two old women are busy putting a mattress between the window and the shutter.  A sentinel, mounting guard in front of the Cafe de la Compagnie du Gaz, cries out to me, “You can’t pass here!” I therefore seat myself at a table in front of the cafe, which has doubtless been left open by order, and where several officers are talking in a most animated manner.  One of them rises and advances towards me.  He asks me rudely what I am doing there.  I will not allow myself to be abashed by his tone, but draw out my pass from my pocket and show it him, without saying a word.  “All right,” says he, and then seats himself by my side, and tells me, “I know it already, that a part of the left bank of the river is occupied by the troops of the Assembly, that fighting is going on everywhere, and that the army on this side is gradually retreating.—­Street fighting is our affair, you see,” he continues.  “In such battles as that, the merest gamin from Belleville knows more about it than MacMahon....  It will be terrible.  The enemy shoots the prisoners.” (For the last two months the Commune had been saying the same thing.) “We shall give no quarter.”—­I ask him, “Is it Delescluze who is determined to resist?”—­“Yes,” he answers.[101] “Lean forward a little.  Look at those three windows to the left of the trophy.  That is the Salle de l’Etat-Major.  Delescluze is there giving orders, signing commissions.  He has not slept for three days.  Just now I scarcely knew him, he was so worn out with fatigue.  The Committee of Public Safety sits permanently in a room adjoining, making out proclamations and decrees.”—­“Ha, ha!” said I, “decrees!”—­“Yes, citizen, he has just decreed heroism!"[102] The officer gives me several other bits of information.  Tells me that “Lullier this very morning has had thirty refractaires shot, and that Rigault has gone to Mazas to look after the hostages.”  While he is talking, I try to see what is going on in the Place de l’Hotel de Ville.  Two or three thousand Federals are there, some seated, some lying on the ground.  A lively discussion is going on.  Several little barrels are standing about on chairs; the men are continually getting up and crowding round the barrels, some have no glasses, but drink in the palms of their hands.  Women walk up and down in bands, gesticulating wildly.  The men shout, the women shriek.  Mounted expresses gallop out of the Hotel, some in the direction of the Bastille, some towards the Place de la Concorde.  The latter fly past us crying out, “All’s well!” A man comes out on the balcony of the Hotel de Ville and addresses the crowd.  All the Federals start to their feet enthusiastically.—­“That’s Valles,” says my neighbour to me.  I had already recognised him.  I frequently saw him in the students’ quarter in a little cremerie in the Rue Serpente.  He was given to making verses, rather bad ones by-the-bye; I remember one in particular, a panegyric on a green coat.  They used to say he had a situation in the pompes funebres.[103] His face even then wore a bitter and violent expression.  He left poetry for journalism, and then journalism for politics.