Note 104 — XC.

Jules Vallès was one of the most conspicuous among the men of the 18th of March. He had been journalist, working printer, a clerk at the Hôtel de Ville, editor of a newspaper, pamphleteer, and café orator in turn, but always noisy and boastful. André Gill, the caricaturist, once drew him as an undertaker’s dog, dragging a saucepan behind him, and the caricature told Vallès’ story well enough. In face he was ugly, but energetic in expression, almost to ferociousness. He was born at Puy, in 1833, and on leaving the college of Nantes, came to study law in Paris, but politics occupied him chiefly, and he soon got himself shut up in Mazas as a political prisoner. After some time spent in confinement, he obtained his liberty, and published at Nantes, a pamphlet under the title of “Money: by a literary man become a journalist;” and the pamphlet, having gained him some slight popularity, he was engaged, later, on the Figaro, to write the reports of the Bourse, and in the meantime he eked out his slender salary by working as a clerk at the Hôtel de Ville. When Ernest Feydeau brought out the Epoque, in 1864, Jules Vallès published a few articles in its columns, and a little later became a writer on the Evénement, with the magnificent salary of eighteen thousand francs a year. A month afterwards, he was without occupation again, but he soon re-appeared with a new journal of his own, La Rue, La Sue, in its turn, however, only lived during a few numbers, and Jules Vallès now took up café politics, and practised table oratory at the Estaminet de Madrid, where he fostered and expounded the projects which he has since brought to so fearful a result. In 1869, he became one of the most inveterate speakers at election meetings, and presented himself as a candidate for the Corps Législatif. He was not elected, but the profession of opinions that he then made was certain to obtain him a seat in the Communal Assembly. One of the last articles in the Cri du People of Jules Vallès announced the fatal resolution of defending Paris by all possible means. An article finishing with this prophetic sentence, “M. Thiers, if he is chemist enough will understand us.”