less, in a black stuff dress and white crimped cap, holding by the
hand a boy, who had not yet reached the age of sorrowing tears, and
behind them a little knot of neighbours and friends. The small
procession crept along the wide street in the bright sunlight.

When it reached the church they found the door closed, and yet the money
for the mass had been paid the night before, and the hour for the
ceremony fixed. One of the women went forward towards the door of the
vestry, where she was met by a National Guard, who told her with a
superfluity of oaths that she must not go in, that the ---- cure, the
sacristan, and all the d---- fellows of the church were locked up, and
that they would no longer have anything to do with patriots. Then the
mother approached and said, "But who will bury my poor child if the cure
is in prison?" and then she began to weep bitterly at the thought that
there would be no prayers put up for the good of the little spirit, and
that no holy water would be sprinkled on its coffin. Yes, members of the
Commune, she wept, and she wept longer and more bitterly later at the
cemetery, when she saw them lower the body of her child into the grave,
without a prayer or a recommendation to God's mercy. You must not scoff
at her, you see she was a poor weak woman, with ideas of the narrowest
sort; but there are other mothers like her, quite unworthy of course to
bear the children of patriots, who do not want their dear ones to be
buried like dogs; who cannot understand that to pray is a crime, and to
kneel down before God an offence to humanity, and who still are weak
enough to wish to see a cross planted on the tombs of those they have
loved and lost! Not the cross of the nineteenth century--a red
flag![41]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 41: Early in April the Commune forbade divine service in the
Pantheon. They out off the arms of the cross, and replaced it by the red
flag during a salute of artillery.]

[Illustration: COLONEL ASSY.]

XXXIII.

Communal fraternity is decidedly in the ascendant; it is putting into
practice this admirable precept, "Arrest each other." They say M.
Delescluze has been sent to the Conciergerie. Yesterday Lullier was
arrested, to-day Assy. It was not sufficient to change Executive
Committees--if I may be allowed to say so--with no more ceremony than
one would change one's boots; the Commune conducts itself, in respect to
those members that become obnoxious to it, absolutely