You get yourselves killed, you are dead, that is well.
And tomorrow?
Young girls without bread—that is a terrible thing.
Man begs, woman sells.
Ah! those charming and gracious beings, so gracious and so sweet, who have bonnets of flowers, who fill the house with purity, who sing and prattle, who are like a living perfume, who prove the existence of angels in heaven by the purity of virgins on earth, that Jeanne, that Lise, that Mimi, those adorable and honest creatures who are your blessings and your pride, ah! good God, they will suffer hunger!
What do you want me to say to you?
There is a market for human flesh; and it is not with your shadowy hands, shuddering around them, that you will prevent them from entering it!
Think of the street, think of the pavement covered with passers-by, think of the shops past which women go and come with necks all bare, and through the mire.
These women, too, were pure once.
Think of your sisters, those of you who have them.
Misery, prostitution, the police, Saint-Lazare—that is what those beautiful, delicate girls, those fragile marvels of modesty, gentleness and loveliness, fresher than lilacs in the month of May, will come to.
Ah! you have got yourselves killed!
You are no longer on hand!
That is well; you have wished to release the people from Royalty, and you deliver over your daughters to the police.
Friends, have a care, have mercy.
Women, unhappy women, we are not in the habit of bestowing much thought on them.
We trust to the women not having received a man’s education, we prevent their reading, we prevent their thinking, we prevent their occupying themselves with politics; will you prevent them from going to the dead-house this evening, and recognizing your bodies?
Let us see, those who have families must be tractable, and shake hands with us and take themselves off, and leave us here alone to attend to this affair.
I know well that courage is required to leave, that it is hard; but the harder it is, the more meritorious.
You say: ‘I have a gun, I am at the barricade; so much the worse, I shall remain there.’ So much the worse is easily said.
My friends, there is a morrow; you will not be here to-morrow, but your families will; and what sufferings!
See, here is a pretty, healthy child, with cheeks like an apple, who babbles, prattles, chatters, who laughs, who smells sweet beneath your kiss,—and do you know what becomes of him when he is abandoned?
I have seen one, a very small creature, no taller than that.
His father was dead.
Poor people had taken him in out of charity, but they had bread only for themselves.
The child was always hungry.
It was winter.
He did not cry.
You could see him approach the stove, in which there was never any fire, and whose pipe, you know, was of mastic and yellow clay.
His breathing was hoarse, his face livid, his limbs flaccid, his belly prominent.
He said nothing. If you spoke to him, he did not answer.
He is dead.
He was taken to the Necker Hospital, where I saw him.
I was house-surgeon in that hospital.
Now, if there are any fathers among you, fathers whose happiness it is to stroll on Sundays holding their child’s tiny hand in their robust hand, let each one of those fathers imagine that this child is his own.
That poor brat, I remember, and I seem to see him now, when he lay nude on the dissecting table, how his ribs stood out on his skin like the graves beneath the grass in a cemetery.
A sort of mud was found in his stomach. There were ashes in his teeth.
Come, let us examine ourselves conscientiously and take counsel with our heart.
Statistics show that the mortality among abandoned children is fifty-five per cent.
I repeat, it is a question of women, it concerns mothers, it concerns young girls, it concerns little children.
Who is talking to you of yourselves?
We know well what you are; we know well that you are all brave, parbleu! we know well that you all have in your souls the joy and the glory of giving your life for the great cause; we know well that you feel yourselves elected to die usefully and magnificently, and that each one of you clings to his share in the triumph.
Very well.
But you are not alone in this world.
There are other beings of whom you must think.
You must not be egoists.”
All dropped their heads with a gloomy air.
Strange contradictions of the human heart at its most sublime moments.
Combeferre, who spoke thus, was not an orphan.
He recalled the mothers of other men, and forgot his own.