Page:Ernest Belfort Bax - A Short History of the Paris Commune (1895).djvu/67

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horror of these nights cannot be described. The glare of a hundred conflagrations reflected in pools of blood; corpses and human remains wherever the eye lighted; the half of Paris one vast, hideous, dreamlike hell, against the reality of which Dante's imagination seems feeble! Such a scene of horror was barely known to history before; the proscriptions of Sylla, the destruction of Jerusalem, the Sicilian Vespers, St. Bartholomew, the sacking of Magdeburg—all pale before this blood orgie of the propertied class of France, which had the approval, tacit or avowed, of the same class throughout the world—a class that, while it could day after day witness unmoved the indiscriminate torture and butchery of countless hecatombs of human beings whom it imagined were hostile to its class-interests—could, nevertheless, with a refinement of cynicism, pretend to snivel and caterwaul over a single archbishop!!

One corpse lay that night of Tuesday-Wednesday in the Hotel de Ville on a bed of blue satin, a solitary taper at its head, before which the hurry and scurry of the head-quarters was stilled; before which all involuntarily bowed their heads. It was the body of Dombrowski, who had been mortally wounded during the afternoon. Towards morning the corpse was transferred to the Pére Lachaise Cemetery. As it passed the barricades all Federals presented arms. At the July column a halt was made, and hundreds of National Guards crowded round to get a last sight of their