Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/512

 at their post. The following interesting account was published by the Gaulois concerning the proceedings at the Bank during the days of the Commune:

"How many times has this question not been put: 'How was it the insurgents did not pillage the Bank of France?' In fact, that problem is a very interesting one to examine. Those scoundrels were complete masters of Paris; they lived surrounded by an atmosphere of theft. The Bank was almost entirely in their hands; nevertheless it has escaped nearly intact. And yet it contained (official figures) three milliards of securities: one consisting of deposits of private individuals in gold, scrip, and diamonds; a second in precious metals and bank-notes; and the third in paper-money, which required only one other signature to become legal currency. But is a name so difficult to write? Once done, who could have distinguished between the notes thus completed by the Commune and those previously in circulation? No one, certainly.

"M. Rouland was Governor of the Bank when the storm burst. His duty was to save it, but he preferred making his escape. He withdrew, with regrettable precipitation, on the 23d of March—the very day on which Admiral Saisset came to Paris to rally round him the friends of the Government, or the National Guards of order, solidly established at the Saint-Lazare Station and at the Louvre, covering with a vast buckler the Bank and its Governor. Every one knows how the Admiral's attempt failed; the friends of order, losing courage, dispersed, and the Federals had no difficulty in occupying the abandoned positions. Of the administration, only the sub-Governor, the Marquis de Plœuc, remained, who devoted his attention to the difficult task of guarding the three milliards, which represented the savings of France. He found in