PARIS AFTER THE SEIGE.

Grey River Argus, Volume XI, Issue 949, 11 August 1871, Page 2

PARIS AFTER THE SEIGE.

[correspondent op times.] Of all the strange sights I have seen in Paris — and I have seen many — since the first siege commenced, I don't know that I have seen any Btranger than the appearance of the Boulevards yesterday. They still bear, and will long bear, startling traces of the murderous conflict which has just occurred in them. Here is an iron lamp-post cut in half, the upper portion hanging down like a broken bough. A little further on another, more fortunate, has escaped with shattered panes, and bits of its coating forced back by repeated blows of bullets, as if it had been cut and twisted by a strong machine. Into the neighboring kiosk the slanting sunbeams stream through a dozen small round holes, so close to each other as to suggest that a mitrailleuse has been at work upon them. A very curious and sharp-eyed observer may. perhaps, detect upon the pavement certain suspicious stains, which look very much as if a man had fallen there to bleed to death, or had just been ab2e to drag himself off, leaving, as he went, big drops of blood behind him. Look up at the adjoining houses, the walls are pock-marked, if I may use the expression, by hullets, and the large plated windows perforated like crochet-work. But what, after all, to those who have witnessed the recent transformation scenes in the great Parisian melodrama, is newest and strangest is the crowd of welldressed holiday-making loungers streaming so thickly over the broad pavement that it is no easy matter to get through them, and occupying every available chair outside the adjoining cafe. Where in the world do they all come from? The brilliant military uniforms, so long missing from Paris, and so welcome even to the most envious of out-shone Pekins and petits creveSf are easily accounted for. They have come into Paris as part of the victorious army. But against noucombatants the gates are still jealously closed. It requires no small influence to get inside Paris. The vast majority of the civilian flaneurs must, therefore, have been in Paris throughout the second siege, and one wonders where they have been hiding or how their gay dresses and handsome equipages escaped the righteous and hungry indignation of the Commune. If during the last few weeks they have appeared upon the Boulevards it has been with garb and demeanour so different that they are not now recognisable, and one anspfio.tß, therefore, that they have nqvey appeared in public at all, ' but have been hiding in their cellars and garrets, hoping that every one would number them among the fugitives who had left Paris, like psuedo-fashionables in London at the end of the season, who pull down the blinds and deny themselves to all visitors, in order that it may be supposed they have gone abroad. They have many of them this excuse — that they could not get away from Paris if they would. So they had nothing to do but to remain here, keeping as quiet as possible, in order that everybody might fancy they had escaped, and that thep might thus be spared being forced to fight against brothers and friends at Versailles, or to submit their goods to the exactions of the Commune. Many of them have stories of their recent experiences to tell which, well arranged, might make the fortune of a theatrical manager — stories so sensational that one would feel bound to refuse them credence if they were not in perfect harmony with the sensational scenes of which every third man's personal experience has supplied him with a specimen. One man has been close prisoner in a cellar two days and nights while fighting has been going on all around him and over his head. Another has had to fly amid bullets from the suffocating smoke of burning buildings, his ears still ringing with the cries of poor wretches who could not muster up their courage for the rush, and who risked a lingering death under the fallen ruins. Numerous corpses have been dug put of cellars over which had fallen masses of burning houses, arid many probably still remain, at which it is impossible to get. In the Rue Roya.le and its immediate neighborhood last night the air was tainted with the unmistakable smell of putrefying bodies, which, it was supposed, were lying under the huge masses of smouldering woodwork and masonry still heaped upon them. The fire, though the engines have been at work at it six days and nights, has not yet been completely extinguished, and last night I and a friend, although he had his wife to protect him, were compelled to take our turn at the pumps. We in vain pleaded that we could not leave the lady alone. The head of the pressgang who had kidnapped us would be delighted to take care of her while we worked, and as soon as it appeared that we were only to work a short time— not to be kept on indefinitely iato the small hours of the night— we were not sorry to lend a helping hand. A fresh batch of captives, condemned to hard labor, shortly came up and replaced us. One of our objections to being kept at work' was that it was getting late, and that after dark it is no very easy or safe matter to go about the streets. All traffic is nominally forbidden, and though the order is by no means universally complied with, or very strictly enforced, if the belated wanderer can show that he is going home, still, the mere existence of the prohibition makes everybody violate it at a certain amount of risk. I have explored Paris in every fdirection to judge with some degree of accuracy of the extent of the damage done, but I will spare your readers any detailed iccount of those scenes of havoc and ruin, which differ in their character according to the agent of destruction, and which jonsist of ruins caused by shells and ruins jaused by fire. Houses which have been iestroyed by shells present a iky more ghastly appearance than those which have 3een burnt, and the aspect of the street at ]

Point dv Jour is calculated to strike the imagination of those who are now entering Paris for the first time from Versailles by that gate. The same may be said of the houses on both sides of the Avenue de la Grande Armee, and in the neighborhood of the Porte Maillot ; but nothing that I have seen equals the Anteuil Railway Station, where the building, the line, and the railway bridge have all been crumpled up together, as if some giant hand had squeezed them into a shapeless mass. The iron bridge still spans the road, but with rails and girders so contorted and covered with debris that we were afraid to drive under it for fear the slight concussion caused by a carriage passing beneath might bring the tottering mass down on our heads. A little beyond a sentry is placed to prevent people passing a house which is on the verge of crumbling to the ground. It is a lofty, handsome building, elegantly furnished, and quite new, which has been completely cut in two, and the furniture of each successive story is thus exposed. One room on the fourth floor was apparently a boudoir, for the rich crimson furniture stands trembling at the edge of the "parquet," and a heavy armchair threatens with the least jar to come down with a crash into the middle of the road. It was reserved for French artillery to complete the work which the German 'artillery began. I drove round this same road a week after the first siege, and, compared to their present condition, these suburbs might have been considered well preserved and habitable. Looking at the long enceinte of fortifications with its battered breaches and crumbling embrasures, one is puzzled whether M. Thiers deserves more credit for the skill with which he put it up or for that with which he has knocked it down. Anxious to see to what condition the conquerors have reduced the Insurgent stronghold at Belleville, I have returned from penetrating its disagreeable recesses. As usual, even in peaceful times, the lower part of the Faubourg dv Temple was densely crowded with an agitated restless throng, composed principally of women. Most of the shops were shut, probably because their owners were either shot or in prison. Those who lounged in the doorways looked surly and suspicious ; nor is this much to be wondered at, for during the last two days every domicile has been searched in this Quarter from attic to cellar, and every street swarms wiMi denouncers and soldiers. As we approached Menilmontant the crowd became thinner, and the soldiers more numerous, until they almost lined the street on either side. Here and there were piles of broken arms and heaps of National Guard coats and trousers. The road was literally strewn with capa, which had been torn from the heads of prisoners and flung into the mud. Old women were rummaging in the heaps for something worth taking away which was not of a military character, as their operations were closely watched by the soldiery, who were by no means of an amiable type. Here were no signs of fraternisation or amicable intercourse. It is evident that one of the results of this conflict will be to establish, for a time, at all events, a most intense antipathy between the army and the Radical portion of the community — a sentiment which will facilitate the establishment of a military Dictatorship. At one plage at least a dozen omnibusses were collected and crammed with arms and military stores, a magazine of which I saw the process of being emptied. Gueroult urges the expediency of clemency in so far as the rank and file are concerned, now that the military exigencies no longer demand stringent procedure. The abolition of the National Guard and the reconstruction of the army are measures of the most pressing necessity, for they are the first steps to the inauguration of that absolute power without which, vested in the hand of a single individual, the government of the French nation seems impossible. Numerous evidences of a clerical reaction, supported by an army, are daily becomiug apparent, and it is a remarkable statement for a Republican journal to make, that the present Chamber is "at least as anti-Bon apartist, as Liberal, as progressive, especially in all that concerns decentralization, and very probably more clerical, or, if you will, more Catholic, than the majority of the French nation." So far from the events of the last two months weakening the position of M. Thiers, in Paris at all events a reaction seems to have set in in his favor. The removal of MM. Favre and Picavd will assist this, if it is followed by that of M. Simon ; but the strongest argument in favor of keeping the Chief of the Executive where he is, is the difficulty of finding any one at this moment to put in his place, unless it be M. Greyy. The FUjarq comes out as an un-? compromising organ of the Legitimist and Orleans fusion, and the result of the discussion in regard to the legality of the Orleans elections now pending in the Chamber will produce a gre%t influence upon a public mind which really has no fixed opinion of its own in regard to the form of government it desires. The real secret of the Party of Order not having the courage of its opinions was because it had none. Tha Communists had opinions, but not so much courage as a week's struggle might lead the uninitiated to iiragine. The Figaro publishes a list of forty-nine names of the military and political leaders who were not Frenchmen. I observe among them twenty-one Poles, eight Italians, seven Germans, and the remainder are, made up of Belgians, WaUachians, Hungarians, Portuguese, Spaniards, and Americans, but only two or three of each nationality. It is gratifying that no English name is to be found among them. , The papers are full of picturesque and exciting incidents, of which the last week furnished an abundant crop, but the habit of exaggeration and embellishment is so inveterate that they probably belong in some degree to the region of fiction. Of one thing there can be no doubt, that the hatred of those who have been for the time suppressed, and who will possibly be treated with a vindictive severity by their traditional enemies, the gendarmes, as soon as the latter enter upon their functions, is only smouldering and waiting for the reaction which is sure to follow the inauguration, of an absolute form of government, whether the authority be vested in a President or in a Monarch. In the meantime they may possibly pursue a policy of private incendiarism and assassination, the numerous instances of firing from windows upon officers suggesting such an idea. Unless the severity of punishment is mitigated, and military

executions put an end te, the sympathy of a large class of persons will begin to manifest itself in their favor, and while on the surface that organisation which is staggered by the blow it has just received seems to sleep, it may be only collecting the elements of an explosion even more formidable than that which has -just shaken France to its foundations.