ere he more than
confirmed the high reputation he had acquired during the siege, and
impressed the ablest public men with the belief that he was destined
to take a very leading part in the strife of party. When the Versailles
troops entered Paris, he was, of course, among them in command of a
battalion.

"He escaped safe through that horrible war of barricades, though no man
more courted danger. He inspired his men with his own courage. It was
not till the revolt was quenched on the evening of the 28th May that he
met his death. The Versailles soldiers, naturally exasperated, were very
prompt in seizing and shooting at once every passenger who looked like a
foe. Some men under De Mauleon had seized upon one of these victims,
and were hurrying him into the next street for execution, when, catching
sight of the Vicomte, he screamed out, 'Lebeau, save me!'

"At that cry De Mauleon rushed forward, arrested his soldiers, cried,
'This man is innocent--a harmless physician. I answer for him.' As he
thus spoke, a wounded Communist, lying in the gutter amidst a heap of
the slain, dragged himself up, reeled towards De Mauleon, plunged a
knife between his shoulders, and dropped down dead.

"The Vicomte was carried into a neighbouring house, from all the windows
of which the tricolour was suspended; and the Medecin whom he had just
saved from summary execution examined and dressed his wound. The Vicomte
lingered for more than an hour, but expired in the effort to utter some
words, the sense of which those about him endeavoured in vain to seize.

"It was from the Medecin that the name of the assassin and the motive
for the crime were ascertained. The miscreant was a Red Republican and
Socialist named Armand Monnier. He had been a very skilful workman, and
earning, as such, high wages. But he thought fit to become an active
revolutionary politician, first led into schemes for upsetting the world
by the existing laws of marriage, which had inflicted on him one woman
who ran away from him, but being still legally his wife, forbade him
to marry another woman with whom he lived, and to whom he seems to have
been passionately attached.

"These schemes, however, he did not put into any positive practice till
he fell in with a certain Jean Lebeau, who exercised great influence
over him, and by whom he was admitted into one of the secret
revolutionary societies which had for their object the overthrow of the
Empire. After that time his