stood only three
or four yards from the officer in command of the place, who stood
looking at the prisoners, with his arms folded and his officers
beside him. I saw him staring at me, which I attributed to my being
the best-dressed man of the party. Presently he walked slowly up
to me, and measuring me from head to foot with what I took to be
a diabolical sneer, cried, 'Ho! Ho! the ribbon of the Legion of
Honor! You got it, I suppose, on the barricades!' With that I felt
a sharp pull at my coat. Quick as thought, I brought my hand down,
and caught his firmly as he was trying to tear the ribbon from
my breast. In my agitated state of mind I had not been aware I
was wearing a coat that had it on. 'You may shoot me, Captain,'
I said, 'but you shall not wrest that ribbon from me.' 'Where did
you get it?' 'The prince president of the Republic, Louis Napoleon,
gave it me.' 'When?' 'On September 23, 1853.' 'How is it, then,
that you were arrested? Was it on a barricade?' 'No, Captain, in
my own apartment. It is not likely I should fight for the Commune
after having been a devoted friend of the emperor for forty years.'
'Your name?' 'Count Joseph Orsi.' He looked at me again, and having
joined his officers, to whom he related what had taken place, he
turned round and in a loud voice said to me: 'Come out of the ranks.'
Then, seeing a gendarme close by, he said: 'Do not lose sight of
this prisoner.'"

For two days the captain kept Count Orsi in his office and encouraged
him to write to any friends he might have in Versailles. Count Orsi
named M. Grevy (afterwards president) as having been for years his
legal adviser, and he wrote a few lines to various other persons.
But there were no posts, and in the confusion of Versailles at
that moment there seemed little chance that his notes would reach
their destination. Two days later an order came to Satory to send
all prisoners to Versailles, and the kind-hearted captain was forced
to return Count Orsi to the column of his fellow-prisoners.

At Versailles they were shut up in the wine-cellars of the palace,
forty-five feet underground. The prisoners confined there were
the very dregs and scum of the insurrection. The cellars had only
some old straw on the floors, left there by the Prussians. There
were six hundred men confined in this place, and the torture they
endured from the close air, the filth, and the impossibility of
lying down at night was terrible.

Count Orsi was ten