look upon its
members as too mad--if not worse--to believe that by any accident they
can be reasonable. These men have finished by rendering detestable
whatever good there originally was in their idea.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 65: He was born in 1841, in the department of the Rhone. His
education was completed very early. At the age of twenty he was engaged
on two journals of the opposition, _La Jeune France_, and _La Jeunesse_.
Those papers were soon suppressed, and their young contributor was
imprisoned for three months. In 1864 he became one of the staff of the
_Presse_, whence he passed to the _Liberte_ in 1866. Two years later he
founded the _Courrier Francais_; but from the multiplicity of fines
imposed upon it, and from the imprisonment of its founder, the new
journal expired very shortly. After a year's incarceration at
Sainte-Pelagie, Vermorel was engaged on the _Reforme_, which continued
to appear until the fall of the Empire. During the siege he served as a
private in the National Guard. He became a member of the Committee of
Justice under the Commune, and was one of those who, at its fall,
neither deserted nor disgraced it. He is reported to have mounted a
barricade armed only with a cane, crying "I come here to die and not to
fight." His mother obtained permission to transport his remains to
Venice.]

LIX.

We have a court-martial; it is presided over by the citizen Rossel,
chief of the grand staff of the army. It has just condemned to death the
Commandant Girod, who refused to march against the "enemy." The
Executive Committee, however, has pardoned Commandant Girod. Let us look
at this matter a little. If the Executive Committee occupies its time in
undoing what the court-martial has done, I can't quite understand why
the executive has instituted a court-martial at all. If I were a member
of the latter I should get angry. "What! I should say, they instal me in
the hall where the courts-martial are held, they appoint guards to
attend upon me, and my president has the right to say, 'Guards, remove
the prisoner.' In a word, they convert me into something which resembles
a judge as much as a parody can resemble the work burlesqued, and when
I, a member of the court-martial, desire to take advantage of the rights
that have been conferred upon me, and order the Commandant Girod to be
shot, they stand in the way of justice, and save the life of him I have
condemned. This is absurd! I had a liking for