and that the army
on this side is gradually retreating.--Street fighting is our affair,
you see," he continues. "In such battles as that, the merest gamin from
Belleville knows more about it than MacMahon.... It will be terrible.
The enemy shoots the prisoners." (For the last two months the Commune
had been saying the same thing.) "We shall give no quarter."--I ask him,
"Is it Delescluze who is determined to resist?"--"Yes," he answers.[101]
"Lean forward a little. Look at those three windows to the left of the
trophy. That is the Salle de l'Etat-Major. Delescluze is there giving
orders, signing commissions. He has not slept for three days. Just now I
scarcely knew him, he was so worn out with fatigue. The Committee of
Public Safety sits permanently in a room adjoining, making out
proclamations and decrees."--"Ha, ha!" said I, "decrees!"--"Yes,
citizen, he has just decreed heroism!"[102] The officer gives me several
other bits of information. Tells me that "Lullier this very morning has
had thirty _refractaires_ shot, and that Rigault has gone to Mazas to
look after the hostages." While he is talking, I try to see what is
going on in the Place de l'Hotel de Ville. Two or three thousand
Federals are there, some seated, some lying on the ground. A lively
discussion is going on. Several little barrels are standing about on
chairs; the men are continually getting up and crowding round the
barrels, some have no glasses, but drink in the palms of their hands.
Women walk up and down in bands, gesticulating wildly. The men shout,
the women shriek. Mounted expresses gallop out of the Hotel, some in the
direction of the Bastille, some towards the Place de la Concorde. The
latter fly past us crying out, "All's well!" A man comes out on the
balcony of the Hotel de Ville and addresses the crowd. All the Federals
start to their feet enthusiastically.--"That's Valles," says my
neighbour to me. I had already recognised him. I frequently saw him in
the students' quarter in a little _cremerie_ in the Rue Serpente. He was
given to making verses, rather bad ones by-the-bye; I remember one in
particular, a panegyric on a green coat. They used to say he had a
situation in the _pompes funebres_.[103] His face even then wore a
bitter and violent expression. He left poetry for journalism, and then
journalism for politics.

[Illustration: JULES VALLES, COMMISSIONER OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.[104]]

To-day he is spouting forth at a window of the Ho