Bergeret has been
grievously wounded by a shell. "Pure exaggeration!" some one answers.
"The General has only had two horses killed under him."

Before him, rather, since he drives to battle. What appears most
certain of all is that there is furious fighting going on between Sevres
and Meudon. I hear it said that the 118th of the line have turned the
butts of their guns into the air, and that the Parisians have taken
twelve mitrailleuses from the Versailles troops.

There is fighting, too, at Chatillon. The Federals have won great
advantages. Nevertheless an individual who went out that side to
investigate, announces that he saw three battalions return with very
little air of triumph, and that other battalions, forming the reserve,
had refused to march.

A shower of contradictions, in which the news for the most part has no
other source than the opinion and desire of the person who brings it. It
is by the result alone that we can appreciate what is passed. At one
moment I give up trying to get information as a bad job, but I begin
questioning again in spite of myself; the desire to know is even
stronger than the very strong certainty that I shall be able to learn
nothing.

I turn to the Champs Elysees. The cannon is roaring; ambulance waggons
descend the Avenue, and stop before the Palais de l'Industrie; over the
way Punch is making his audience roar with laughter as usual. Oh! the
miserable times! The horrible fratricidal struggle! May those who were
its cause be accursed for ever!

While some are killing and others dying, the members of the Commune are
rendering decrees, and the walls are white with official proclamations.

"Messieurs Thiers, Favre, Picard, Dufaure, Simon and Pothuan are
impeached; their property will be seized and sequestrated until they
deliver themselves up to public justice."

This impeachment and sequestration, will it bring back husbands to the
widows and fathers to the orphans?

"The Commune of Paris adopts the families of citizens who have
fallen or may fall in opposing the criminal aggression of the
Royalists, directed against Paris and against the French republic."

Infinitely better than adopting the orphans would be to save the fathers
from death. Oh, these absurd decrees! You separate the Church from the
State; you suppress the budget of public worship; you confiscate the
property of the clergy. A pretty time to think about such acts! What is
necessary,