m telling you now. This almost
general abstention of electors, compared with the eagerness of former
times, is but the avowal of the error to which your masquerade has given
rise. And what does it prove but the resolution to mix in your carnival
no more? We see clearly through it now, I tell you, that the saturnalia
is wearing to its end. In vain does the orchestra of cannon and
mitrailleuses, under the direction of the conductor, Cluseret, play
madly on and invite us to the fete. We will dance no more, and there is
an end of it!

But it will be fatal to Paris if, after saying this, she sit satisfied.
Contempt is not enough, there must be abhorrence too, and actual
measures taken against those we abhor. It is not sufficient to neglect
the poll, one abstains when one is in doubt, but now that we doubt no
longer it is time to act. While wrongful work is being done, those that
stand aside with folded arms become accomplices. Think that for more
than a fortnight the firing has not ceased; that Neuilly and Asnieres
have been turned into cemeteries; that husbands are falling, wives
weeping, children suffering. Think that yesterday, the 18th of April,
the chapel of Longchamps became a dependance--an extra dead-house--of
the ambulances of the Press, so numerous were that day's dead. Think of
the savage decrees passed upon the hostages and the refractory, those
who shunned the Federates; of the requisitions and robberies; of the
crowded prisons and the empty workshops, of the possible massacres and
the certain pillage. Think of our own compromised honour, and let us be
up and doing, so that those who have remained in Paris during these
mournful hours, shall not have stood by her only to see her fall and
die.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 61: Serailler, a member of the International, intrusted with a
commission to London on behalf of the Central Committee to borrow cash
for the daily pay of thirty sous to the National Guard.]

LVI.

Paris! for once I defy you to remain indifferent. You have had much to
bear, during these latter days; it has been said to you, that you should
kneel in your churches no more, and you have not knelt there; that the
newspapers that pleased you, should be read no more, and you have not
read them. You have continued to smile--with but the tips of your lips,
it is true--and to promenade on the boulevards. But now comes stalking
on that which will make you shudder indeed! Do you know what I have jus