These remarks being received in no friendly spirit, hostility to the stranger increased, when a vivandiere approached, and looking the gentleman who had exposed himself to the fury of the mob full in the face, exclaimed, “It is Clement Thomas!” And in truth it was General Clement Thomas; he was not in uniform.  A torrent of abuse was poured forth by a hundred voices at once, and the anger of the crowd seemed about to extend itself to violence, when a ruffian cried out:  “You defend the rascal Lecomte!  Well, we’ll put you both together, and a pretty pair you’ll be!” and this project being approved of, the General was hurried, not without having to submit to fresh insults, to where General Lecomte had been imprisoned since the morning.

From this moment the narrative I have collected differs but little from that circulated through Paris.

At about four o’clock in the afternoon the two generals were conducted from their prison by a hundred National Guards, the hands of General Lecomte being bound together, whilst those of Clement Thomas were free.  In this manner they were escorted to the top of the hill of Montmartre, where they stopped before No. 6 of the Rue des Rosiers:  it is a little house I had often seen, a peaceful and comfortable habitation, with a garden in front.  What passed within it perhaps will never be known.  Was it there that the Central Committee of the National Guard held their sittings in full conclave? or were they represented by a few of its members?  Many persons think that the house was not occupied, and that the National Guards conducted their prisoners within its walls to make the crowd believe they were proceeding to a trial, or at least to give the appearance of legality to the execution of premeditated acts.  Of one thing there remains little doubt, namely, that soldiers of the line stood round about at the time, and that the trial, if any took place, was not long, the condemned being conducted to a walled enclosure at the end of the street.

[Illustration:  HOTEL DE VILLE, AS FORTIFIED BY THE NATIONAL GUARD, MARCH, 1871.  The Hotel de Ville of Paris, which witnessed so many national ceremonies and republican triumphs, was commenced in 1533, and it was finished in 1628.  Here the first Bourbon, Henry IV., celebrated his entry into Paris after the siege of 1589, and Bailly the maire, on the 17th July, 1789, presented Louis XVI. to the people, wearing a tricolor cockade.  Henry IV. became a Catholic in order to enter “his good city of Paris” whilst Louis XVI. wore the democratic insignia in order to keep it.  A few days later the 172 commissioners of sections, representing the municipality of Paris, established the Commune.  The Hotel de Ville was the seat of the First Committee of Public Safety, and from the green chamber, Robespierre governed the Convention and France till his fall on the 9th Thermidor.  From 1800 to 1830 fetes held the place of political manifestations.  In 1810