It must be admitted, too, that there is much less disorder in the command than might be expected.  The battalions all know whom they are to obey.  Some go to the Hotel de Ville, others to the Place Vendome, many to the forts, a few to the advanced posts; marches and counter-marches are managed without confusion, and the combatants are in general well provided with ammunition, and supplied with provisions.  Far as one is from esteeming the chiefs of the Federals, one is obliged to admit that there is something remarkable in this rapid organisation of a whole army in the midst of one of the most complete political convulsions.  Who, then, directs?  Who commands?  The members of the Commune, divided as they are in opinion, do not appear capable, on account of their number and lamentable inexperience, of taking the sole lead in military affairs.  Is there not some one either amongst them or in the background, who knows how to think, direct, and act?  Is it Bergeret?  Is it Cluseret?  The future perhaps will unravel the mystery.  In the meantime, and in spite of the reverses to which the Federals have had to submit during these last days, the whole of Paris unites in unanimous surprise at the extreme regularity with which the administrative system of the war seems to work, the surprise being the greater that, during the siege, the “legitimate” chiefs with much more powerful means, and having disciplined troops at their command, did not succeed in obtaining the same striking results.

But would it not have been better far that that order had never existed?  Better a thousand times that the command had been less precise than that those commanded should have been led to a death without glory?  For the last few days Neuilly, so joyous in times gone by with its busy shops, its frequented restaurants and princely parks; Neuilly, with the Versailles batteries on one side and the Paris guns on the other, under an incessant rain of shells and mitraille from Mont Valerien; Neuilly, with her bridge taken and re-taken, her barricades abandoned and re-conquered, has been for the last few days like a vast abyss, into which the Federal battalions, seized with mortal giddiness, are precipitated one after another.  Each house is a fortress.  Yesterday, the gendarmes had advanced as far as the market of Sablonville; this morning they were driven back beyond the church.  Upon this church, a child; the son of Monsieur Leullier, planted a red flag amidst a shower of projectiles.  “That child will make a true man,” said Cluseret, the war delegate.  Ah, yes! provided he is not a corpse ere then.  Shots are fired from window to window.  A house is assaulted; there are encounters, on the stairs; it is a horrible struggle in which no quarter is given, night and day, through all hours.  The rage and fury on both sides are terrific.  Men that were friends a week ago have but one desire—­to assassinate each other.  An inhabitant of Neuilly, who succeeded in escaping,