multitude
which seems to have but one heart and one voice. The members of the
Committee, each with a tricolor scarf across his breast, have taken
their places on the platform. One of them reads out the names of the
elected councillors. Then the cannon roars once more, but is almost
drowned by the deafening huzzas of the crowd. Oh! people of Paris, who
on the day of the "_Crosse en l'air_"[26] got tipsy in the wine-shops of
Montmartre, whose ranks furnished the murderers of Thomas and Lecomte,
who in the Rue de la Paix shot down unconscious passengers, who are
capable of the wildest extravagance and most execrable deeds, you are
also in your days of glory, grand and magnificent, when a volcano of
generous passions rages within, and the hearts even of those who condemn
you most, are scorched in the flames.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 25: The result of the voting was made known at four o'clock on
the 28th March. The papers devoted to the Commune asserted, on the
following day, that _two hundred and fifteen_ battalions were assembled
on that day, and that the average strength of each corps was one
thousand men. Who could have believed that the Place de l'Hotel de Ville
was capable of accommodating so many! This farcical assertion of the two
hundred and fifteen battalions has passed into a proverb.]

[Footnote 26: When they turned the butt-ends (_crosses_) of their guns
in the air, as a sign they would not fight.]

XXI.

"Citizens," says the _Official Journal_ this morning, "your Commune is
constituted." Then follows decree upon decree. White posters are being
stuck up everywhere. Why are they at the Hotel de Ville, if not to
publish decrees? The conscription is abolished. We shall see no more
poor young fellows marching through the town with their numbers in their
caps, and fired with that noble patriotism which is imbibed in the
cabarets at so much a glass. We shall have no more soldiers, but to make
up for that we shall all be National Guards. There's a glorious decree,
as Edgar Poe says. As to the landlords, their vexation is extreme; even
the tenants do not seem so satisfied as they ought to be. Not to have to
pay any rent is very delightful, certainly, but they scarcely dare
believe in such good fortune. Thus when Orpheus, trying to rescue
Eurydice from "the infernal regions," interrupts with "his harmonious
strains" the tortures of eternal punishment, Prometheus did not
doubtless show as much delight as he o