It had been intended to execute the hostages on the 23d; but the director of the prison, endeavoring to evade the horrible task of delivering up his prisoners, pronounced the first order he received informal.

The accursed 24th of May dawned, brilliant and beautiful.  The archbishop went down in the early morning to obtain the breath of fresh air allowed him.  Judge Bonjean, who had never professed himself a believer, came up to him and prayed him for his blessing, saying that he had seen the truth, as it were on the right hand of Death, and he too was about to depart in the true faith of a Christian.

By this time the insurgents held little more of Paris than the heights of Belleville, Pere la Chaise, and the neighborhood of La Roquette, which is not far from the Place de la Bastille.  The Communal Government had quitted the Hotel-de-Ville and taken refuge not far from La Roquette, in the Mairie of the Eleventh Arrondissement.

At six in the morning of May 24th,[1] a second order came to the director of the prison to deliver up all hostages in his hands.  He remonstrated, saying he could not act upon an order to deliver up prisoners who were not named.  Finally, a compromise was effected; six were to be chosen.  The commander of the firing party asked for the prison register.  The names of the hostages were not there.  Then the list from Mazas was demanded.  The director could not find it.  At last, after long searching, they discovered it themselves.  Genton, the man in command, sat down to pick out his six victims.  He wrote Darboy, Bonjean, Jecker, Allard, Clerc, Ducoudray.  Then he paused, rubbed out Jecker, and put in Duguerrey.  Darboy, as we know, was the archbishop; Bonjean, judge of the Court of Appeals; Allard, head-chaplain to the hospitals, who had been unwearied in his services to the wounded; Clerc and Ducoudray were Jesuit fathers; Duguerrey was pastor of the Madeleine.  Jecker was a banker who had negotiated Mexican loans for the Government.  The next day the Commune made a present of him to Genton, who, after trying in vain to get a few hundred thousand francs out of him for his ransom, shot him, assisted by four others, one of whom was Ferre, and flung his body into the cellar of a half-built house upon the heights of Belleville.

[Footnote 1:  Macmillan’s Magazine, 1873.]

When the order drawn up by Genton had been approved at headquarters, the director of the prison had no resource but to deliver up his prisoners.

Another man, wearing a scarf of office, had now joined the party.  He was very impatient, and accused the others roundly of a want of revolutionary spirit.  He landed afterwards in New York, where his fellow-Communists gave him a public reception.

One of the warders of the prison, Henrion by name, made some attempt to expostulate with the Vengeurs de Flourens, who had been told off for the execution.  “What would you have?” was the answer.  “Killing is not at all amusing.  We were killing this morning at the Prefecture of Police.  But they say this is reprisal.  The Versaillais have been killing our generals.”