over the church door, and rattling the glass in the great painted windows.  I started, but got used to it after a while, and paid no more attention to it than did others.  While I was in church, the citizen patriot who was my cab-driver, had brought me three newspapers, one of them the journal edited by M. Rochefort, which said that it was earnestly to be hoped that the ‘old assassin’ M. Thiers would soon be disposed of; that all men of heart were earnestly demanding more blood, and that blood must be given them.  I also learned that the Commune would erect a statue to Robespierre out of the statues of kings, which were to be melted down for that purpose.  In the Rue Saint-Honore I met a lady whom I knew, returning from the flower-market with flowers in her hands.  ‘Then no one,’ I said, pointing to these blossoms, ‘need be afraid in Paris?’ ‘No woman,’ she answered, ’except of shells; but the men are all afraid, and in danger.  They are suspected of wanting to get away, but they will be made to stay and to fight for the Commune.’

“Indeed, profound gravity seemed expressed on all men’s faces, and as a body, the patriots looked to me cold, tired, bored, and hungry, to say nothing of dirty, which they looked, to a man.  I had expressed a wish to see a barricade, so we turned into a small street apparently closed in by a neatly built wall with holes in it, through which I saw the mouths of cannon.  About this wall men were swarming both in and out of uniform.  They were all armed, and two or three were members of the Commune, with red sashes and pistols stuck in them, after the fashion of the theatre.  As I looked out of my cab window, longing to see more, a cheerful young woman, with a pretty, wan infant in her arms, encouraged me to alight, and a young man to whom she was talking, a clean, trim, fair young fellow, with a military look, stepped forward and saluted me.  He seemed pleased at my admiration of the barricade, and having handed a tin can to the young woman, invited me to come inside.  Thence I beheld the Place Vendome.  I had seen it last on Aug. 15, 1868, on the emperor’s fete-day, filled with the glittering Imperial troops.  I saw it again, a wide, empty waste, bounded by four symmetrical barricades, dotted with slouching figures whose clothes and arms seemed to encumber them....  I thanked my friend for his politeness, and returned to my carriage.  The young woman smiled at me, as much as to say:  ‘Is he not a fine fellow?’ I thought he was; and there may be other fine fellows as much out of place in the ruffianly mass with which they are associated.

“In the Rue de Rivoli I saw a regiment marching out to engage the enemy.  Among them were some villanous-looking faces.  They passed with little tramp and a good deal of shuffle,—­shabby, wretched, silent.  I did not hear a laugh or an oath; I did not see a violent gesture, and hardly a smile, that day.  The roistering, roaring, terrible ‘Reds,’ as I saw them, were weary, dull men, doing ill-directed work with plodding indifference.