XIX.—(Page 351.)
Shall we ever know of all the spurious speculators, the commercial men with no resources left, the men at the brink of bankruptcy, who made use of the conflagrations in order to quit scores? How many cried 'Death!' who had themselves just set the petroleum on fire.
On the 10th March, 1877, the assize court of the Seine sentenced to ten years' hard labour a ruined Bonapartist, Prieur de la Comble, found guilty of having set fire to his house, with the object of getting a heavy premium from the companies where he was insured. He had prepared his crime with the greatest sang froid, painted the walls, saturated the hangings with petroleum, made sure of nine different centres of fire. His father, a former mayor of the first arrondissement, had failed to the amount of 1,800,000 francs, and at the end of the Empire there had been proceedings of bankruptcy instituted against him. Now, on the 24th May, 1871, the house of the accused in the Rue du Louvre, that of his father in the Rue de Rivoli, that of the assignee of the failure in the Boulevard Sebastopol, were consumed, and owing to these triple conflagrations the account-books and vouchers disappeared. This fact was only mentioned before the assize court, and the president confined himself to saying that it was odd. He took good care not to interrogate Prieur; and one knows that the presidents of assize courts are not usually chary of sifting the antecedents of the accused.
The motive of this extraordinary reticence is that no blame was to be thrown upon the army and the courts-martial, which had shot or condemned some petroleuses for the burning of these very houses set on fire by Prieur de la Comble.
XX.—(Page 368.)
" ... A picket of soldiers debouched from the Rue de Vaugirard on our left. They marched in two ranks. In the midst of them was Millière.
"He was dressed exactly as I had seen him some months before at Bordeaux on the tribune of the Assembly and in the Republican Circle—black trousers, dark-blue overcoat, tight and buttoned up, a high black hat.
"The picket stopped before the door of the Luxembourg. One of the soldiers, who held his rifle by the end of the barrel, cried, 'It is I who took him! it is I who am entitled to shoot him!' There were about a hundred persons there of both sexes and of all ages. Many cried, 'Death to him! shoot him!'
"A National Guard, wearing a tricolor armlet, seized hold of Millière by the wrist, led him into the corner on the right, and placed him against the wall, then he retired.... Millière uncovered himself, placed his hat on the pedestal of the column, crossed his arms on his breast, and calm and cool looked at the troops. He waited.
"Round us the soldiers were being questioned. 'Who is it?' one of them was asked, and I heard him answer, 'It is Mayer.'