ses, its prospects,
and its signification. A citizen whom I had heard of as most hotly
in favor of Press freedom, proposed in my hearing that all journals
in Paris should be suppressed save those that were edited by members
of the Council of the Commune. That there were three or four earnest
men among them, no one can dispute; but as to the rest, I can only
say that if they were zealous patriots devoted to their country's
good, they did not, when I saw them, look like it."[1]

[Footnote 1: Cornhill Magazine, 1871.]

In the first week of May the Commune decreed the destruction of
M. Thiers's beautiful home in the Rue St. Georges. The house was
filled with objects of art and with documents of historical interest
which he had gathered while writing his History of the Revolution,
the Consulate, and the First Empire.

The Commune had removed some of these precious things, and sold
them to dealers, from whom many were afterwards recovered; but
the mob which assembled to execute the decree of destruction, was
eager to consume everything that was left. In the courtyard were
scattered books and pictures waiting to feed the flames. "The men
busy at the work looked," says an Englishman,[2] "like demons in
the red flame. I turned away, thinking not of the man of politics,
but of the historian, of the house where he had thought and worked,
of the books that he had treasured on his shelves, of the favorite
chair that had been burned upon his hearthstone. I thought of all
the dumb witnesses of a long and laborious life dispersed, of all
the memories those rooms contained destroyed."

[Footnote 2: Leighton, Paris under the Commune.]

On the 16th of May, the day of the destruction of the column in the
Place Vendome, a great patriotic concert was given in the palace
of the Tuileries, which was thronged; but "by that date, discord and
despair were in the Council of the Commune, and its most respectable
members had sent in their resignation. Versailles everywhere was
gaining ground; the Fort of Vauves was taken, that of Mont Rouge
had been dismantled, and breaches were opened in the city walls.
The leaders of the insurrection lost their senses, and gave way
to every species of madness and folly. The army of Versailles soon
entered the city from different points. The fight was desperate,
the carnage frightful. Dombrowski, the only general of ability, was
killed early in the struggle. Barricades were in almost every street.
Prisoners