Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/221

 The following description of General Cluseret is decidedly true in regard to the feeling of security entertained by all Americans in Paris while he remained in power:

"Cluseret, though, it is said, a naturalized American, is a soldier of a very different type from such as Dombrowski. He has less of the capacity, probably, required by a general on the battle-field handling troops, but in the closet he is immeasurably superior. He is indefatigably active, and of insatiate ambition, greedy of power to such excess that, as was said of Sir Robert Walpole, he has preferred to risk losing it all rather than to sacrifice ever so little of it, and would rather see a too able man among his opponents than among his friends. He has gradually and steadily gathered all power into his own hands, and has made no secret of his resolution to resist and resent all interference on the part of laymen in what he considers the all-absorbing question of the moment—the effectual defence of Paris. He has rare firmness of character and few scruples. A Frenchman, who had the honor the other day of being his prisoner, narrated to me a very characteristic conversation which Cluseret had held with him. The General rather ridiculed the notion of private hostages being wanted by the Commune, when it held such infinitely more valuable hostages as, say, the banks of Paris, and professed his readiness to release all the prisoners, though he took care to guard himself against all suspicion of hesitating to take their lives. 'I don't want to take one life unnecessarily; but if at the last moment I should be called on to kill 10,000 people, I would rather make arrangements for killing 15,000, in order to be on the safe side, than run the risk of not killing the 10,000." He is, in fact, what one calls a thoroughly practical man, somewhat of the shrewd Yankee type; and there is, perhaps, some foundation for the sus