On the morning of May 23 the prisoners had been permitted to breathe fresh air in a narrow paved courtyard; but the archbishop was too weak and ill for exercise; he lay half fainting on his bed. In addition to his other sufferings he was faint from hunger, for the advance of the Versailles troops had cut off the Commune's supplies, and the hostages were of course the last persons they wished to care for. Père Olivariet (shot three days later in the same party as Paul Seigneret, in the Rue Haxo) had had some cake and chocolate sent him before he left Mazas; with these he fed the old man by mouthfuls. This was all the nourishment the archbishop had during the two days he spent at La Roquette. Mr. Washburne, the American minister, had with difficulty obtained permission to send him a small quantity of strengthening wine during his stay at Mazas. But a greater boon than earthly food or drink was brought him by Père Olivariet, who had received while at Mazas, in a common pasteboard box, some of the consecrated wafers used by the Roman Catholic Church in holy communion; and he had it in his power to give the archbishop the highest consolation that could have been offered him. It had been intended to execute the hostages on the 23d; but the director of the prison, endeavoring to evade the horrible task of delivering up his prisoners, pronounced the first order he received informal. The accursed 24th of May dawned, brilliant and beautiful. The archbishop went down in the early morning to obtain the breath of fresh air allowed him. Judge Bonjean, who had never professed himself a believer, came up to him and prayed him for his blessing, saying that he had seen the truth, as it were on the right hand of Death, and he too was about to depart in the true faith of a Christian. By this time the insurgents held little more of Paris than the heights of Belleville, Père la Chaise, and the neighborhood of La Roquette, which is not far from the Place de la Bastille. The Communal Government had quitted the Hôtel-de-Ville and taken refuge not far from La Roquette, in the _Mairie_ of the Eleventh Arrondissement.