“No, no; do not be unjust toward war.  It is good; it has its appointed work to do—­”

There were mingled hatred and remorse in the cry with which Jean interrupted him.

“Good God!  When I see you lying there, and know it is through my fault—­ Do not say a word in defense of it; it is an accursed thing, is war!”

The wounded man smiled faintly.

“Oh, as for me, what matters it?  There is many another in my condition.  It may be that this blood-letting was necessary for us.  War is life, which cannot exist without its sister, death.”

And Maurice closed his eyes, exhausted by the effort it had cost him to utter those few words.  Henriette signaled Jean not to continue the discussion.  It angered her; all her being rose in protest against such suffering and waste of human life, notwithstanding the calm bravery of her frail woman’s nature, with her clear, limpid eyes, in which lived again all the heroic spirit of the grandfather, the veteran of the Napoleonic wars.

Two days more, Thursday and Friday, passed, like their predecessors, amid scenes of slaughter and conflagration.  The thunder of the artillery was incessant; the batteries of the army of Versailles on the heights of Montmartre roared against those that the federates had established at Belleville and Pare-Lachaise without a moment’s respite, while the latter maintained a desultory fire on Paris.  Shells had fallen in the Rue Richelieu and the Place Vendome.  At evening on the 25th the entire left bank was in possession of the regular troops, but on the right bank the barricades in the Place Chateau d’Eau and the Place de la Bastille continued to hold out; they were veritable fortresses, from which proceeded an uninterrupted and most destructive fire.  At twilight, while the last remaining members of the Commune were stealing off to make provision for their safety, Delescluze took his cane and walked leisurely away to the barricade that was thrown across the Boulevard Voltaire, where he died a hero’s death.  At daybreak on the following morning, the 26th, the Chateau d’Eau and Bastille positions were carried, and the Communists, now reduced to a handful of brave men who were resolved to sell their lives dearly, had only la Villette, Belleville, and Charonne left to them, And for two more days they remained and fought there with the fury of despair.

On Friday evening, as Jean was on his way from the Place du Carrousel to the Rue des Orties, he witnessed a summary execution in the Rue Richelieu that filled him with horror.  For the last forty-eight hours two courts-martial had been sitting, one at the Luxembourg, the other at the Theatre du Chatelet; the prisoners convicted by the former were taken into the garden and shot, while those found guilty by the latter were dragged away to the Lobau barracks, where a platoon of soldiers that was kept there in constant attendance for the purpose mowed them down, almost at point-blank