Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/286

 News thus writes in The Daily News of Tuesday, December 16, 1879:—

"'As an eye-witness of the massacre of the Boulevards on December 4th, I cannot allow Marshal Canrobert's version of that historical day to pass uncontradicted. I don't quote the histories of Victor Hugo, Kinglake, and others, but merely recount what I did see. At that time I was not the correspondent of The Daily News, but was an intimate friend of the gentleman who then filled the post. At his request, it being feared that postal communication would be stopped, I started for London on December 2nd, writing with a pencil in the train. I returned to Paris on the morning of the 4th, when I found the streets deserted, and bills posted recommending the inhabitants to remain in their houses and stating—lugubrious threat, but too soon to be realized—that every one who resisted the behests of Louis Napoleon would be 'shot.' I walked from the Northern Railway Station to the Rue de la Paix, seeing scarcely anybody in the streets. To refresh myself for want of sleep I went into an establishment, no longer existing, at the corner of the Rue de la Paix and the Boulevards, called Les Bains de Venus, to take a warm bath. On coming out I found a terrorized crowd in the gangway, and was told that it was unsafe to go into the streets. I said I must go, and pushed my way through. On emerging I found myself just at the head of a regiment of cavalry whose rear, extending along the Rue de la Paix, reached beyond the column of the Place Vendome. I heard a youthful chubby-faced Lieutenant-Colonel say, and I shall never forget the words, 'Nous allons tout balayer.' [We are going to sweep away everything.] And, he added, looking significantly at"