Omaha daily bee., 1898-06-12
CHAPTER XIV.



That night they closed the empty bird
store: Hardwood lifted the wooden shutters
into place and locked them. Hide carried
the monkey into the dining room and in
stalled it in a warm corner. Mehemet Ali,
the parrot, viewed these proceedings with
contempt. 4yIt mattered little to him where
he passed his pessimistic days. Weariness
and a vicious melancholy had marked him
/ for their own. Even when he ate he ate
as If he were making an ironical concession
| to the weakness of some one else. Curl
osity he had subdued, sinister solitude he
courted. and bit when 1t was denied aim.
; There had been a time in earlier days when
he whistled the Observation-Disclosures he
croaked "Vive iEmpereur." Now for a
year he had been mute, brooding in silence
among the noisy feathered inhabitants of the
bird store, dreaming, perhaps scheming-
for he had the SLY, slow eye of the Oriental.
He bit Hardwood when that, young man
was bearing him to the dining room, and
when dropped automatically sidled under
a sofa. From this retreat he made daily
excursions, mounting all the furniture by
aid of beak and claw, sullenly menacing
those who approached.
Scheherazade had not recovered from her
fright. The characteristics Of the big house
cat had almost Disappeared; she covered
when approached, she skunk when SHE
moved; there was a blankness in her eyes
a stealth, almost a menace in the slow
turning of her head. Already in these early
days of the siege milk was becoming too eX-
p~ensive to buy for a lioness; meat also had
increased SO swiftly in price that Yolette
was frightened, and haunted the markeI
wistfully, scarcely daring to buy. Vege'
tables, bread and wine, however, Were
plenty; SO were proclamations from the gov,
ernor of Paris assuring everybody that the
city had ample provisions for months tt
come. Most people thought that the in.
crease in the price of meat was only tenn,
porary-a mere furry caused by the con
summation of an event that was not ye
entirely credited-the actual advent of tn,
Prussian army before Paris.
The arrival of the Germans was like
theatrical entrance; the audience was al
Paris, the orchestra, a thousand canno
They turned up by batteries, west, soutl
and finally north, as the vast circle of stee
closed closer, closer, and finally welded will
the snap of a trap. Then, when the city ant
outer ring of forts were in turn themselve
encircled by a living iron ring, when tn
full thunder from the battery of the Doubl
Crown was echoed from st. Denis to Mont
Nv IA ltoii saint Siouu W I
and again from the southeast northward t.
st. Denis. Paris began to understand.
The first futile curiosity, the foolish terro
and fear of instant bombardment, died on
as the weeks passed and the crack of tn
Prussian rified cannon had not yet awak
ened the hill echoes of Virofay. The sill
proclamations urging the instant tearing u
OF pavements, the fortifying of cellars. tn
assuring OF a water supply, were forgotten
People began to realize that 1t takes month
to establish siege batteries-that for ever
gun capable of throwing a shell into Pari
the would have to send to Ger
many. Fear vanished; how long II woul
take to convey heavy cannon from Berli
across France to the Seine! And would nc
the conveys be cut off by the franc-tireurs
by the provincial armies now organizing
by an uprising of outraged people? Surel
the very land, the elements themselye:
would rise and destroy these barbarians an
their wicked cannon. Troehu, the sombr
mystic, the Breton governor of %republica
Paris, moved on his darkened way, a fas
OF tinselled pomp, a shred of pageantry, tn
last paladin riding back into the gloom {
the middle ages, seeking light, fleeing ligh
wrapped to the eyes in the splendid mantl
of the Trinity.
% nc iooe' esquifeu oy fhith, ufeamin
of saints and guests of chlyalry, ponderin
miracles. As a figure for a Gobelin tapestr
General Trochu would have been useful; !
no other capacity, save perhaps in a cloiste
would he have been of use in the nineteent
century.
When on the 18th of September the Pru.
sian advance guard was signalled and 50
luted by the forts of the west and s0utl
General Vinoy's brave corps passed the gat,
and advanced TO Cretail. The affair was n,
~serious-nothing was serious then. And y
that was the very time when a crushin
success might have electrified the whole nj
tion into such resistance that the end of II
war would not have arrived with the capt.,