The Kimball graphic. (Kimball, Brule County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1905, 1890-06-06

iot oCNClSs
1T will be red, red, red-the color of
blood"
The game of buuchon had just ended in a
tempest of oaths and squabbling, and the
patriots came staggering and staggering to-
wards the spot where Suzon stood with
gloomy brow and eyes fixed upon the
ground.
Come, Cheyenne Michel, come to the
canteen, and empty a bottle of petit bleu
with us. 'Fdut rinccr lie bee aDnnt dc pdytir.
Let it not be said that the National Guard
are without hospitality"
CHAPTER VII.
'1iEADsrRoNG LIBERTY is LAsHED WITH
WOE"
New Years Day had come and gone-a
dark and dreary NDw Year for many a sew
cred household; tho mother andthe children
afar, the father lonely in Paris, not know
ing if the letter which he writes daily to the
wife he loves may notb be written to the dead
for it is months since he has had tidings of
wife or child; and who can tell where the
angel of death may have visited? Achange
had come over the great city and the spirits
of the pc0ple-brave still, bearing their bur
den calamity, still crying their cry of NO
surrender" but gay and light of heart no
longer, bowed down by the weight of ever
increasing wr~etchedness, pinched by the
sharp pan2s of hunger, enfeebled by
disease, tortured by the bitter cold of a
severe winter, which just now is the hardest
t:5al of all. And now. in these dark DAYS
after Christmas, the ice is broken, the siege,
for which Paris has been waiting patiently
three months, begins in bitter earnest, and
the thunder of the gun shakes earth and
sky. The Line, the Mobile, the National
Guard, all do their duty; but at best they
can only die bravely for a cause that has
long been lost. The bombardment ceases
not day or night-now on this side, now on
that. In the trenches the men suffer hor-
rlhly. The snow falls OH the living and the
dead. Every sortie results in heavy loss.
The amoulances are all full to overlooking.
Trochu, the irresolute, the man of proclama-
tions and manifestoes, has given place to
Vinoy; but what generalship can hold a
hs%leaguered city against those grim captains
Famine and Death?
The women beartheir burden with q quiet
resignation which is among the most heroic
things in history. Day after day, in the
early winter dawn, they stand in the dismal
train of householdcrs waiting for the allot-
ted portion of meat-a portion so scantv
that it seems bitterest irony to carry 1t home
toa hungry family. There they stand
ladies, servants, workwomen, from theh high
est TO the loweSt-buffeted by the savage
north-easter, showed upon, hailed upon,
shivering, pale, exhausted. but divinely pa
tient, each feeling that III this silent suffer.
ing she contributes her infinitcsimal share
OF heroism to the defense of her country.
So long as her rulers will hold out, so long
as her soldiers will fight and die, so long
will the women of France submit and suffer.
Their voices will never be joined in the cry,
Surrender for our sakes."
The little children are fading off the face
of this troubled scene. That is the worst
martydom of all the mothers. The little,
faces are growing pinched and haggard, the
fragile forms are dropping, dropping, day
by day. The mother and fathers hope
against hope. In a day or two the siege will
lie raised; milk and bread, fuel. comfort,
luxury, the joy and light of life, will return
tothose desolate households ;andtie dropping
children will revive and grow strong again.
And. while the mothers hope, the little ones
are dying, and the little collins are seen, in
mournful professions, day by day and hour
by hour, in the cold cherries street.
AT the outchers'-sliops, at the bakeries,
there the same dismal train waits day after
day. Everything is scarce. Butter is forty
five francs a pound; the coarsest grease,
rank fat. which the servants would throw
into the grease-tub IN times OF plenty, Is
sold for eighteen francs a pound. Gruyerc
cheese is a thing beyond all price, and is
only bought by the rich, who wish to offer
n costly present, like a basket of strawber-
riesIm February or peaches in March. Pota-
fppc a 20 fyyarty.iva ro,,cS a huplal. , ,,l
bage six francs: and garden-stutf, which
last year one would have hardly offered to
the rabbits, is now the Luxurious accompani.
iment of the pot-du.fem dc cherdl. There is
no more gas for the street-lamps. and the
once brilliant Lutetia is city of Cimmerian
| darkness. Bitterest scarcity of all, fuel has
become pr0digiously deay; and the poor are
| shiverlng, dying in their desoIate garrets,
pinched and blue with the cold of a hard
winter.
Even among the well-to-do classes funds
are running low. Provisions at siege prices
have exhausted the purses of mlddle-class
citizens. Stocks have been sold at aterrible
loss, capital has been exhausted. Ruin and
hunger stare i'll at the windows, and haunt
| the snowy night-likc spectres.
For the poor the struggle is still sharper;
| Uul liic Iool dC lhllltldl VIII tIlt IiliCl Oh
poverty, with the pangs of self-denial. And
then, perhaps, there is more lone for the
INDECENT in this day of national calamity
than was lone for them IN the golden years
OF prosperity; albeit the Empire, Whatever
its shortcomings, was not neglectful to the
liouseless and the hungry.
In all these troubled days-with surren-
der and shame far away yonder at Metz,
| u.;}1, Iafanf on tbjS ctIn and IN that hara p,
general slain and there a gallant leader
sacrificed, {" little gain one day only to be
courterbalanced by a greater loss the next,
a threatened revolution. Flourens AID his
crew st%rutting, booted and spurred, on the
tables in the Hotel de Vile, little explosions
OF popular feeling NJ BelleviIIe, semi-revqlt
at MISUNDERSTANDING al this time OF
wild fears and wilder hopes the Red FIGG
has been boldly un'urled in the face ot
Paris, and las manxged to pay its contribu
TORS. When bread and meat are so dear
who would stint himself of his favorite
newspaper, in which, for two sous, he ma,
read words that burn like vitriol, sentences
that sound like the kissing of vinegar flung
upon whitc-hot ironr The Red Flag finds
some pretty strong language for the express
sion of its opinions about William, and
Bismarck, and Moltke, and the horde> OF
black helmets yonder; but this language is
mild as compared with the venom which il
spits upon the Empire that is yanished-the
Man of Sedan, the Man of Metz, the En-.
peror who surrendered Empire and army
all that could be surrendered-in the frs,
hour of reverse; the general who kept the
flower OF the French army locked up within
the walls of beleagucred city, tied hand
and foot, when they pining to be mp and do
ing, hungering for the fray, eager to fling
themselves into the teeth of the foe, to cu'
their way to liberty or to death, only u
hand them over to the enemy like a flock OF
sheep when he found that his imperialist
game was played out, and the stakes LOST
irretrieyably.
AT last came that which seemed the
browning humiliation, a capitulation which
to the soul of the patriots, was move shame
full h that of Sedan, more irreparable
than Strasburg, more fatal than Metz. Pari.
surrendered her forts, and opened her gates
TO the invader: France gave up her prov
inces, and pledged herself to the payment
Oft monstrousH indemnity. The flag of the
Gefmanic Confederation tloated above Mon
Valerien, and the Guard of the Emperor o
Germany detilei along the Avenue of tlt
| Grand A rtnaa In q. H.. ~.