ugh the air of the projectiles,
and the cracking and bursting at each end when they reached their
destination, made a music which it requires a Parisian education
thoroughly to appreciate. Heavy volumes of smoke rose from the besieged
quarter, and the destruction of life and property upon the doomed area
which the Insurgents have chosen as their final stronghold must be
something appalling. Near the angle of the street at which we stood lay
the dead body of a man, covered with a cloth, who had been shot not many
hours before in an adjoining Court. It was evident from the looks and
tone of the inhabitants of this neighbourhood that their sympathies were
strongly with the Communists. They muttered gloomily and savagely to
each other, scarcely daring to raise their suspicious glances from the
ground, for they knew not which of their neighbours might not have
denounced them, and that the day of danger was by no means past.
Probably two-thirds of the men now gathered at their shopdoors had
fought actively for the Commune. At the Prevote of the 5th corps I had
an interesting instance of the effect of denunciations. While there some
men who had been intrusted with the arrest of General Henry returned
from their expedition. General Henry, it will be remembered, was one of
the earliest leaders of the movement, and I went down to see where he
had openly established himself as Commander-in-Chief of the National
Guard in the Vaugirard quarter. About the 16th of March, or two days
before the Revolution several attempts were made to arrest him but the
task was so dangerous that they all failed. Throughout the movement this
man has exhibited daring and intelligence, and his capture is much
desired. In consequence of the information received his haunt was
visited, and the result I saw in the shape of a blue Prussian overcoat
stained with blood and perforated with a bullet-hole, a tunic still
more bloody and torn, a very jaunty braided jacket quite clean and new,
a Prussian undress cap, and a very handsome sword. The proprietor had
evidently been wounded, and had succeeded in evading his captors, if
still alive, by some secret contrivance, which, however, the honour of
the denouncer was pledged to discover; it was evident that he had
provided himself with a Prussian uniform, in the hope of passing through
the German lines, and the blood on his coat would seem to indicate that
he had made the attempt and failed. From this barrack, just pri