Eugène Varlant

Eugène Varlant was born in a vineyard village of Champagne and came to Paris at thirteen to learn bookbinding. He is a fine craftsman with long patient hands, and he has spent his evenings since the 1860s teaching other craftsmen to read the books they bind.

He helped set up a mutual-aid society for his trade, then a lending library in a back room of a wine shop, then a strike chest. When the bookbinders struck for shorter hours, he was the one who kept the accounts, and the employers learned his name. He believes workers must free themselves, and that they should keep good accounts while they do it.

The siege of 1870 turned Varlant from an organiser into a soldier: like nearly every man in the working districts he joined a National Guard battalion, and his comrades elected him to its committee. In March 1871, when the army tried to take back the Guard's cannon and failed, the committees found themselves running the city.

Elected to the council of the Commune, Varlant was given thankless work: reopening the workshops their owners had abandoned and finding the men to run them. He did it honestly, with the same careful ledgers he had kept for the bookbinders, and he argued in every meeting against the hostage decrees and the hunt for traitors. He is tired, thin and sure that the next weeks will decide everything.