His father received the news of his death calmly. He wrote: "Let us bear our poor child's death as much like Christians and as much like men as we can. May his blood, joined to that of so many other innocent victims, finally appease the justice of God," But when, shortly afterwards, Charles died of an illness brought on by excessive fatigue in serving the ambulances, the father sank under the double stroke, and died fifteen days after his last remaining son.
From the death of the youngest and the humblest of these ecclesiastical hostages, we will turn now to that of the venerable archbishop, and to his experiences during the forty-eight hours that he passed at La Roquette, after having been transferred to it from Mazas.
With studied cruelty and insolence, a cell of the worst description was assigned to the chief of the clergy in France. It had been commonly appropriated to murderers on the eve of their execution. There was barely standing-room in it beside the filthy and squalid bed. The beds and cells of the other priests were at least clean, but this treatment of the archbishop had been ordered by the Commune.
On the morning of May 23 the prisoners had been permitted to breathe fresh air in a narrow paved courtyard; but the archbishop was too weak and ill for exercise; he lay half fainting on his bed. In addition to his other sufferings he was faint from hunger, for the advance of the Versailles troops had cut off the Commune's supplies, and the hostages were of course the last persons they wished to care for. Père Olivariet (shot three days later in the same party as Paul Seigneret, in the Rue Haxo) had had some cake and chocolate sent him before he left Mazas; with these he fed the old man by mouthfuls. This was all the nourishment the archbishop had during the two days he spent at La Roquette. Mr. Washburne, the American minister, had with difficulty obtained permission to send him a small quantity of strengthening wine during his stay at Mazas. But a greater boon than earthly food or drink was brought him by Père Olivariet, who had received while at Mazas, in a common pasteboard box, some of the consecrated wafers used by the Roman Catholic Church in holy communion; and he had it in his power to give the archbishop the highest consolation that could have been offered him.
It had been intended to execute the hostages on the 23d; but the director of the prison, endeavoring to evade the horrible task of delivering up his prisoners, pronounced the first order he received informal.
The accursed 24th of May dawned, brilliant and beautiful. The archbishop went down in the early morning to obtain the breath of fresh air allowed him. Judge Bonjean, who had never professed himself a believer, came up to him and prayed him for his blessing, saying that he had seen the truth, as it were on the right hand of Death, and he too was about to depart in the true faith of a Christian.
By this time the insurgents held little more of Paris than the heights of Belleville, Père la Chaise, and the neighborhood of La Roquette, which is not far from the Place de la Bastille. The Communal Government had quitted the Hôtel-de-Ville and taken refuge not far from La Roquette, in the Mairie of the Eleventh Arrondissement.
At six in the morning of May 24th,[1] a second order came to the director of the prison to deliver up all hostages in his hands. He remonstrated, saying he could not act upon an order to deliver up prisoners who were not named. Finally, a compromise was effected; six were to be chosen. The commander of the firing party asked for the prison register. The names of the hostages were not there. Then the list from Mazas was demanded. The director could not find it. At last, after long searching, they discovered it themselves. Genton, the man in command, sat down to pick out his six victims. He wrote Darboy, Bonjean, Jecker, Allard, Clerc, Ducoudray. Then he paused, rubbed out Jecker, and put in Duguerrey. Darboy, as we know, was the archbishop; Bonjean, judge of the Court of Appeals; Allard, head-chaplain to the hospitals, who had been unwearied in his services to the wounded; Clerc and Ducoudray were Jesuit fathers; Duguerrey was pastor of the Madeleine. Jecker was a banker who had negotiated Mexican loans for the Government. The next day the Commune made a present of him to Genton, who, after trying in vain to get a few hundred thousand francs out of him for his ransom, shot him, assisted by four others, one of whom was Ferré, and flung his body into the cellar of a half-built house upon the heights of Belleville.
[Footnote 1: Macmillan's Magazine, 1873.]
When the order drawn up by Genton had been approved at headquarters, the director of the prison had no resource but to deliver up his prisoners.