he size of postage-stamps
were pasted on the walls of the doomed houses, with the letters,
B. P. B. (_Bon Pour Bruler_). Some of these tickets were square,
others oval, with a Bacchante's head upon them. A _petroleuse_
was to receive ten francs for every house which she set on fire.

All the sewers beneath Paris had been strewn with torpedoes, bombs,
and inflammable materials, connected with electric wires. "The
reactionary quarters shall be blown up," was the announced intention
of the Commune. Mercifully, these arrangements had not been completed
when the Versailles troops obtained the mastery. Almost the first
thing done was to send sappers and miners underground to cut the
wires that connected electric currents with inflammable material
in all parts of the city. The catacombs that underlie the eastern
part of Paris were included in the incendiary arrangement.

When Paris was at last in safety, and the Commune subdued, would
that it had been only the guilty on whom the great and awful vengeance
fell!

[Illustration: _MONSEIGNEUR DARBOY._ (_Archbishop of Paris._)]

CHAPTER XVI.

THE HOSTAGES.

About once in every seventy or eighty years some exceptionally
moving tragedy stirs the heart of the civilized world. The tragedy
of our own century is the execution of the hostages in Paris, May
24 and 26, 1871.

At one o'clock on the morning of April 6, three weeks after the
proclamation of the Commune, a body of the National Guard was drawn
up on the sidewalk in the neighborhood of the Madeleine. A door
suddenly opened and a man came hastily out, followed by two National
Guards shouting to their comrades. The man was arrested at once,
making no resistance. It was the Abbe Duguerry, _cure_ of the
Madeleine,[1]--the first of the so-called hostages arrested in
retaliation for the summary execution of General Duval, who had
commanded one of the three columns that marched out of Paris the
day before to attack the Versaillais.

[Footnote 1: _Cure_ in France means rector; what we mean by a curate
or assistant minister is there called _vicaire_.]

Both the _cure_ of the Madeleine and his _vicaire_, the Abbe Lamazou,
were that night arrested. The latter, who escaped death as a hostage,
published an account of his experiences; but he died not long after
of heart disease, brought on by his excitement and suffering during
the Commune.

The same night Monseigneur Darboy, the archbishop of Paris, his
chaplain, and eigh