. Tell them on good authority that they
had lost a battle or been driven back, they would answer that you
were joking, and you might think yourself lucky to escape with a
whole skin; but say nothing but 'All goes well! We have won!' and
without stopping to inquire, they would at once cheer and shout
as if for a decisive victory."

[Footnote 1: At that time the execution of the hostages was taking
place within the prison.]

The next duty of our Englishman was to act as mounted orderly to
captains who were ordered to visit and report on the state of the
barricades, also to command all citizens to go into their houses
and close the doors and windows. There was little enthusiasm at
the barricades, and everywhere need of reinforcements. The army
of the Commune was melting away. The most energetic officer they
saw was a stalwart negro lieutenant,--possibly the man who, as De
Compiegne tells us, had scared some Versaillais in a cellar on
the 22d of May.

On the night of Thursday, May 25, the Column of July was a remarkable
sight. It had been hung with wreaths of _immortelles_, and those caught
fire from an explosive. Elsewhere, except for burning buildings,
there was total darkness. There was no gas in Paris, of course. And
here our Englishman goes on to say that so far as his experience
went, he saw no _petroleuses_ nor fighting women, nor did he believe
in their existence.

By Friday, May 26, provisions and fodder were exhausted, and it
was hard for the soldiers of the Commune to get anything to eat.
Our Englishman, in the general disorganization, became separated
from his comrades, and joined himself to a small troop of horsemen
wearing the red shirt of Garibaldi, who swept past him at a furious
gallop. They were making for the cemetery of Pere la Chaise. "All is
lost!" they cried. "To get there is our only chance of safety." Yet
they still shouted to the men and women whom they passed, "All goes
well! _Vive la Commune! Vive la Republique!_" By help of an order to
visit all the posts, which the Englishman had in his pocket, they
obtained admittance into Pere la Chaise. There were five Poles in
the party, one Englishman, and one Frenchman; "and certainly," adds
the narrator, "they were no credit to their respective nations. It
was on their faces that I remarked for the first time that peculiar
hunted-down look which was afterwards to be seen on every countenance,
and I presume upon my own."

Our Englishman rode up to