The father of Claudine, aghast with fear and horror, stepped back into
the sitting-room. "I see no escape for us," he cried.

At that moment hoarse shouts below them in the court-yard announced that
a party of insurgents, accompanied by a band of the fiendish women they
called _petroleuses_, had burst into the house that they inhabited.
Already the dangerous fluid from which these women took their name was
being poured over the wood-work of the staircase and the two lower
_appartements_.

A cry ran through the house of "Save yourselves!" Claudine's father
gathered together some important papers, some money, and a few jewels.
The mother and her old servant spread a blanket on the floor, and flung
into it such objects as they could gather up in haste, tying it by the
four corners. As to Claudine, frantic with terror, she ran into her
bedroom and brought out what she valued most--a cage containing two
young turtle-doves. They were her only pets. She loved them better than
anything else in the world, except old Clemence and her father and
mother.

The torches of the Communards had already set fire to the wood-work
saturated with coal-oil. Flames were breaking out in every direction.
The inhabitants of the doomed houses were forced to make their way into
the street, or stay to be burned alive. The first to rush down the
staircase was Claudine, cage in hand. She ran into the street. A
bomb-shell burst as she reached it, and her terrified parents saw her
drop upon the sidewalk, while the cage fell at some distance, rolling
away out of her hand.

When her father saw her dead, as he supposed, he rushed into the street,
undaunted by the bursting of the shell, and picking up her body,
retreated with it under shelter of the _porte cochere_.

But Claudine was not dead, nor even wounded. She had fainted with
fright, and as her parents hung over her with tender words, she opened
her blue eyes and smiled at them. A moment after, she remembered her
dear doves. Before any one could stop her or forbid her she ran back
into the street through bullets thick as hail, caught up her cage, and
ran back with her recovered treasures. A _petroleuse_ who had seen her
stopped as she was setting fire to some furniture, and cried out, with a
mocking laugh,

"What was the use of running out to pick up those? They will be roast
birds anyhow in the next half-hour."

On hearing these cruel words little Claudine began to comprehend for the
first