get, and piled it all on, the women and children helping in that. By and by, when it was all finished, these went away and we got down behind the pile and waited.

Tete de Die*.! What smart things we said to while away the time till the soldiers came—jokes, bon-mots flew all round ;it was superb. Well do [ remember big Pierre, from the faubourg St. Antoine ; ‘ Pierre le grand,’ we used to call him, on acconnt of his great size and strength. He kept the ‘ sans culottes ’ in a roar with his big coarse laugh, and his great crude broad jokes. He was a sort of a leader there where it was every man for himself, besides which, some of us young ones were rather afraid of Pierre, who could scent blood like a tiger, and enjoyed the reputation of being one of the wickedest old villains that ever cheated the guillotine. He had been drinking a lot of absinthe, I think, for his blotched face was furiously red, and he i idled about from one side of the street to the other swearing fearfully at everybody and everything. You should have seen him lifting great paving-stones that puzzler! two or three of us to move. He was armed with an old fowling-piece whose stock was broken and mended with twine, and he double loaded it twice to my knowledge. I was sitting down in the corner of the barricade thinking very seriously if I should ever come out of there alive, when a volley of imprecations from old Pierre aroused me.

‘A pin, comrades,’ I heard him bawl out. ‘A pin, for the love of Hod, Jeannette.’ (He kept calling his weapon after a dear little grizette, whose health we drank every night at the wine shop.) ‘Jeannette has lost the sight of one of her pretty eyes. ’

None of those near him had what he wanted, anil he was getting terribly abusive, when up steps a curly-headed lad of about seventeen, and, taking a scarf-pin out of a neckcloth he was wearing, gave it timidly to big red capped Pierre.

* Hullo I garcon,’ said he. ‘ A love-token for Jeinnette, eh ?’

‘ Non, Monsieur.’ replied the little fellow, quite pathetically. ‘ ’Tis a thing my mother gave me with her blessing and a kiss when I was leaving the old home down in La Yendee, yonder, to come up here to Paris to learn the law.’ Some of the men began to laugh, but Pierre turned on them with a great oath. * Silence ! you blackguards ; you laugh at everything. ’ * And what dost thou here among men, talking of thy mother, stripling? he added quite softly. ‘ I would fight for the cause of the people,’ said the boy. ‘ Vive le peuple !’ shouted the others. ‘ La Vendee fought for the Lilies in ’93,’ went on Pierre : * How then comes this ?’

‘ Free la republique !’ cried the youngster, taking off his cap. ‘ Vive la republique !’ yelled the crowd. ‘ Well said, youngster,' exclaimed the elder, handing him back his pin. ‘ Well said, but thou hadst bettei have stayed at home with thy mother, to comfort her old days.’ ‘ Hark '.’ Rat-a-tat-tat—the roll of the drum !

‘ Take care, boys ; here they come,’ cried someone. They were coming, sure enough. I could hear the rattle of the drum nearer and nearer. I looked along the line and took a glance at my comrades as they crowded down Irehind the debris. It is a queer thing to see that expression which grows on men’s faces when under the influence of a strong excitement. They all look towards the same thing. An expression with a terrible sameness in it. ‘ Here they are,’ shouted old Pierre, as they turned the corner. ‘ Keep quiet and let them come up close.’ He had seen some of that work before, and knew all about it. I remember the short gasp I gave as they came in sight, advancing at the double, with a little brat of a drummer beating time in front. Closer ! Closer ! Halt I Fire !

Saerebleu.' What a funny thing it is when you see the smoke leap out of the muzzles of the guns, and the bullets come whistling around you for the first time. Then I heard the guttural voice of * Pierre le grand ’ growling out * Now then, get teady !’ Present ! Fire !! Bang!!!

When the smoke cleared away I could see that a lot of them had been hit ; but thev didn't seem to mind it a bit. They just closet! in and fired another volley, and then came at us with a rush.

We loaded ami fired as quickly as we could. Twice they fell back, and we thought they were going to retire, when a handsome young officer with epaulettes came out in front of them, and, waving his sword, led them at it again. They came right up now, and we had it hand to hand. < fur fellows fought like demons, hitting out right and left with the butts of their guns, or anything that came to hand. Big Pierre, towering like Goliath above us all. struck alsrat him like a fiend. He was three parts tiger at any time, but now. with one foot on a big paving stone, and a great meat axe, swinging above his head (which he had taken from thehandsof a butcher, through whose body agrenadier's bayonet had just passed), he seemed the incarnation of all that is devilish in man. Whack ! The butt of a mu-ket caught him on the neck just as he was recovering from a terrific blow, by which he had cut one of the others down, and sent him reeling back. Just then the curly headed lad from La 3 endee, was rushed by a big grenadier, whose bayonet in another second would have spitted him like a ferret, when Pierre threw himself between the two and

took the steel in his breast. Down he went, the boy with him. At that moment the butt of a piece took what little sense I had left out of me, and the soldiers rushed over what remained of the bairicade. When I recovered enough to look round the fight was all over. We had lost the day. I could hear them shooting at intervals down the streets, and the roll of the drum far off in the distance. That cursed little drummer still kept up his rat-a-tat-tat. I could hear it in my head for many a day afterwards. I looked around. The scene, which a quarter of an hour before had been filled with all the sights and sounds of the infernal regions, was quite still. The Vendean, with big Pierre’s great coarse head in his arms, was trying to stop the bleeding from a dreadful hole the grenadier's bayonet had made in his chest. ‘No use. No use, mon cher,’ growled the old villain with a ghastly smile. ‘ Those pins stick deep and stay. I have got it this time. Go home and be agood boy to thy mother, and tell her Pierre le Grand was with thee in the barricade.’ The blood rushed out of his mouth, and he rolled over dead as a stone.

Rat-a-tat-tat ! the drum. There it was again, but old Pierre did not hear it that time, he was gone. Whither? Somehow I cannot help thinking that the ‘ Ism Dieu ’ is not too hard on men like that, who cannot help being what they are.

Lawyer : ‘On what ground do you seek a divorce ?' Female client : ‘ My husband is an amateur photographer, and ’ Lawyer : ‘ That will do. We’ll have no trouble about it. My wife has the craze, too, and I've been taking my meals at a restaurant for two weeks.’ Mr Goodcatch (calling on the eldest sister): ‘Why, Johnny, how you are growing. You’ll be a man liefore your sister, it you keep on ’ Johnny : ‘ You l»et I will. Sister’ll never be a man if she keeps on being twenty like she has for the last five years.' Then there was trouble in the household.