illes troops had reached the spot, and
ninety sappers and miners, with seven brave firemen, were at work
with water-buckets attempting to save the main building, which
was blazing fiercely when M. Chazal arrived. Already the detached
building in which the precious duplicate was stored was on fire.
There was no place to which he could safely remove the precious
papers, no means of transport to carry them away.

During the siege orders had been given to have large piles of sand
placed in the courtyards of all public buildings, to smother shells
should any fall there. There were three of these sand-piles lying in
the yard of this record office. In them deep trenches were rapidly
dug; and the boxes were buried. Then the pile was covered with
all the incombustible rubbish that could be collected; and had
the Grand Livre been really destroyed, as for some days it was
believed to have been, every Government creditor would have found
his interests safe, through the exertions of M. Chazal and the
intrepid band who worked under him.

In somewhat the same manner the gold and silver in the vaults of
the Bank of France were saved from pillage. The narrow staircase
leading to the vaults, down which only one man could pass at a
time, was by order of the directors filled up with sand during the
siege.

Though my readers may be weary of sad tales of massacre, that of
the Dominicans of Arceuil remains to be told. Their convent was in
the suburbs of Paris; it had been turned by them into a hospital
during the siege, and it continued to be so used during the Commune.
After the fall of Fort Issy, the insurgent troops made their
headquarters not far from the convent. They were commanded by a
general of some ability, but of ferocious character, named Serizier.
He was in the habit of saying, as he looked from his window into
the garden of the Dominicans, "Those rascals ought to be roasted
alive." On May 17 the roof of the building in which he lived caught
fire. The Dominicans tucked up their gowns and did their best to
put it out. When all was over, they were ordered to wait upon the
general. They supposed that they were going to be thanked for their
exertions, and were amazed at finding themselves accused of having
set the building on fire as a signal to the Versaillais. The next
morning a battalion of Communist soldiers surrounded their convent.
The prior, his monks, pupils, and servants, were arrested and marched
to a casemate of a nei