Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/426

 *vard Saint-Michel. One night, sitting before the café Soufflot, the man of pleasure becoming for an instant effaced by the fanatic, he exclaimed, in striking his glass against that of his neighbor, that he "should like to place a bouquet of 300,000 decapitated heads around the feet of the statue of Liberty."

During the day of the 24th, the service of artillery had been reorganized at Montmartre, and about half past seven in the evening a furious cannonade was begun. The batteries of Montmartre thundered against La Chapelle, La Villette, and the Buttes Chaumont, while those of the Pantheon covered with shells the neighborhood of the Place de la Bastille.

At ten o'clock the fire became most intense, and those who heard those detonations will never forget the terrible uproar. It was no longer roaring cannons exchanging regularly their projectiles, but a continual rolling of shot upon shot, coming from an army of batteries placed in every direction. The Seine itself took part in the struggle, and the gunboats moored beneath the bridges poured forth fire like so many volcanoes. The musketry fire was so rapid that the sound resembled the whistling rush of a mighty wind, now and then deadened by the sharp rattle of the mitrailleuse.

The battle was everywhere going on: at La Villette, on the boulevards, at the Hotel de Ville, the Luxembourg, and the Pont Neuf. Paris was entirely lost in a cloud of smoke, lighted now and then by the flashes of the cannon, and reddened by the flames of burning buildings. From La Villette and the Buttes Chaumont, shells were thrown to every portion of the right bank. No quarter was spared. Incendiary projectiles fell in quantities in the Rue de la Monnaie, on the Place Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, in the Central Markets, the Rue Montmartre, Place de la Bourse, the Rue Neuve des Petits-Champs, the Place