Assembly,
elected president of the Paris department, one of the most persistent,
most generous, and most respected patriots from first to last,--who
better deserved to be spared than? Arrested at Gisors[3268] by order of
the Paris Commune, he left the inn, escorted by the Parisian commissary,
surrounded by the municipal council, twelve gendarmes and one hundred
National Guards; behind him walked his mother, eighty years of age, his
wife following in a carriage; there could be no fear of an escape.
But, for a suspected person, death is more certain than a prison; three
hundred volunteers of the Orne and the Sarthe departments, on their way
through Gisors, collect and cry out: "We must have his head--nothing
shall stop us!" A stone hits M. de la Rochefoucauld on the temple; he
falters, his escort is broken up, and they finish him with clubs and
sabers, while the municipal council "have barely time to drive off the
carriage containing the ladies."--Accordingly, national justice, in the
hands of the volunteers, has its sudden outbursts, its excesses, its
reactions, the effect of which it is not advisable to wait for. For
example, at Cambray,[3269] a division of foot-gendarmerie had just left
the town, and it occurs to them that they had forgotten "to purge the
prison". It returns, seizes the keeper, takes him to the Hotel-de-ville,
examines the prison register, sets at liberty those whose crimes seem
to it excusable, and provides them with passports. On the other hand, it
kills a former royal procureur, on whom addresses are found tainted
with "aristocratic principles," an unpopular lieutenant-colonel, and a
suspected captain.--However slight or ill-founded a suspicion, so much
the worse for the officer on whom it falls! At Charleville,[3270] two
loads of arms having passed through one gate instead of another, to
avoid a bad road, M. Juchereau, inspector of the manufacture of arms and
commander of the place, is declared a traitor by the volunteers and the
crowd, torn from the hands of the municipal officers, clubbed to the
ground, stamped on, and stabbed. His head, fixed to a pike, is paraded
through Charleville, then into Mezieres, where it is thrown into the
river running between the two towns. The body remains, and this the
municipality orders to be interred; but it is not worthy of burial; the
murderers get hold of it, and cast it into the water that it may join
the head. In the meantime the lives of the municipal officer