At one o'clock on the morning of April 6, three weeks after the proclamation of the Commune, a body of the National Guard was drawn up on the sidewalk in the neighborhood of the Madeleine. A door suddenly opened and a man came hastily out, followed by two National Guards shouting to their comrades. The man was arrested at once, making no resistance. It was the Abbé Duguerry, _curé_ of the Madeleine,[1]--the first of the so-called hostages arrested in retaliation for the summary execution of General Duval, who had commanded one of the three columns that marched out of Paris the day before to attack the Versaillais. [Footnote 1: _Curé_ in France means rector; what we mean by a curate or assistant minister is there called _vicaire_.] Both the _curé_ of the Madeleine and his _vicaire_, the Abbé Lamazou, were that night arrested. The latter, who escaped death as a hostage, published an account of his experiences; but he died not long after of heart disease, brought on by his excitement and suffering during the Commune. The same night Monseigneur Darboy, the archbishop of Paris, his chaplain, and eight other priests, were arrested. One was a missionary just returned from China, another was the Abbé Crozes, the admirable chaplain (_aumônier_) of the prison of La Roquette,--a man whose deeds of charity would form a noble chapter of Christian biography. When Archbishop Darboy was brought before the notorious "delegate," Raoul Rigault, he began to speak, saying, "My children--" "Citizen," interrupted Rigault, "you are not here before children,--we are men!" This sally was heartily applauded in the publications of the Commune. As it would not be possible to sketch the lives and deaths of all these victims of revolutionary violence, it may be well to select the history of the youngest among them, Paul Seigneret.[1] His father was a professor in the high school at Lyons. Paul was born in 1845, and was therefore twenty-six years old when he met death, as a hostage, at the hands of the Commune. His home had been a happy and pious one, and he had a beloved brother Charles, to whom he clung with the most tender devotion. Charles expected to be a priest; Paul was destined for the army, but he earnestly wished that he too might enter the ministry. Lamartine's "Jocelyn" had made a deep impression on him, but his father having objected to his reading it, he laid it aside unfinished; what he had read, however, remained rooted in his memory. [Footnote 1: Memoir of Paul Seigneret, abridged in the "Monthly Packet."] When Paul was eighteen, his father gave his sanction to his entering the priesthood; he thought him too delicate, however, to lead the life of a country pastor, and desired him, before he made up his mind as to his vocation, to accept a position offered him as tutor in a family in Brittany.