"There had been installed in this house, so sadly celebrated, a provostship, presided over by a captain of Chasseurs. As the inhabitants of the quarter rivalled each other in zeal in denouncing the insurgents, the arrests were numerous. As the prisoners arrived they were questioned.
"They were forced to kneel down, bare-headed, in silence, before the wall at the foot of which the unfortunate Generals Lecomte and Clément-Thomas had been assassinated. They remained thus a few hours, till others came to take their place. Soon, to lessen what might be cruel in this amende honorable, the prisoners were allowed to sit down in the shade, but always opposite the wall, the aspect of which prepared them for death, and shortly after the principal culprits amongst them were shot.
"They were taken a few steps from there to the slope of the hill, at the spot where during the siege a battery overlooked the St. Denis route. It is there too that Varlin was conducted, whom they had great trouble in protecting from the violence of the crowd. Varlin had confessed his name, and made no efforts to escape the fate that awaited him; he died game.
V. B."
XVII.—(Page 338.)
The day before, at five o'clock, at the moment when the baggage of the War Office arrived at the Hôtel-de-Ville, in the Avenue Victoria, two guards, carrying a chest, were assailed with a hatchet, by an individual dressed in a blouse and wearing a cap. One of the Federals fell dead. The assassin, immediately seized hold of, cried, 'You are done for! you are done for! Give me back my hatchet and I shall recommence.' On this madman the commissary of police of the Hôtel-de-Ville found papers and the livret, proving that he had served in the sergents-de-ville.
During the evening of Tuesday, an individual, wearing the uniform of an officer of a free corps, came to ask for orders at the Hôtel-de-Ville. A commandant of the same corps entered the hall and saw this officer, and not recognising him, asked his name. The latter grew confused: 'But no, you are not one of my men,' said the commandant. The individual was arrested, and found to be the bearer of Versaillese instructions and orders.
Treason assumed all shapes. The same morning at Belleville, Place des Fêtes, Ranvier and Frankel heard a drummer reading the Federal Guards the order not to leave their arrondissements. Ranvier, interrogating the drummer, learned that the order emanated from General du Bisson.
XVIII.—(Page 348.)
"Colonel Gaillard, chief of the military prisons, interrogated by the Commission d'Enquête as to the objects of value found on the insurgents, answered: 'I can give you no information on this head. There were valuables which have not been sent to Versailles. A few days ago I saw a minister of Denmark. He came to inquire what had become of a sum of 100,000 francs seized on one of his compatriots who had been shot near the Hôtel-de-Ville. His minister told me he had been unable to obtain any information. Many things happened in Paris of which we know nothing.'"—Enquête sur le 18 Mars, Colonel Gaillard, v. 2, p. 246.