overstepping all bounds, took Napoleon by the horns and the gendarmes by the nose, and committed other extravagances, until the Government fined him to the amount of ten thousand francs penalties, and ordered him a short repose in the prison of Sainte-Pelagie.  The notoriety attaching to his name dates from that period, and the events which accompanied the violent death of Victor Noir tended to augment his popularity and to convert him into the leader of a party, or the bearer of a flag, around which rallied all the elements of the struggle against established authority.  He escaped to Belgium, and studied socialism, which he expounded later to an admiring audience of seventeen to eighteen thousand electors at Belleville.  Elected deputy by the 20th Arrondissement, M. de Rochefort became, in 1869, a favourite representative of that class of the Parisian population whose bad instincts he had flattered and whose tendencies to revolt against authority he had encouraged, and in virtue of these claims he was chosen to form part of the Government of the National Defence.  As President of the Commission of Barricades, after the 4th of September, during the siege of Paris, in the midst of the difficulties of all sorts caused to the Government of the National Defence by the investment of the capital, M. De Rochefort, making more and more common cause with the revolutionary party, separated himself from his colleagues in the Government who refused to permit the establishment of a second Government, the Commune, within a besieged city.  By this act he openly declared himself a partisan of the Commune, and immediately after the acceptance of the preliminaries of peace he resigned his position as a deputy, alleging that his commission was at an end, and retired to Arcachon.

His wildly sanguinary articles in the Marseillaise, and the compacts sealed with blood, with Flourens and his associates, now had so exhausted our poor Rochefort that at the moment of flourishing his handkerchief as the standard of the canaille, he dropped pale and fainting to the ground, attacked by a severe illness.  He was hardly convalescent when the events of the 18th of March occurred.  But early in April, he exerted himself to assume the direction of the Mot d’Ordre, which, after having been suppressed by order of General Vinoy, the military commandant of Paris, had reappeared immediately upon the establishment of the Commune.  He arrived on the scene of contest about the 8th or 10th of April.  The daily report of military operations states the movements of the enemy, and points out what should be done to meet and resist him most advantageously (12th, 13th, and 14th of April; 10th; 16th, and 20th of May).  Imaginary successes, the inaccuracy of which must in most instances have been known to the chief editor of the Mot d’Ordre, encouraged the hopes of the insurgents, while the announcement of unsuccessful combats was delayed with evident intention;