or a recommendation to God’s mercy.  You must not scoff at her, you see she was a poor weak woman, with ideas of the narrowest sort; but there are other mothers like her, quite unworthy of course to bear the children of patriots, who do not want their dear ones to be buried like dogs; who cannot understand that to pray is a crime, and to kneel down before God an offence to humanity, and who still are weak enough to wish to see a cross planted on the tombs of those they have loved and lost!  Not the cross of the nineteenth century—­a red flag![41]

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 41:  Early in April the Commune forbade divine service in the Pantheon.  They out off the arms of the cross, and replaced it by the red flag during a salute of artillery.]

[Illustration:  COLONEL ASSY.]

XXXIII.

Communal fraternity is decidedly in the ascendant; it is putting into practice this admirable precept, “Arrest each other.”  They say M. Delescluze has been sent to the Conciergerie.  Yesterday Lullier was arrested, to-day Assy.  It was not sufficient to change Executive Committees—­if I may be allowed to say so—­with no more ceremony than one would change one’s boots; the Commune conducts itself, in respect to those members that become obnoxious to it, absolutely as if they were no more than ordinary archbishops.

[Illustration:  PLACING THE RED FLAG ON THE PANTHEON. (The hole in the dome was occasioned by a Prussian shell.)]

What!  Assy—­Assy[42] of Creuzot—­who signed before all his comrades the proclamations of the Central Committee, in virtue, not only of his ability, but in obedience to the alphabetical order of the thing—­Assy no longer reigns at the Hotel de Ville!—­publishes no more decrees, discusses no longer with F. Cournet, nor with G. Tridon.  Wherefore this fall after so much glory?  It is whispered about that Assy has thought it prudent to put aside a few rolls of bank notes found in the drawers of the late Government.  What, is that all?  How long have politicians been so scrupulous?  Members of the Commune, how very punctilious you have grown.  Now if the Citizen Assy were accused of having in 1843 been intimately acquainted with a lady whose son is now valet to M. Thiers’ first cousin, or if he had been seen in a church, and it were clearly proved that he was there with any other intention than that of delicately picking the pockets of the faithful, then I could understand your indignation.  But the idea of arresting a man because he has appropriated the booty of the traitors, is too absurd; if you go on acting in that way people will think you are growing conscientious!