The Unruly Passions of Eugenie R. (56 page)

 

An omnibus careens down from the top of the rue du Mail, heading away from Montmartre to the Great Cross, the wide expanse of intersection where Saint-Germain meets Saint-Michel. Near where Henri may have fought. The Salamandre on Gay-Lussac is open for business; a girl at the bar—a new sight all over Paris—wipes down the zinc with a cloth. At the Luxembourg gates, women steer baby carriages toward tranquil, buzzing comfort, as though it had not, so recently, been a place to line up and be shot. Couples walk arm and arm and a kiosk offers glasses of beer; pressed lemon and water. I turn onto the boulevard Saint-Jacques. I had meant to veer toward Val de Grace, but now, instead, I am on the rue d'Enfer. Gas lamps and trees in full leaf, exposed brick and crumbling plaster walls, a wooden fence and spiked iron gates; the afternoon sun pounding down, hot sweat running down under my arms and breasts, trickling down into my stays. Skirts—all bustles, now—and top hats mingle down the block. A crowd gathers for an exhibition of some kind, and a cool dark place out of the sun.

 

The pictures are lined up on the walls and divided by
quartier.
They are photographs, some of the first ever taken in Paris. Each section begins with a map; the monument, building, or street labeled in sharp black script, homage to the known city: école de medicine. hôpital hommes vénériens
.
My heart slows and my blood cools amid the murmur of voices and a swish of skirts. The light in the pictures like the brightness of midday diffused though a sudden rain. The sun comes out again, dazzling through the clouds. Just for a few moments, the street glistens, wet and empty; but everyone has rushed indoors.

 

The streets in these pictures are not lifelike, but empty. Shops without customers, as they were during the first siege and in anticipation of the second. The very kiosk I had just passed, the one by the Luxembourg gates, is shown with windows open for business, but the little round cork mats on the counter have no beer glasses upon them. Even the
pissoirs
are empty; no one fumbles with trouser buttons. In the Opéra-Madeleine section, on one corner stands a flower shop with roses standing in pails; on another, a china shop with white bowls in the window; opposite, a poster offering translations of documents and letters. Behind these, at the top of the street, peculiarly angled is a seven-story building with its gabled roof, spots in windows high enough to receive afternoon light. The windows of the lower flats are shuttered; eggs and butter are for sale in a shop on the ground level. These pictures could not have been taken during the emptiness of the siege, then, because there would have been no eggs. My heart begins to pound and my breath comes faster; my stomach, calm just a few moments ago, lurches.

Someone behind me is explaining the camera's mechanism. These streets were full of people, he explains, but because of the swiftness of their movements and the length of time needed to burn the image onto the plate, only the standing structures, radiant with light, remain. He is pointing at something that looks like a misty smudge on the surface, and I place my face very close, straining to see what has vanished.

And indeed, to look closely is to see light smears resolve into eerie silhouettes: a nipped-in waistline, the flare of crinoline; the round shape of a stovepipe hat. At a theater at matinee time, a crowd entering in a great rush of movement. What appear to be clouds of smoke occluding the photograph resolve, at a closer look, into umbrellas. A mist is two heads leaning together, a couple walking arm in arm; and here is a single, spinning, silver-spoked carriage wheel—captured without axles, horse, or driver; hovering above the cobbles . . . the luminosity of these pictures is not rain but light diffused through vanished movement. In a picture of a junk shop, a jumble of chipped cups and plates, tables without a leg, chairs without backs . . . a cloudy smear at head level. Whose, and on what errand? While the exposure was taken, shop doors swung open and closed; lemonade was paid for and drunk, carriages wheeled in and out of the frame . . . Every picture packed with the living, with the motion of life both evident and evanesced at once. I go back to the beginning and look at every picture again. On one map I find the Royal Observatory, a block marked
ENFANTS ASSISTéS.
No camera could have captured the swift, furtive movements there. But the
tour
was long closed, anyway. The new authorities thought better of it.

But it is late in the day, and the
patronne
gives a sigh and pulls a black curtain across one end of the gallery. Another woman at the end of the hall has been looking as intently as I, making marks on a small tablet. I had to blink; her outline reminded me of Mlle. C.

Back outside, I blink again in the sunlight and find the café; order a lemonade, which warms quickly in the heat. Bits of pulp floating on top, turning from pale yellow to grayish while the boulevard fills and empties.

 

I have two letters with me, and I open the first now. Its postmarks and many stamps tell me that it is from Chandannagar, West Bengal. It is not from the man I hired; but the black ink has a familiar slant. There is a name, and an address, of another lawyer's office—this one in Paris. Tickets are waiting, writes Stephan. Two, because I will need to employ a companion for this journey. The ship is the
India Queen
and it sails for Calcutta in September.

I pause, take a breath, consult my heart; and my heart demurs to answer. But it is a woman's heart now—not a girl's; not unknown. And with me for good.

Berthe is with him, he writes. She is well. Determined, he says, upon knowing her mother.

The second letter is from Odette and encloses a note from Maxime Lisbonne. Henri Duport, he writes, was not executed, but deported to New Caledonia, along with Louise Michel and certain others. Blanqui, the old prisoner, intervened on his behalf. And there is a movement afoot for amnesty, repatriation of the exiled Communards. It will take a long time, he writes. But hope is alive. And Henri is alive.

 

It is not a sound that awakens me; not a bell or a clap of thunder; perhaps it is the movement of a hand, an arm flung open, the arc of a gesture to throw open the shutters and let in some air. But perhaps not. Perhaps it is just time to lift my eyes. To be flooded with vision. In the end, no one could walk these streets and remain blind.

I am more a seeker of beginnings, than ends. Beginnings are sweeter, after all. An encounter on a bridge over the Seine; finding a friend over the
fripier
's cart at the Temple; sharing a
pichet
in a seedy café or the bite of absinthe on the tongue at a long zinc bar. Although once you look closely, endings are deceptive. Once you do not turn the eyes away.

Rise of the Second Empire, 1848–1869

February 1848—King Louis Philippe abdicates, dissolving the "July Monarchy" of 1830 in favor of a provisional government.

March 1848—The working day is limited to ten hours in Paris, eleven in the provinces.

June 1848—Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is elected to the Constituent Assembly (along with Victor Hugo) but remains in exile in England until August.

December 1851—Louis Napoleon Bonaparte stages a coup d'état. Despite demonstrations of resistance, the coup is ratifi ed by plebiscite.

December 1852—Empire is proclaimed, with Louis Napoleon Bonaparte at its head as Napoleon III.

January 1853—Napoleon III marries Eugénie de Montijo, age twenty-eight, of the Spanish nobility.

July 1853—Georges Haussmann becomes prefect of the Seine, charged with the rebuilding of Paris.

1856—Birth and baptism of the prince imperial; Flaubert publishes
Madame Bovary
; photographer Charles Marville begins documenting Paris streets.

1857—Flaubert is prosecuted for "off ense of public morals."

February 1858—First of Bernadette Soubirous's visions at a grotto near Lourdes.

January 1860—Paris city limits are extended.

April 1861—American Civil War commences.

January 1862—France invades Mexico.

September 1862—Construction begins for reservoir and aqueduct to ensure water supply in Paris.

November 1862—Victor Hugo publishes Les
Misérables
.

1863—Napoleon III suggests that France, Britain, and Russia intervene in the American Civil War; Russia and Britain decline.

January 1863—Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation.

May 1863—Salon des Refusés launches the Impressionist painters.

1864—International Working Men's Association founded in London.

April 1864—The Austrian archduke and prince Ferdinand Maximilian, of the house of Hapsburg, is crowned Maximilian I of Mexico, with support from Mexican aristocrats and France.

April 1865—Robert E. Lee surrenders to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox.

April 1865—Lincoln is assassinated.

July 1866—Prussian army conquers and annexes Austria, France's ally, at Sadowa, in a move toward German unifi cation and expansion.

1867—Karl Marx publishes
Das Kapital
.

April 1867—The Great Exhibition opens in Paris, including "model workers' dwellings" and the Krupp cannon.

June 1867—Maximilian I is abandoned by French protectors and shot at Querétaro by Mexican nationalists.

May 1868—First issue of the leftist, empire-critical newspaper
La Lanterne
is published, becoming a bestseller among workers; its publisher is subsequently arrested.

May 1869—French elections result in defeats of pro-empire candidates.

July 12, 1869—Napoleon III announces liberalizing reforms, including freedom of the press.

August 1869—The Carpeaux sculpture
La Danse
, in front of the Opéra Garnier, is defaced for being too realistic.

November 28, 1869—At the last imperial ball at the Tuileries palace, Empress Eugénie dresses as Marie Antoinette.

 

The Empire's Collapse, 1870–1871

January 1870—The republican journalist Victor Noir is murdered by Prince Pierre Bonaparte, great-nephew of Napoleon I and Napoleon III's cousin.

July 1870—Otto von Bismarck advances the Hohenzollern prince Leopold of Sigmaringen for the vacant throne of Spain.

July 13, 1870—King Wilhelm of Prussia receives the French ambassador at Bad Ems, but refuses terms that no Hohenzollern candidates be proposed for the Spanish throne.

July 19, 1870—The French Empire declares war on Prussia.

July 28, 1870—Napoleon III and his fi fteen-year-old son, the prince imperial, embark from Saint-Cloud for the front.

August 3, 1870—A successful French attack near Saarbrücken; newspapers hail the "nvasion of Germany." Over the following few days, battles are fought at Wissemberg, Froeschwiller, Spicheren, Forbach, and Woerth.

August 15, 1870—The Prussians surround Strasbourg, France, the start of a fi fty-day siege.

September 3, 1870—Napoleon III's armies are defeated at the Battle of Sedan on the Belgian border, and he is taken prisoner.

September 4, 1870—The French Empire is overthrown. A republic is proclaimed by the provisional Government of National Defense.

September 19, 1870—Siege of Paris by the Prussian army begins.

September 28, 1870—Strasbourg capitulates and rations begin in Paris.

October 3, 1870—The newspaper
La Liberté
suggests a women's army, the "Amazons of the Seine," be funded by the jewels of wealthy ladies. Trochu vetoes the project.

October 7, 1870—Léon Gambetta leaves Paris in a balloon, to raise an army. The fi rst major defeat of the Prussians follows at Coulmiers.

October 27, 1870—Metz capitulates, leaving behind supplies and arms for the Prussians' use.

October 31, 1870—A demonstration by 150,000 members of the National Guard of Belleville takes place at the Hôtel de Ville.

November 26, 1870—The Great Sortie results in 12,000 French dead in three days.

January 1871—Prussians bombard Paris for three weeks.

January 18, 1871—Wilhelm I pronounced Kaiser of the Germans and the Emperor of Unifi ed Germany at Versailles.

January 20, 1871—No rations are left in Paris.

January 22, 1871—Protest at the Hôtel de Ville is put down by Trochu's army, the Breton Mobiles.

January 28, 1871—Armistice and capitulation of Paris.

February 8, 1871—The National Assembly convenes in Bordeaux.

February 17, 1871—Adolphe Thiers wins a vote of confi dence and is appointed to lead the French Republic and to negotiate the terms of the Treaty of Frankfurt.

February 26, 1871—During preliminary peace talks, the Prussians demand fi ve billion gold francs in reparations within fi ve years, as well as territories in the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. Working-class Parisians drag cannon, which they have purchased by subscription, to Montmartre.

March 1, 1871—Prussians march through Paris. The National Assembly moves to Versailles; the Central Committee of the National Guard (the Commune) forms in Paris.

March 18, 1871—Government soldiers refuse to retrieve cannon from Montmartre, turning their rifl es butt-up; the Commune begins a "bloodless revolution."

March 22, 1871—A massacre takes place on the rue de la Paix, sparked by protests from the Friends of Order.

March 26, 1871—The Commune and Municipal Council elected at the Hôtel de Ville.

April 1871—Gustave Courbet calls for a federation of artists organized on democratic principles.

April 2, 1871—Versailles troops push into Paris's suburbs, defeating the Commune's National Guard.

April 3–5, 1871—Women march to Versailles to demand reconciliation.

April 5, 1871—The Commune takes priests hostage.

April 6, 1871—Thiers bombards western Paris, trapping residents.

April 11, 1871—Women's section of the International is formed.

April 29, 1871—Versailles troops victorious at Issy-les-Moulineaux after a strong Commune defense.