days in this horrible prison. At last one evening
he heard his name called. His release had come. On going to the
door he was taken before a superior officer, who expressed surprise
and regret at the mistake that had been committed, and at once
set him at liberty. A brave little boy, charged with one of his
notes, had persevered through all kinds of difficulties in putting
it into the hands of the English lady to whom it was addressed.
This lady and the Italian ambassador had effected Count Orsi's
release. He was ill with low fever for some weeks in consequence
of the bad air he had breathed during his confinement. Subsequently
he discovered that personal spite had caused his arrest as a friend
of the Commune.

My next account of those days is drawn from the experience of the
Marquis de Compiegne,[1] one of the Versailles officers. He was
travelling in Florida when the Franco-Prussian war broke out, but
hastened home at once to join the army. He fought at Sedan and was
taken prisoner to Germany, but returned in time to act against
the Commune. Afterwards he became an explorer in the Soudan, and
in 1877 was killed in a duel.

[Footnote 1: His narrative was published in the "Supplement Litteraire
du Figaro."]

On the 20th of May, news having reached Versailles that the first
detachment of regular troops had made their way into Paris, M.
de Compiegne hastened to join his battalion, which he had that
morning quitted on a few hours' leave. As they approached the Bois
de Boulogne at midnight, the sky over Paris seemed red with flame.
They halted for some hours, the men sleeping, the officers amusing
themselves by guessing conundrums; but as day dawned, they entered
Paris through a breach in the defences. The young officer says,--

"I shall never forget the sight. The fortifications had been riddled
with balls; the casemates were broken in. All over the ground were
strewn haversacks, packets of cartridges, fragments of muskets,
scraps of uniforms, tin cans that had held preserved meats,
ammunition-wagons that had been blown up, mangled horses, men dying
and dead, artillerymen cut down at their guns, broken gun-carriages,
disabled siege-guns, with their wheels splashed red from pools of
blood, but still pointed at our positions, while around were the
still smoking walls of ruined private houses. A company of infantry
was guarding about six hundred prisoners, who with folded arms and
lowering faces were standing among the