Then comes the solid, serious article, generally written by a pen invested with all due authority, by the man who has the most head in the place.  The subject varies according to circumstances; but the main point of the article is generally to show that Paris has never been so rich, so free, nor so happy, as under the government of the Commune; and this is a truth that is certainly not difficult to prove.  Is not the fact of being able to live without working the best possible proof that people are well off?  Well! look at the National Guards; they have not touched a tool for a whole month, and they have such a supply of money that they are obliged to make over some of it to the wineshop-keepers in exchange for an unlimited number of litres and sealed bottles.  Then, who could say that we are not free?  The journals that allowed themselves to assert the contrary have been prudently suppressed.  Besides, is it not being free to have shaken off the shameful yoke of the men who sold France; to be no longer subjected to the oppression of snobs, reactionaires, and traitors?  And as to the most perfect happiness, it stands to reason, since we are both free and rich, that we must be in the incontestable enjoyment of it.  Finally, after the official dispatches edited in the style you are acquainted with, and after the accounts of the last battles, come the miscellaneous news, the faits divers; and here it is that the ingenuity of the writers displays itself to the greatest advantage.

“Yesterday evening, towards ten o’clock, the attention of the passers-by in the Rue St. Denis was attracted by cries which seemed to proceed from a four-storied house situated at the corner of the Rue Sainte-Apolline.  The cries were evidently cries of despair.  Some people went to the nearest guardhouse to make the fact known, and four National Guards, preceded by their corporal, entered the house.  Guided by the sound of the cries they arrived at the fourth storey, and broke open the door.  A horrible spectacle was then exposed to the view of the Guards and of the persons who had followed them in their quest.  Three young children lay stretched on the floor of the room, the disorder of which denoted a recent struggle.  The poor little things were without any covering whatever, and there were traces of blows upon their bodies; one of them had a cut across the forehead.  The National Guards questioned the children with an almost maternal kindness.  They had not eaten for four days, and, in consequence of this prolonged fast, they were in such a state of moral and physical abasement that no precise information could be obtained from them.  The corporal then addressed himself to the neighbours, and soon became acquainted with a part of the terrible truth.

“In this room lived a poor work-girl, young and pretty.  One day, as she was carrying back her work to the shop, she observed that she was followed by a well-dressed man, whose physiognomy indicated