“I retire; and have the honour to beg for a cell at Mazas.

    “ROSSEL."[83]

Most certainly I do not like the Paris Commune, such as the men of the Hotel de Ville understand it.  Deceived at first by my own delusive hopes, I now am sure that we have nothing to expect from it but follies upon follies, crimes upon crimes.  I hate it on account of the suppressed newspapers, of the imprisoned journalists, of the priests shut up at Mazas like assassins, of the nuns shut up at Saint-Lazare like courtesans; I hate it because it incites to the crime of civil war those who would have been ready to fight against the Prussians, but who do not wish to fight against Frenchmen; I hate it on account of the fathers of families sent to battle and to death; on account of our ruined ramparts, our dismantled forts, each stone of which as it falls wounds or destroys; on account of the widowed women and the orphaned children, all of whom they can never pension in spite of their decrees; I cannot pardon them the robbing of the banks, nor the money extorted from the railway companies, nor the loan-shares sold to a money-changer at Liege; I hate it on account of Clemence the spy, and Allix the madman.  I am sorry to think that two or three intelligent men should be mixed up with it, and have to share in its fall.  I hate it particularly on account of the just principles it at one time represented, and of the admirable and fruitful ideas of municipal independence, which it, was not able to carry out honestly, and which, because of the excesses that have been committed in their name, will have lost for ever, perhaps, all chance of triumphing.  Still, great as is my horror of this parody of a government to which we have had to submit for nearly two months, I could not forbear a feeling of repulsion on reading the letter of Citizen Rossel.  It is a capitally written letter, firm, concise, conclusive, differing entirely from the bombastic, unintelligible documents to which the Commune has accustomed us; and besides, it brings to light several details at which I rejoice, because it permits me to hope that the reign of our tyrants is nearly at an end.  I am glad to hear that the Commune, if it possesses artillery, is short of artillerymen.  It delights me to learn that they can only dispose of seven thousand combatants.  I had feared that it would be enabled to kill a great many more; and as to what Citizen Rossel says of the committees and officers who deliberate but do not act, it is most pleasant news, for it convinces me, that the Commune has not the power to continue much longer a war, which can but result in the death of Paris; and yet I highly disapprove of the letter of Citizen Rossel, because it is on his part an act of treachery, and it is not for the friends and servants of the Commune to reveal its faults and to show up its weaknesses.  Who obliged Rossel, commander of the staff, to take the place of his general, disgraced and imprisoned?  Did he not accept willingly a