Having been charged by you with the War Department, I feel myself no longer capable of bearing the responsibility of a command where everyone deliberates and nobody obeys.  When it was necessary to organize the artillery, the commandant of artillery deliberated, but nothing was done.  After a month’s revolution, that service is carried on by only a very small number of volunteers.  On my nomination to the ministry I wanted to further the search for arms, the requisition for horses, the pursuit of refractory citizens.  I asked help of the Commune; the Commune deliberated, but passed no resolutions.  Later the Central Committee came and offered its services to the War Department.  I accepted them in the most decisive manner, and delivered up to its members all the documents I had concerning its organization.  Since then the Central Committee has been deliberating, and has done nothing.  During this time the enemy multiplied his audacious attacks upon Fort Issy; had I had the smallest military force at my command, I would have punished him for it.  The garrison, badly commanded, took to flight.  The officers deliberated, and sent away from the fort Captain Dumont, an energetic man who had been ordered to command them.  Still deli berating, they evacuated the fort, after having stupidly talked of blowing it up,—­as difficult a thing for them to do as to defend it....  My predecessor was wrong to remain, as he did, three weeks in such an absurd position.  Enlightened by his example, and knowing that the strength of a revolutionist consists only in the clearness of his position, I have but two alternatives,—­either to break the chains which impede my actions, or to retire.  I will not break my chains, because those chains are you and your weakness.  I will not touch the sovereignty of the people.

I retire, and have the honor to beg for a cell at Mazas.

  ROSSEL.

He did not obtain the cell at Mazas.  He escaped from the vengeance of his colleagues, and was supposed to be in England or Switzerland, while in reality he had never quitted Paris.  He was arrested two weeks after the fall of the Commune, disguised as a railroad employee.  He was examined at the Luxembourg, and then taken, handcuffed, to Versailles, where he was shot at Satory, though M. Thiers, the president, made vain efforts to save him.

The members of the Commune, who by the first week in May were reduced to fifty-three, met in the Hotel-de-Ville in a vast room once hung with the portraits of sovereigns.  The canvas of these pictures had been cut out, but the empty frames still hung upon the walls; while at one end of the chamber was a statue of the Republic dressed in red flags, and bearing the inscription, “War to Tyrants.”