few brave men. The Queen of England was received here
in 1865, and the sovereigns who visited Paris since have been feted
therein. On the 4th of September the bloodless revolution was
proclaimed; and on the 31st of October, 1870, and the 22nd of January,
1871, Flourens and Blanqui made a fruitless attempt to substitute the
red flag for the tricolor; but their partisans succeeded on the 18th of
March, when it was fortified, and became the head-quarters of the
Commune of 1871.]

As soon as they had halted, an officer of the National Guard seized
General Clement Thomas by the collar of his coat and shook him violently
several times, exclaiming, whilst he held the muzzle of a revolver close
to his throat,--"Confess that you have betrayed the Republic." To this
Monsieur Clement Thomas only replied by a shrug of his shoulders; upon
this the officer retired, leaving the General standing alone in the
front of the wall, with a line of soldiers opposite.

Who gave the signal to fire is unknown, but a report of twenty muskets
rent the air, and General Clement Thomas fell with his face to the
earth.

"It is your turn now," said one of the assassins, addressing General
Lecomte, who immediately advanced from the crowd, stepping over the body
of Clement Thomas to take his place, awaiting with his back to the wall
the fatal moment.

"Fire!" cried the officer, and all was over.

Half an hour after, in the Rue des Acacias, I came across an old woman
who wanted three francs for a bullet--a bullet she had extracted from
the plaster of a wall at the end of the Rue des Rosiers.

III.

It is ten o'clock in the evening, and if I were not so tired I would go
to the Hotel de Ville, which, I am told, has been taken possession of by
the National Guards; the 18th of March is continuing the 31st of
October. But the events of this day have made me so weary that I can
hardly write all I have seen and heard. On the outer boulevards the wine
shops are crowded with tipsy people, the drunken braggarts who boast
they have made a revolution. When a stroke succeeds there are plenty of
rascals ready to say: I did it. Drinking, singing, and talking are the
order of the day. At every step you come upon "piled arms." At the
corner of the Passage de l'Elysee-des-Beaux-Arts I met crowds of people,
some lying on the ground; here a battalion standing at ease but ready
to march; and at the entrance of the Rue Blanche and the Rue Fontaine
were some st