s tragedy. I saw that reign of blind death, I
saw the distracted victims fall around me in crowds. It is for this that
I have signed myself in this book AN EYE-WITNESS.

Destiny entertains a purpose. It watches mysteriously over the future
historian. It allows him to mingle with exterminations and carnages, but
it does not permit him to die, because it wishes him to relate them.

In the midst of this inexpressible Pandemonium, Xavier Durrieu met me as
I was crossing the bullet-swept boulevard. He said to me, "Ah, here you
are. I have just met Madame D. She is looking for you." Madame D.[24]
and Madame de la R.,[25] two noble and brave women, had promised Madame
Victor Hugo, who was ill in bed, to ascertain where I was, and to give
her some news of me. Madame D. had heroically ventured into this carnage.
The following incident happened to her. She stopped before a heap of
bodies, and had had the courage to manifest her indignation; at the cry
of horror to which she gave vent, a cavalry soldier had run up behind
her with a pistol in his hand, and had it not been for a quickly opened
door through which she threw herself, and which saved her, she would
have been killed.

It is well known that the total slaughter in this butchery is
unrecorded. Bonaparte has kept these figures hidden in darkness. Such is
the habit of those who commit massacres. They are scarcely likely to
allow history to certify the number of the victims. These statistics are
an obscure multitude which quickly lose themselves in the gloom. One of
the two colonels of whom we have had a glimpse in pages 223-225 of this
work, has stated that his regiment alone had killed "at least 2,500
persons." This would be more than one person per soldier. We believe
that this zealous colonel exaggerates. Crime sometimes boasts of its
blackness.

Lireux, a writer, arrested in order to be shot, and who escaped by a
miracle, declares that he saw "more than 800 corpses."

Towards four o'clock the post-chaises which were in the courtyard of the
Elysee were unhorsed and put up.

This extermination, which an English witness, Captain William Jesse,
calls "a wanton fusillade," lasted from two till five o'clock. During
these three terrible hours, Louis Bonaparte carried out what he had been
premeditating, and completed his work. Up to that time the poor little
"middle-class" conscience was almost indulgent. Well, what of it? It was
a game at Prince, a species of state swindli