Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/510

 A collection of all the sovereigns of Europe who had accepted an invitation to the Hotel de Ville, and who in doing so, always engaged to send their busts in white marble to the Prefect of the Seine, was also lost. Their number was considerable. The busts of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, of the King and Queen of Portugal, of the King of Belgium, the King of Italy, the Czar of Russia, the King of Prussia, the Sultan of Turkey, etc., etc., all destroyed, mutilated, or lost in this formidable conflagration.

Most terrible of all was the loss of the prisoners who had been left by a refinement of cruelty in the cellars of the Hotel de Ville, and who were buried beneath the flames.

The archives of the State had also been condemned to perish. The Commune did not like history, probably because it foresaw the punishment which would be one day inflicted on its memory by this avenger of outraged right. The archives were therefore to be burned, with the thirty million files of papers which they contained. These documents excited the hatred of one-half the Commune, and the contempt of the remainder. A more particular grievance, however, added to their desire for their destruction.

The honorable director of the archives, M. Maury, one of the most learned men of the present day, under a menace of death several times repeated, had always refused to pull down the tricolor and replace it by the red flag. Such a crime could not be left unpunished. On Monday, May 22d, five men, of disreputable appearance, presented themselves in the cabinet of M. Maury, declaring that they came on the part of the Commune to assume the direction of the archives. The Commune once installed in the place, it may easily be imagined what fate was reserved for the precious collections which it contained.