was the Tuileries.  The Versaillais were already within the walls of Paris, but this we in the centre of the city did not know.  The news spread during the day, however, and there was a great panic in the evening.  Everybody began to make preparations for flight, the soldiers being anxious to get home and change their uniforms for plain clothes.  No one knew with any degree of certainty where the enemy really was, nor how far he had advanced; only one thing was certain, that the game was played out, and that sauve qui peut must be the order of the day.  Men, women, and children were rushing frantically about the streets, demanding news, and repeating it with a hundred variations.  The whole scene was lit up by fires which blazed in all directions.  At last the night gave place to dawn, and the scene was one to be remembered for a lifetime.  The faces of the crowd wore different expressions of horror, amazement, and abject terror....  Early in the morning of Wednesday 24th, I, with some others, was ordered to the barricade of La Roquette.[1] My companions were very good fellows, with one exception,—­a grumpy old wretch who had served in Africa, and could talk about nothing but the heat of Algeria and the chances for plunder he had let slip there.  Finding nothing to do at the barricade, I tied my horse and fell asleep upon the pavement.  I dreamed I was at a great dinner-party in my father’s house, and could get nothing to eat, though dishes were handed to me in due course.  Many times afterwards my sleeping thoughts took that direction.  I really believe that there were times when I and many others would willingly have been shot, if we could have secured one good meal, When I awoke, about mid-day, in the Rue de la Roquette, I found my companions gone to the mairie of the Eleventh Arrondissement, and I followed them.  Our uniform was not unlike that of the troops of the line in the French army, so we were taken by the crowd for deserters, and hailed with ’Ah, les bon garcons!  Ah, les bons patriotes!’ and we shouted back in turn with all our might, ‘Vive la Commune!  Vive la Republique!’ Those words were in my mouth the whole of the next three days.  The people never saw a horseman without shrieking to him, ’How is all going on at present?’ To which the answer was invariably, ’All goes well! Vive la Commune!  Vive la Republique!’ though the enemy might at that moment be within five hundred yards.  Indeed, the infatuation and credulity displayed by the French, not only during the insurrection, but the whole war, was absurd.  Tell them on good authority that they had lost a battle or been driven back, they would answer that you were joking, and you might think yourself lucky to escape with a whole skin; but say nothing but ‘All goes well!  We have won!’ and without stopping to inquire, they would at once cheer and shout as if for a decisive victory.”

[Footnote 1:  At that time the execution of the hostages was taking place within the prison.]