“We are in the position to assert that a company of the 132nd Battalion has this morning surrounded fifteen thousand gendarmes and sergents-de-ville, in the park of Neuilly.  Seeing that all resistance was useless, the supporters of Monsieur Thiers surrendered without reserve.  Among them were seventeen members of the National Assembly, who, not content with ordering the assassination of our brothers, had wished also to be present at the massacre.

    [Illustration:  PASCHAL GROUSSET, DELEGATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS.][73]

“A person worthy of credit has related to us the following fact:—­A cantiniere of the 44th Battalion (from the Batignolles quarter), was in the act of pouring out a glass of brandy for an artilleryman of the Fort of Vanves, when suddenly the artilleryman was out in two by a Versailles shell; the brave cantiniere drank off the contents of the glass just poured out for the dead man who lay in bits at her feet, and took his place at the guns.  She performed her new part of artilleryman so bravely, that ten minutes later there was not a single gun uninjured in the Meudon battery.  As to those who were serving the pieces there, they were all hurled to a distance of several miles, and amongst them were said to have been recognised—­we give this news however with great reserve—­Monsieur Ollivier, the ex-minister of the ex-Emperor, and Count von Bismarck, who wished to verify for himself the actual range of the guns that he had lent to his good friends of Versailles.”

After the LATEST NEWS come the reports of the day, the bulletin du jour as it is called now, and it is in this that the editor, a member of the Commune, reveals his talent.  We trust that the following example is not quite unworthy of the pen of Monsieur Felix Pyat, or the signature of Monsieur Vermorel:—­

    “Paris, 29th April, 1871.

    “They are lying in wait for us, these tigers athirst for blood.

    “They are there, these Vandals, who have sworn that in all Paris not
    a single man shall be spared, nor a single stone, left standing.

    “But we are not in their power yet.  No, nor shall we ever be.

    “The National Guard is on the watch; victorious and sublime, their
    soldierly breasts are not of flesh and blood, but of bronze, from
    which the balls rebound as they stand, dauntless, before the enemy.

“Ah! so these lachrymose Jules Favres, these fat Picards, these hungry Jules Ferrys, said amongst themselves, ’We will take Paris, we will tear it up, and its soil shall be divided after the victory between the wives of the sergents de ville!’ They are beginning to understand all the insanity of their plan.  Why, it is Paris that will take Versailles, that will take all those blear-eyed old men who, because they cannot look steadily at Monsieur Thiers’ face, fancy that it is the sun.