The feeling among the workers was growing every day against the opportunist town councilors and political leaders, as also against the press, which made light of a very acute crisis, while nothing was undertaken to relieve the widespread misery. As is usual at such times, the fury of the poorer people turned especially against the places of amusement and debauch, which become only the more conspicuous in times of desolation and misery, as they impersonate for the worker the egotism and dissoluteness of the wealthier classes. A place particularly hated by the workers was the underground café at the Théâtre Bellecour, which remained open all night, and where, in the small hours of the morning, one could see newspaper men and politicians feasting and drinking in company with gay women. Not a meeting was held but some menacing allusion was made to that café, and one night a dynamite cartridge was exploded in it by an unknown band. A worker who was occasionally there, a socialist, jumped to blow out the lighted fuse of the cartridge, and was killed, while a few of the feasting politicians were slightly wounded. Next day a dynamite cartridge was exploded at the doors of a recruiting bureau, and it was said that the anarchists intended to blow up the huge statue of the Virgin which stands on one of the hills of Lyons. One must have lived at Lyons or in its neighborhood to realize the extent to which the population and the schools are still in the hands of the Catholic clergy, and to understand the hatred that the male portion of the population feel toward the clergy.
A panic now seized the wealthier classes of Lyons. Some sixty anarchists—all workers, and only one middle-class man, Emile Gautier, who was on a lecturing tour in the region—were arrested. The Lyons papers undertook at the same time to incite the government to arrest me, representing me as the leader of the agitation, who had come on purpose from England to direct the movement. Russian spies began to parade again in conspicuous numbers in our small town. Almost every day I received letters, evidently written by spies of the international police, mentioning some dynamite plot, or mysteriously announcing that consignments of dynamite had been shipped to me. I made quite a collection of these letters, writing on each of them “Police Internationale,” and they were taken away by the French police when they made a search in my house. But they did not dare to produce these letters in court, nor did they ever restore them to me.
Not only was the house searched, but my wife, who was going to Geneva, was arrested at the station in Thonon, and searched. But of course absolutely nothing was found to compromise me or anyone else.
Ten days passed, during which I was quite free to go away, if I wished to do so. I received several letters advising me to disappear—one of them from an unknown Russian friend, perhaps a member of the diplomatic staff, who seemed to have known me, and wrote that I must leave at once, because otherwise I should be the first victim of the extradition treaty which was about to be concluded between France and Russia. I remained where I was; and when the Times inserted a telegram saying that I had disappeared from Thonon, I wrote a letter to the paper, giving my address. Since so many of my friends were arrested, I had no intention of leaving.
In the night of December 21 my brother-in-law died in my arms. We knew that his illness was incurable, but it is terrible to see a young life extinguished in your presence after a brave struggle against death. Both my wife and I were broken down. Three or four hours later, as the dull winter morning was dawning, gendarmes came to my house to arrest me. Seeing in what a state my wife was, I asked permission to remain with her till the burial was over, promising upon my word of honor to be at the prison door at a given hour; but it was refused, and the same night I was taken to Lyons. Elisée Reclus, notified by telegraph, came at once, bestowing on my wife all the gentleness of his golden heart; friends came from Geneva; and although the funeral was absolutely civil, which was a novelty in that little town, half of the population was at the burial, to show my wife that the hearts of the poorer classes and the simple Savoy peasants were with us, and not with their rulers. When my trial was going on, the peasants used to come from the mountain villages to town to get the papers, and to see how my affair stood before the court.
Another incident which profoundly touched me was the arrival at Lyons of an English friend. He came on behalf of a gentleman, well-known and esteemed in the English political world, in whose family I had spent many happy hours at London, in 1882. He was the bearer of a considerable sum of money for the purpose of obtaining my release on bail, and he transmitted me at the same time the message of my London friend that I need not care in the least about the bail, but must leave France immediately. In some mysterious way he had managed to see me freely—not in the double-grated iron cage in which I was allowed interviews with my wife—and he was as much affected by my refusal to accept the offer as I was by that touching token of friendship on the part of one whom, with his excellent wife, I had already learned to esteem so highly.
The French government wanted to have one of those great trials which produce an impression upon the population, but there was
