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His rifle and cartridges were missing, that was all. The villagers stood around us, talking excitedly; we could not understand them, but they were evidently not hostile, and we told them to bury Bourbaki. They began at once, digging a hole in the soft earth with pointed sticks. We then asked for the rifle, the cartridges and the murderer, and were informed that two men had done the killing.
They imagine that the man whose ancestors have from generation to generation obscurely vegetated upon some dozen acres, is the superior of the man who has made himself great without the adventitious aid of birth; I do not. When Jules Favre met Bismarck over here the other day, the latter spoke of Bourbaki as a traitor, because he had been untrue to his oath to Napoleon.
Captain Kirwan's company fought bravely, sustaining the credit of their country through the whole campaign, and, under Bourbaki, were among those who actually struck the last blow the Germans received on French soil. Arthur Forrester, who joined the French Foreign Legion, was severely wounded in the foot.
I consequently told him that he would be duly brought into relations with Marshal Canrobert and General Bourbaki, whom I would inform in regard to his proposals, and whom I would place at liberty to act as each might choose in the matter.
Next morning there were again about twenty men on the shore, and again the same performances were gone through. Evidently the people, influenced by Bourbaki, who was still in the village, were more confident, and left their weapons behind of their own accord.
But as though this success were not enough in itself, all the newspapers this morning tell us that "Chartres has also been retaken," that the army of Kératry has effected a junction with that of the Loire, and that in the North Bourbaki has forced the Prussians to raise the siege of Amiens. Everyone is asking when "they" will be here.
But people argued that Bazaine was surely as good a patriot as Bourbaki, who, it was already known, had escaped from Metz and offered his sword to the National Defence in the provinces. A number of indignant citizens hastened to the office of Le Combat in order to seize Pyat and consign him to durance, but he was an adept in the art of escaping arrest, and contrived to get away by a back door.
Bourbaki brought news that in a few days there was to be a great sacrificial feast in the village, and that, everybody being busy preparing for it, we had no chance of recruiting, neither could we see the great chief, he being shut up in his house, invisible to everybody except to a little boy, his servant.
Being too poor to do this, he decided to pay his debt in an old-fashioned way by killing a man, and Bourbaki was unlucky enough to arrive just at the right time, and being a man from a distant district, there was no revenge to be feared. Belni, therefore, chose him as his victim.
But our conversation soon took a more serious turn, for the news was very bad. For the last twelve days the ambulances had been crowded with wounded men. Everything was in a bad way, home politics as well as foreign politics. The Germans were advancing on Paris. The army of the Loire was being formed. Gambetta, Chanzy, Bourbaki, and Trochu were organising a desperate defence.
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