"Jules the garçon—Jules of the white apron!" cried one who knew me.
"Know you not that he is now Dictator? Vive the Dictator Jules,
Emperor-of 'Encore-un-Bock'!"
So they mocked me, and I dared not try them further, for we came upon another crowd of them with a poor frightened man in the centre. He was crying out—"For me, I am a man of peace—gentlemen, I am no spy. I have lived all my life in the Rue Scribe." But one after another struck at him, some with the butt-end of their rifles, some with their bayonets, those behind with the heels of their boots—till that which had been a man when I stood on one side of the street, was something which would not bear looking upon by the time that I had passed to the other. For these horrors were the commonest things done under the rule of Hell—which was the rule of the Commune. Then I desired greatly to have done my commission and to be rid of Paris.
In a little the Nationals were thirsty. Ho, a wine-shop! There was one with the shutters up, probably a beast of a German—or a Jew. It is the same thing. So with the still bloody butts of their chassepots they made an entrance. They found nothing, however, but a few empty bottles and stove-in barrels. This so annoyed them that they wrought wholesale destruction, breaking with their guns and with their feet everything that was breakable.
So in time we came to the Prison of Mazas, which in ordinary times would have been strongly guarded; but now, save for a few National Guards loafing about, it was deserted—the criminals all being liberated and set plundering and fighting—the hostages all fusiladed.
When we arrived at the gate, there came out a finely dressed, personable man in a frock-coat, with a red ribbon in his button-hole. The officer in charge of the motley crew reported that he held a prisoner, the citizen commonly called Père Félix.
"Père Félix?" said the man in the frock-coat, "and who might he be?"
"A member of the Revolutionary Government of Forty-eight," said the old man with dignity, speaking from the midst of his captors; "a revolutionary and Republican before you were born, M. Raoul Regnault!"
"Ah, good father, but this is not Forty-eight! It is Seventy-one!" said the man on the steps, with a supercilious air. "I tell you as a matter of information!"
"You had better shoot him and have the matter over!" he added, turning away with his cane swinging in his hand.
Then, with a swirl of his sword, the officer marshalled us all into the courtyard—for I had followed to see the end. I could not help myself.