The Argosy — page 59: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

46 A Nightin a Monastery. house, exploded, carrying with it roofs and chimney pots, smashing windows, and shaking the very ground itself. You need not ask whether I was terrified: my teeth chattered. I am an old man now, and I have been young once ; but though in those by-gone days I may have made more speed, certainly I never hurried more. As fast as my old legs would take me, I returned to the shelter of my own roof, ome left it no more until the siege was over.’ “ And the commune?” I inquired. ‘“ How did you support that? There were dangers also to encounter?” “Ves,” he answered. ‘‘Some of them greater than those of the siege, for in it lay still greater madness and wickedness. It is awful to contemplate how quickly the French turn themselves into wild beasts.” “‘ And the women were worse than the men?” “The women!” he cried. “ Do not speak of them. Women were made to be angels, but when they become bad they are worse than demons. They hesitate at nothing.” “You, however, happily escaped them?” I asked. “T was away,” he answered. ‘As soon as ever the siege was over I left Paris. Not without difficulty and danger; but still I got away. I was thoroughly ill from the miseries and privations I had endured, and felt that nothing but change of air would restoreme. So I went.” “Well?” I said, as he paused. “T am telling you,’ he answered, somewhat fretfully at ws: inter- ruption. “ Iwent toSt. Germain. The air there is pure, you know, and I thought I should succeed in getting a couple of comfortable rooms. Not atall. Every room in the place was occupied by people who had left Paris. For several days I had to sleep in a stable—fancy being reduced to that! At last I managed to get a room ina cabaret: a horrible little estaminet ; so dirty, so poor, with so bad a reputation that no one would venture into it. Be it what it may, I thought, it cannot be worse than a stable. So I took the room, and lived there, miserably, fora whole month. Before the end of that time the Com- mune had had its life and death.” * And you were none the worse for-it?” ) “Not much. Once or twice reports reached me that the houses I possess in this neighbourhood had been destroyed by these savages ; but when I returned to Paris I found that whilst many other ah dee had suffered, the Commune had spared me.” “ You came back all the better for your change ?” “Yes; in spite of the privations and anxieties I had gone through; the miseries of that horrible cabaret. I suppose they did their best for me; and then there was the pure air and the change. Since then, I have been living quietly, and now I am as well as ever I was.” “T felt doubtful whether I should find you alive or dead,” I romialiees to another old friend, of whom I had not had tidings since the siege. — Gomicbooks.co