ers, who had arrived from Bordeaux, had been meditating the blow
for the last two days, in order that the Assembly at Versailles might
proceed without fear to proclaim the monarchy. Then the scene shifted,
and he was on the ground at Montmartre itself--about nine o'clock it
was--fired by the narrative of the people's victory: how the soldiery
had come sneaking up in the darkness, how the delay in bringing up the
teams had given the National Guards an opportunity to fly to arms, the
troops, having no heart to fire on women and children, reversing
their muskets and fraternizing with the people. Then he had wandered
desultorily about the city, wherever chance directed his footsteps, and
by midday had satisfied himself that the Commune was master of Paris,
without even the necessity of striking a blow, for Thiers and the
ministers had decamped from their quarters in the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, the entire government was flying in disorder to Versailles, the
thirty thousand troops had been hastily conducted from the city, leaving
more than five thousand deserters from their numbers along the line
of their retreat. And later, about half-past five in the afternoon, he
could recall being at a corner of the exterior boulevard in the midst of
a mob of howling lunatics, listening without the slightest evidence of
disapproval to the abominable story of the murder of Generals Lecomte
and Clement Thomas. Generals, they called themselves; fine generals,
they! The leaders they had had at Sedan rose before his memory,
voluptuaries and imbeciles; one more, one less, what odds did it make!
And the remainder of the day passed in the same state of half-crazed
excitement, which served to distort everything to his vision; it was an
insurrection that the very stones of the streets seemed to have favored,
spreading, swelling, finally becoming master of all at a stroke in the
unforeseen fatality of its triumph, and at ten o'clock in the evening
delivering the Hotel de Ville over to the members of the Central
Committee, who were greatly surprised to find themselves there.

There was one memory, however, that remained very distinct to Maurice's
mind: his unexpected meeting with Jean. It was three days now since the
latter had reached Paris, without a sou in his pocket, emaciated
and enfeebled by the illness that had consigned him to a hospital in
Brussels and kept him there two months, and having had the luck to fall
in with Captain Ravaud, who