Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/494



audacity and sang-froid.
 * diers, after having escaped death only by a prodigy of

"Prisoner of the Committee of Public Safety at the Conciergerie, Mazas and La Roquette, I will be to-day sparing of details regarding the revolting and monstrous acts of which the last-named prison has been the theatre, and which assure it hereafter a renown amongst the places most sinisterly celebrated. To mention one out of a hundred, a vicar of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires and myself passed a half-an-hour on Thursday, May 25th, preparing ourselves to be shot. It was only a false alarm, and the agents of the Commune charged with these amiable invitations consoled those who were the objects of them, in assuring them that what didn't take place to-day would not fail to arrive on the morrow. For the time they were only charged with bringing one of our neighbors before a kind of court-martial, then sitting in the prison, and which was composed of citizens principally remarkable, some for their stupidity, the others for their ferocity.

"Since the atrocious execution of Monseigneur the Archbishop of Paris, of M. le Curé de la Madeleine, of President Bonjean, of M. Allard, former missionary, and of the Jesuit Fathers Clair and Du Coudray, which took place on Wednesday, May 24th, in a corner of the exterior court of the prison, without motive, without judgment, without verbal process, in presence of a delegate of the Commune, who had no other mandate than a revolver in his hand, and of a crowd of National Guards, who could manifest no sentiments but the most revolting outrages; without any respect for the bodies of these noble victims, who were stripped of their clothes, piled on a common wagon, and thrown into a corner of earth at Charonne, it was evident that the burlesque acts of the Commune were to be succeeded by others both destructive and sanguin