on both sides were shot without mercy. The Communists set
fire to the Tuileries, the Hotel-de-Ville, the Ministry of Finance,
the Palace of the Legion of Honor.

The rest of the story is all blood and horror. The most pathetic
part of it is the murder of the hostages, which took place on the
morning of May 24, and which cannot be told in this chapter. The
desperate leaders of the Commune had determined that if they must
perish, Paris itself should be their funeral pyre.

It was General Eudes who organized the band of incendiaries called
"petroleuses" and gave out the petroleum. It was Felix Pyat, it
was said, who laid a train of gunpowder to blow up the Invalides,
while another member of the Commune served out explosives.

On the night of May 24, the Hotel-de-Ville was in flames. The smoke,
at times a deep red, enveloped everything; the air was laden with
the nauseous odors of petroleum. The Tuileries, the Palace of the
Legion of Honor, the Ministry of War, and the Treasury were flaming
like the craters of a great volcano.

We have heard much of _petroleuses_. They appear to have worked
among private houses in the more open parts of the city. Here is
a picture of one seen by an Englishman:--

"She walked with a rapid step under the shadow of a wall. She was
poorly dressed, her age was between forty and fifty; her head was
bound with a red-checked handkerchief, from which fell meshes of
coarse, uncombed hair. Her face was red, her eyes blurred, and
she moved with her eyes bent down to the ground. Her right hand
was in her pocket; in the other she held one of the high, narrow
tin cans in which milk is carried in Paris, but which now contained
petroleum. The street seemed deserted. She stopped and consulted
a dirty bit of paper which she held in her hand, paused a moment
before the grated entrance to a cellar, and then went on her way
steadily, without haste. An hour after, that house was burning to
the ground. Sometimes these wretched women led little children
by the hand, who were carrying bottles of petroleum. There was
a veritable army of these incendiaries, composed mainly of the
dregs of society. This army had its chiefs, and each detachment
was charged with firing a quarter."

The orders for the conflagration of public edifices bore the stamp
of the Commune and that of the Central Committee of the National
Guard; also the seal of the war delegate. For private houses less
ceremony was used. Small tickets of t