In the courtyard they were joined by thirty-five ex-policemen, so-called hostages like themselves.  The execution was to take place in the Rue Haxo, at the farthest extremity of Belleville, and the march was made on foot, so that the victims were exposed to all the insults of the populace.  It has been said that when they reached the Rue Haxo, where they were placed against a wall, Paul was thrown down while attempting to defend an aged priest, and was maltreated by the crowd; but this account was not confirmed when, four days later, the bodies were taken from the trench into which they had been thrown:  Paul’s showed no sign of violence.  His eyes were closed, his face was calm.  His cassock was pierced with balls and stained with blood.  He is buried at Saint-Sulpice.

His father received the news of his death calmly.  He wrote:  “Let us bear our poor child’s death as much like Christians and as much like men as we can.  May his blood, joined to that of so many other innocent victims, finally appease the justice of God,” But when, shortly afterwards, Charles died of an illness brought on by excessive fatigue in serving the ambulances, the father sank under the double stroke, and died fifteen days after his last remaining son.

From the death of the youngest and the humblest of these ecclesiastical hostages, we will turn now to that of the venerable archbishop, and to his experiences during the forty-eight hours that he passed at La Roquette, after having been transferred to it from Mazas.

With studied cruelty and insolence, a cell of the worst description was assigned to the chief of the clergy in France.  It had been commonly appropriated to murderers on the eve of their execution.  There was barely standing-room in it beside the filthy and squalid bed.  The beds and cells of the other priests were at least clean, but this treatment of the archbishop had been ordered by the Commune.

On the morning of May 23 the prisoners had been permitted to breathe fresh air in a narrow paved courtyard; but the archbishop was too weak and ill for exercise; he lay half fainting on his bed.  In addition to his other sufferings he was faint from hunger, for the advance of the Versailles troops had cut off the Commune’s supplies, and the hostages were of course the last persons they wished to care for.  Pere Olivariet (shot three days later in the same party as Paul Seigneret, in the Rue Haxo) had had some cake and chocolate sent him before he left Mazas; with these he fed the old man by mouthfuls.  This was all the nourishment the archbishop had during the two days he spent at La Roquette.  Mr. Washburne, the American minister, had with difficulty obtained permission to send him a small quantity of strengthening wine during his stay at Mazas.  But a greater boon than earthly food or drink was brought him by Pere Olivariet, who had received while at Mazas, in a common pasteboard box, some of the consecrated wafers used by the Roman Catholic Church in holy communion; and he had it in his power to give the archbishop the highest consolation that could have been offered him.