"I found among them the same men whom I had seen in the battalions of the siege of Paris. Almost all seemed to me to be working-men.
"Their faces betrayed neither despair nor despondency nor emotion. They walked on with a firm, resolute step, and they seemed to me so indifferent to their fate that I thought they expected to be released. I was entirely mistaken. These men had been taken in the morning at Menilmontant, and knew whither they were being led. Arrived at the Lobau Barracks, the cavalry officers who preceded the escort had a semi-circle formed, and prevented the curious from advancing."
XXVII.—(Page 385.)
One of the most ignoble barkers of Versailles, Francisque Sarcey, wrote in the Gaulois of the 13th June:—
"Men who are quite cool, of whose judgment and word I cannot doubt, have spoken to me with an astonishment mingled with horror of the scenes they had seen, seen with their own eyes, and which rendered me rather meditative.
"Young women, pretty of face, and dressed in silk dresses, came down into the street, and a revolver in their hands, fired at random, and then said with proud mien, elevated voice, eyes full of hatred, 'Shoot me at once!' One of them, who had been taken in a house whence they had fired from the windows, was about to be bound in order to be taken to Versailles and judged there.
"'Come,' said she, 'save me the trouble of the journey!' And placing herself against a wall, her arms spread open, her breast bare, she seemed to solicit—to provoke death.
"All those who have been seen executed thus summarily by furious soldiers have died, insults on their tongues, with a laugh of contempt, like martyrs, who in sacrificing themselves accomplish a great duty."
XXVIII.—(Page 386.)
At the time of an action entered against M. Raspail, fils, in 1876, for his pamphlet in favour of an amnesty, the following letter, addressed to him by M. Hervey de Saisy, senator, was read in court:—