side of the boulevard. They all fled
at the first discharge, took a few steps, then fell to rise no more.
One young man had taken refuge in a gateway, and tried to shelter
himself behind the projection of the wall towards the boulevards. After
ten minutes of badly aimed shots, he was hit, in spite of all his
efforts to render himself as small as possible by drawing himself up to
his full height, and he too was seen to fall, to rise no more.'

"Another:--

"'The plate glass and the windows in the Maison du Pont-de-Fer were all
shattered. One man, who was in the courtyard, went mad with fright. The
cellars were filled with women who had sought refuge there, but in
vain. The soldiers fired into the shops and the cellar windows. From
Tortoni's to the Gymnase Theatre similar things took place. This lasted
more than an hour.'

VI

"Let us confine ourselves to these extracts. Let us close this mournful
inquest. We have proofs enough.

"The general execration of the deed is visible. A hundred other
depositions which we have before us repeat the same facts in almost the
same words. It is at present certain, it is proved, it is beyond the
possibility of doubt, it cannot be denied, it is evident as the
sunlight, that on Thursday, the 4th of December, 1851, the unoffending
citizens of Paris, the citizens who were not in any way mixed up with
the fighting, were shot down without warning, and massacred merely for
the sake of intimidation, and that it is not possible to attach any
other meaning to Monsieur Bonaparte's mysterious command.

"This execution lasted until nightfall. For more than an hour, there
was, as it were, a debauch of musketry and artillery. The cannonade and
the platoon-firing crossed each other indiscriminately; at one time the
soldiers were killing one another. The battery of the 6th Regiment of
Artillery, which belonged to Canrobert's brigade, was dismounted; the
horses, rearing in the midst of the balls, broke the axles, the wheels
and the poles, and of the whole battery, in less than a minute there
remained only one gun in commission. A whole squadron of the 1st
Lancers was obliged to seek refuge in a shed on Rue Saint-Fiacre.
Seventy bullet-holes were counted the next day in the pennons of the
lances. A sort of frenzy had seized the soldiers. At the corner of Rue
Rougemont, and in the midst of the smoke, one general was waving his
arms as if to restrain them; a medical officer of the 27th was n