Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/530

 *gram, inclosed by a stout wall, where artillery used to be parked and a number of cavalry stables stand. It is here that the Communist prisoners are lodged when they arrive from Paris. When I say lodged, I mean that they are crowded into the stables and grouped in the open, inclosed by ropes and surrounded by sentries. Yesterday was a pouring wet day, as the one before it had been, and the carriage wheels sank deep into the mud and holes of the neglected road. On our right were the tents and huts of a division there encamped. Opposite the entrance to the inclosure guns were drawn up, their muzzles pointed at the prisoners. Around the gateway stood gendarmes and police, and officers in their cloaks, all muddy and unshaven The rain and the trampling of thousands of men had converted the whole of the vast square into a quagmire, into which one sank ankle-deep, intersected by ditches over which one had to jump. The various stables being inadequate to accommodate more than a portion of the prisoners, the others were penned like sheep in the corners of the inclosure. There they stood behind a rope, watched by numerous gendarmes-sentries with loaded chassepots, for the most part motionless, many of them probably sick and suffering, some in rags, some barefooted, many with dirty handkerchiefs as sole covering for their heads. As some protection—a very slight one—against the rain that poured steadily down, some had covered their shoulders with wisps of the straw they had slept upon. Most of them looked stolid and sullen. Our gendarme said they were generally very meek and volunteered readily for fatigue duty. If those in the open were exposed to the elements, they at any rate breathed a purer atmosphere than was to be found in the stables. We entered one of these, crowded with men of all ages, some gray-headed, some boys of fourteen. Most of them were standing; but in the background, where the light was