directly
to a bank, descended from the car, and shot down the three men in charge
of the bank. They then seized from the safe $10,000. A crowd which had
gathered was kept back by one of the bandits with a rifle. The others
came out, opened fire on the spectators, started the car at its utmost
speed, and disappeared.

Not long after, Monsieur Jouin, deputy chief of the Surete, and Chief
Inspector Colmar were making a domiciliary search in a house near Paris.
Instead of finding what they thought, a man crouching beneath a bed
sprang upon them, and in the fight Jouin was killed and Colmar severely
injured. Bonnot, although injured, escaped by almost miraculous means.

At last, on April 29, the band, which had defied the police force of
Paris for four months, was discovered concealed in a garage said to
belong to a wealthy anarchist. A body of police besieged the place, and
after two police officers were killed a dynamite cartridge was exploded
that destroyed the garage. Bonnot was then captured, fighting to the
last. The police reported the finding of Bonnot's will, in which he
says: "I am a celebrated man.... Ought I to regret what I have done?
Yes, perhaps; but I must live my life. So much the worse for idiotic and
imbecile society.... I am not more guilty," he continues, "than the
sweaters who exploit poor devils."[12] His final thought, it is said,
was for his accomplices, both of whom were women, one his mistress, the
other the manager of the _Journal Anarchie_.

CHAPTER VI

SEEKING THE CAUSES

Such is the tragic story of barely forty years of terrorism in Western
Europe. It reads far more like lurid fiction than the cold facts of
history. Yet these amazing irreconcilables actually lived--in our
time--and fought, at the cost of their lives, the entire organization of
society. Surely few other periods in history can show a series of
characters so daring, so bitter, so bent on destruction and
annihilation. Bakounin, Nechayeff, Most, Lingg, Duval, Decamps,
Ravachol, Henry, Vaillant, Caserio, and Luccheni--these bewildering
rebels--individually waged their deadly conflict with the world. With
the weakness of their one single life in revolt against
society--protected as it is by countless thousands of police, millions
of armed men, and all its machinery for defense--these amazing creatures
fought their fight and wrote their page of protest in the world's
history. Think of it as we will, this we know, that th