they had next day to be pulled down. Peaceful shopkeepers,
dressmakers, and English strangers were among the slain,--an old man
with an umbrella, a young man with an opera-glass. In the house
where Jouvin sold gloves there was a pile of dead bodies.

The firing was over by four P. M. It has never been known how many
were massacred. Some said twenty-five hundred, some made it five
hundred, and almost every person killed was, not a Red combatant,
but an innocent victim.

Thus Louis Napoleon made himself master of Paris. The army was
all for him, the masses were apathetic, the rural population was
on his side. A few weeks later a _plebiscite_ made him emperor.

The _coup d'etat_ having succeeded, most Frenchmen gave in their
adhesion to its author. It remained only to dispose of the prisoners.
Without any preliminary investigation, squads of them were shot,
chiefly in the court-yard of the Prefecture of Police. All deputies
of the Left were sent into exile, except some who were imprisoned
in Algerine fortresses or sent to Cayenne,--the French political
penal colony at that period.

Victor Hugo remained a fortnight in hiding, believing, on the authority
of Alexandre Dumas, that a price was set upon his head. He gives
some moving accounts of little children whom he saw lying in their
blood on the evening of the massacre. His chief associates nearly
all escaped arrest, and got away from France in various disguises.
Their adventures are all of them very picturesque, and some are
very amusing.

Several of the eight prisoners at Ham suffered much from dampness.
Lamoriciere, indeed, contracted permanent rheumatism during his
imprisonment. He begged earnestly to be allowed to write to his
wife, but was permitted to send her only three words, without date:
"I am well."

On the night of January 6, the commandant of the fortress, in full
uniform, accompanied by a Government agent, entered the sleeping-room
of each prisoner, and ordered him to rise and dress, as he was
to be sent immediately into exile under charge of two agents of
police detailed to accompany him over the frontier. Nor was he
to travel under his own name, a travelling _alias_ having been
provided for him. At the railroad station at Creil, Colonel Charras
met Changarnier. "_Tiens, General!_" he cried, "is that you? I am
travelling under the name of Vincent." "And I," replied Changarnier,
"am called Leblanc." Each was placed with his two police agents
in a se