ed at the gate, there came out a finely dressed, personable
man in a frock-coat, with a red ribbon in his button-hole. The officer
in charge of the motley crew reported that he held a prisoner, the
citizen commonly called Pere Felix.

"Pere Felix?" said the man in the frock-coat, "and who might he be?"

"A member of the Revolutionary Government of Forty-eight," said the old
man with dignity, speaking from the midst of his captors; "a
revolutionary and Republican before you were born, M. Raoul Regnault!"

"Ah, good father, but this is not Forty-eight! It is Seventy-one!" said
the man on the steps, with a supercilious air. "I tell you as a matter
of information!"

"You had better shoot him and have the matter over!" he added, turning
away with his cane swinging in his hand.

Then, with a swirl of his sword, the officer marshalled us all into the
courtyard--for I had followed to see the end. I could not help myself.

It was a great, bare, barren quadrangle of brick, the yard of Mazas
where the prisoners exercise. The walls rose sheer for twenty feet. The
doorway stood open into it, and every moment or two another company of
Communists would arrive with a gang of prisoners. These were rudely
pushed to the upper end, where, unbound, free to move in every
direction, they were fired at promiscuously by all the ragged
battalions--men, women, and even children shooting guns and pistols at
them, as at the puppet-shows of Asnieres and Neuilly.

The prisoners were some of them running to and fro, pitifully trying
between the grim brick walls to find a way of escape. Some set their
bare feet in the niches of the brick and strove to climb over. Some lay
prone on their faces, either shot dead or waiting for the guards to come
round (as they did every five or ten minutes) to finish the wounded by
blowing in the back of their heads with a charge held so close that it
singed the scalp.

As I stood and looked at this horrible shooting match, a human shambles,
suddenly I was seized and pushed along, with the young girl beside me,
towards the wall. Horror took possession of me. "I am Chief Servitor at
the Hotel de Ville," I cried. "Let me go! It will be the worse for you!"

"There is no more any Hotel de Ville!" cried one. "See it blaze."

"Accompany gladly the house wherein thou hast eaten many good dinners!
Go to the Fire, ingrate!" cried another of my captors.

So for very shame, and because the young maid was silent, I had to