Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/548

 The carriage in which he was placed was escorted by a body of soldiers, but they were insufficient to restrain the fury of the assailants; they pushed through the guard, shaking their fists in his face, and endeavoring to strike him.

Several times M. Duret was obliged to lean out of the window and beg the crowd to respect his prisoner.

"Be patient," he said, "justice shall be done; but my honor as a magistrate is engaged to place Paschal Grousset alive in the hands of the authorities."

He was listened to for a moment with deference, but almost immediately the clamor recommenced with greater violence, and it is probable that justice would have been done on the spot if the procession had not been met by General Pradier, who inquired the cause of the tumult. Informed of the danger incurred by the prisoner, he requisitioned indifferently all the officers and soldiers who passed, and thus formed an escort sufficient to impose its will upon the crowd.

They then proceeded along the boulevards and Rue Royale to the Palais de l'Industrie.

Arrived at the entrance of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, which was choked by the ruins of the surrounding houses, the fury of the crowd redoubled in violence.

"Look, wretch, at what you have done! Death to the incendiary! Let him be shot on the ruins of the houses he has burned!"

"This crowd is ferocious," said Paschal Grousset.

"One must be philosophical," replied M. Duret. "Fifteen days ago, if I had been seized, I might have been in your place and you in mine, and who knows whether you would have saved me then from the fury of all these people."

The carriage, however, advanced slowly. Grousset remarked that he could not understand how he, a writer