Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/545

 *ably circulated, as has happened in many other cases, by his friends, in order to cause the vigilance of the police to slumber.

While colonel of the francs-tireurs of the Seine, La Cecilia lived during a month in the Chateau de Banneville, at Banneville-la-Campagne, a small town in the arrondissement of Caen.

Having succeeded in getting out of Paris, it was towards this chateau that La Cecilia directed his flight. He counted on the kindness formerly shown him by Madame de Banneville during the war with Prussia, and believed that she would consent to interest herself in his fate.

He was mistaken, however, in his calculations. Madame de Banneville declared that for the defender of the Commune she had only hatred and contempt, and that if he did not immediately leave of his own free-will, she would have him put out of the house by force or else arrested.

Seeing that all remarks would be superfluous, La Cecilia decided to withdraw. Almost immediately after his departure, and while still overcome by the scene just enacted, Madame de Banneville was informed that the house was surrounded by gendarmes. A brigadier presented himself saying that they had been instructed of the presence in her house of a dangerous man who had arrived that morning at the station of Moult-Argences, and that they had come to arrest him.

The lady then related what had happened.

The gendarmes proceeded, without losing an instant, to search the environs, and the ex-general of the Commune was soon discovered in a small inn of Banneville-la-Campagne, accompanied by his former attendant in the francs-tireurs, who, since the war, had taken service at the Chateau de Banneville. He had left the chateau with his former chief. A certain quantity of arms and ammunition was found in the inn, whose proprietor, together