"From seventeen to nineteen, service in the marching-companies is
voluntary, but from nineteen to forty it is obligatory for the
National Guards, married or unmarried.

"I recommend all good patriots to be their own police, and to see
that this edict is carried out in their respective quartern, and to
force the refractory to serve."

As to the last paragraph of Cluseret's decree it is impossible to joke
about it, it is by far too odious. This exhortation in favour of a
press-gang,--this wish that each man should become a spy upon his
neighbour (he says it in so many words), fills me with anger and
disgust. What! I may be passing in the streets, going about my own
business, and the first Federal who pleases, anybody with dirty hands, a
wretch you may be sure, for none but a wretch would follow the
recommendations of Cluseret,--an escaped convict, may take me by the
collar and say, "Come along and be killed for the sake of my municipal
independence." Or else I may be in bed at night, quietly asleep, as it
is clearly my right to be, and four or five fellows, fired with
patriotic ardour, may break in my door, if I do not hasten to open it on
the first summons like a willing slave, and, whether I like it or not,
drag me in night-cap and slippers, in my shirt perhaps, if it so pleases
the brave _sans-culottes_, to the nearest outpost. Now I swear to you,
Cluseret, I would not bear this, if I had not, during the last few
hungry days of the siege, sold to a curiosity dealer--your colleague now
in the Commune--my revolver, which I had hoped naively might defend me
against the Prussians! Think, a revolver with six balls, if you please,
and which, alas! I forgot to discharge!

We can only hope that even at this moment, when the revolution has
brought out of the darkness into the light, so many rascals and cowards,
just as the sediment rises to the top when the wine is shaken, we must
hope, that there will be found in Paris, nobody to undertake the mean
office of spy and detective; and that the decree of M. Cluseret will
remain a dead-letter, like so many other decrees of the Commune. I will
not believe all I am told; I will not believe that last night several
men, without any precise orders, without any legal character whatever,
merely National Guards, introduced themselves into peaceful families;
waking the wife and children, and carrying off the husband as one
carries off a housebreaker or an escaped convic