Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/416

 the orders of Millière, Dereure, Billioray, and Vésinier, for the purpose of setting fire to the different quarters of Paris, have been already given in this work.

On the 24th of May, at nine in the evening, the following notice was placarded on the walls of the 11th Arrondissement:

"COMMUNE OF PARIS.

"Order.

"4 Prairial, year 79, 9

"Any house from the windows of which a shot is fired on the National Guards will be immediately destroyed; and all the inhabitants who do not deliver or themselves execute the author of such a crime, will be immediately shot.

""

The following order was found on an insurgent killed at the barricade of the Croix Rouge:

"The bearer of this order is authorized to destroy by fire or mine any public or private establishment prejudicial to the defence of the Commune."

At the moment when the attack on the Pantheon was in full progress, the fighting was suspended on both sides for several moments by a terrible detonation which shook the quarter of the Luxembourg to its very foundations.

A powder magazine situated in the back of the garden, near the Rue de l'Ouest, had been exploded by the insurgents, who had communicated a spark to the powder by means of an electric wire. The noise was frightful; a great number of houses in the Rue de l'Ouest, in the Boulevard Saint-Michel near the Observatory, were much injured; also those in the Rues d'Enfer, D'Assas, De Vaugirard, De Madame, De Fleurus, etc. In the Place de Medicis, and the neighboring portion of the Boulevard Saint-Michel, the fronts of the shops had been literally torn