ublime.

Children, even, do not remain passive in this fearful conflict. The
children! you cry,--but do not smile; one of my friends has just seen a
poor boy whose eye has been knocked in with the point of a nail. It
happened thus. It was on Friday evening in the principal street of
Neuilly. Two hundred boys--the eldest scarcely twelve years old--had
assembled there; they carried sticks on their shoulders, with knives and
nails stuck at the end of them. They had their army roll, and their
numbers were called over in form, and their chiefs--for they had
chiefs--gave the order to form into half sections, then to march in the
direction of Charenton; a mite of a child trudged before, blowing in a
penny trumpet bought at a toy-shop, and they had a cantiniere, a little
girl of six. Soon, they met another troop of children of about the same
numbers. Had the encounter been previously arranged? Had it been decided
that they should give battle? I cannot tell you this, but at all events
the battle took place, one party being for the Versailles troops, the
other for the Federals. Such a battle, that the inhabitants of the
quarter had the greatest difficulty in separating the combatants, and
there were killed and wounded, as the official despatches of the
Commune would give it; Alexis Mercier, a lad of twelve, whom his
comrades had raised to the dignity of captain, was killed by the blow of
a knife in the stomach.

Ah! believe it, these women drunk with hate, these children playing at
murder, are symptoms of the terrible malady of the times. A few days
hence, and this fury for slaughter will have seized all Paris.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 51: The Gardiens de la Paix replaced the Sergents de Ville.
They carried no sword, and wore a cap with a tricoloured band and
cockade; in fact were the policemen of Paris. The Gendarmerie are the
country police.]

[Footnote 52: Tricoteuses (knitters), women who attended political
clubs--working whilst they listened--1871 refined upon the idea of 1793.
The first revolution had its Tricoteuses, that of 1871 its
Petroleuses!!!]

XLII.

May conciliation be hoped for yet? Alas! I can scarcely think so. The
bloody fight will have a bloody end. It is not alone between the Commune
of Paris and the Assembly of Versailles that there lies an abyss which
only corpses can fill. Paris itself, at this moment--I mean the Paris
sincerely desirous of peace--is no longer understood by France; a few
da