and National Guards.  The priests and the National Guards seemed resigned to their fate, but the soldiers, who had fought the Prussians, could not believe it was intended to shoot them.  Suddenly a voice, loud as a trumpet, rose above the din.  ‘Friends,’ it cried, ’hearken to a man who desires to save you.  These wretches of the Commune have killed more than enough people.  Don’t let yourselves be murdered!  Join me.  Let us resist.  Sooner than give you up I will die with you!’ The speaker was Poiret, one of the warders of the prison.  He had been horrified by what had been done already, and when ordered by his superiors to give up the prisoners in his corridor to a yelling crowd, he had shut the doors on the third story behind him, and was advising us, at the risk of his own life, to organize resistance.”

The abbe joined him with, “Don’t let us be shot, my friends; let us defend ourselves.  Trust in God; he is on our side!”

But many hesitated.  “Resistance is mere madness,” they said; and a soldier shouted, “They don’t want to kill us; they want the priests!  Don’t let us lose our lives defending them!”

“The sergents de ville in the story below you,” cried Poiret, “are going to defend themselves, They are making a barricade across the door of their corridor.  We have no arms, but we have courage.  Don’t let us be shot down by the rabble.”

It was proposed to make a hole in the floor, and so to communicate with the sergents de ville.  The prisoners armed themselves with boards and iron torn from their bedsteads, and in five minutes had made an opening through the floor.  A non-commissioned officer from below climbed through it, and arranged with Poiret the plan of defence.

By this time the inner courtyard of the prison was invaded by a rough and squalid crowd, come to take a hand in whatever murder or mischief might be done.  The besieged put mattresses before their windows for protection.  The man who led the mob was one Pasquier, a murderer who had been in a condemned cell in La Roquette till let out by the general jail-delivery of the Commune.

Two barricades were built like that on the floor below.  Pasquier and some of his followers had burst open the outer door, and were endeavoring to burn both the prison and the prisoners.  “Never fear,” cried a corporal who had superintended the hasty erection of the barricades; “I put nothing combustible into them.  They can’t burn floor tiles and wire mattresses.  Bring all the water you can.”

The crowd continued to shout threats.  The battery from Pere la Chaise, they cried, was coming; and often a voice would shout, “Soldiers of the Loire, surrender!  We will not hurt you.  We will set you at liberty!” A few soldiers trusted this promise, and as soon as they got into the crowd were massacred.