Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/123

 French with an accent peculiar to the borders of the Rhine.

The insurgents now commenced making requisitions upon different schools and theological institutions. Among others, they entered the establishment of the Jesuits in the Rue Lhomond, and placed all the fathers under arrest. They then searched the house from top to bottom, breaking the furniture and sacking the cupboards; and finally descended to the cellars, where they gorged themselves with wine destined for the use of the establishment. They then carried off the Superior and seven others to the Prefecture of Police in an omnibus requisitioned for the purpose. Similar outrages were also committed amongst the fathers of the Saint-Esprit and the Dominicans, who were also taken to prison.

These and similar acts of plunder were the result of Rochefort's articles in the Mot d'Ordre, which, abandoning the comparative moderation which it had lately observed, now stimulated to pillage in every number which it issued, at one time saying:

"M. Thiers possesses in the Place St. George a marvelous hotel, full of works of art of all sorts. M. Picard possesses in the streets of Paris, which he has deserted, three houses, which bring him in a large income; and M. Jules Favre occupies in the Rue d'Amsterdam a sumptuous habitation, belonging to him. What would these statesmen proprietors say if, to their destruction outside, the people were to respond by the blows of a pickaxe; and if each time a house at Courbevoie was touched by a shell a wall was to be knocked down of the palace in the Place St. George, or the hotel in the Rue d'Amsterdam?"

It was only necessary in moments like those, to indicate certain proceedings to an excitable people, to produce the most deplorable consequences.