The Grand Livre is kept at the Ministry of Finance; that building Ferre ordered to be summarily destroyed, uttering the words, “Flambez Finances.”  The building was accordingly set on fire the day before the Commune fell; and for some days after, it was thought throughout all France that the Grand Livre had perished.  By heroic exertions some of it was saved, the officials in charge of it rushing into the flames and rescuing that portion of it which contained the names of living property-holders, I while they let the records of past generations burn.

There was in existence a duplicate copy of the Grand Livre, though this was known only to the higher officials of the Treasury.  It was kept in a sort of register’s office not far from the Tuileries, and was in the care of a M. Chazal.  When the Tuileries and the Treasury were on fire, the object of M. Chazal and of all who knew of the precious duplicate was to save it, in case the building in which it was deposited should share in the conflagration.

Of course the Grand Livre is of vast bulk.  This copy was contained in great bundles of loose sheets.  Luckily these papers were in stout oaken boxes on the ground-floor of a detached building opening on a courtyard.  The Versailles troops had reached the spot, and ninety sappers and miners, with seven brave firemen, were at work with water-buckets attempting to save the main building, which was blazing fiercely when M. Chazal arrived.  Already the detached building in which the precious duplicate was stored was on fire.  There was no place to which he could safely remove the precious papers, no means of transport to carry them away.

During the siege orders had been given to have large piles of sand placed in the courtyards of all public buildings, to smother shells should any fall there.  There were three of these sand-piles lying in the yard of this record office.  In them deep trenches were rapidly dug; and the boxes were buried.  Then the pile was covered with all the incombustible rubbish that could be collected; and had the Grand Livre been really destroyed, as for some days it was believed to have been, every Government creditor would have found his interests safe, through the exertions of M. Chazal and the intrepid band who worked under him.

In somewhat the same manner the gold and silver in the vaults of the Bank of France were saved from pillage.  The narrow staircase leading to the vaults, down which only one man could pass at a time, was by order of the directors filled up with sand during the siege.

Though my readers may be weary of sad tales of massacre, that of the Dominicans of Arceuil remains to be told.  Their convent was in the suburbs of Paris; it had been turned by them into a hospital during the siege, and it continued to be so used during the Commune.  After the fall of Fort Issy, the insurgent troops made their headquarters not far from the convent.  They were commanded by a general of some ability,