At six in the morning of May 24th,[1] a second order came to the director of the prison to deliver up all hostages in his hands. He remonstrated, saying he could not act upon an order to deliver up prisoners who were not named. Finally, a compromise was effected; six were to be chosen. The commander of the firing party asked for the prison register. The names of the hostages were not there. Then the list from Mazas was demanded. The director could not find it. At last, after long searching, they discovered it themselves. Genton, the man in command, sat down to pick out his six victims. He wrote Darboy, Bonjean, Jecker, Allard, Clerc, Ducoudray. Then he paused, rubbed out Jecker, and put in Duguerrey. Darboy, as we know, was the archbishop; Bonjean, judge of the Court of Appeals; Allard, head-chaplain to the hospitals, who had been unwearied in his services to the wounded; Clerc and Ducoudray were Jesuit fathers; Duguerrey was pastor of the Madeleine. Jecker was a banker who had negotiated Mexican loans for the Government. The next day the Commune made a present of him to Genton, who, after trying in vain to get a few hundred thousand francs out of him for his ransom, shot him, assisted by four others, one of whom was Ferré, and flung his body into the cellar of a half-built house upon the heights of Belleville. [Footnote 1: Macmillan's Magazine, 1873.] When the order drawn up by Genton had been approved at headquarters, the director of the prison had no resource but to deliver up his prisoners. Another man, wearing a scarf of office, had now joined the party. He was very impatient, and accused the others roundly of a want of revolutionary spirit. He landed afterwards in New York, where his fellow-Communists gave him a public reception. One of the warders of the prison, Henrion by name, made some attempt to expostulate with the _Vengeurs de Flourens_, who had been told off for the execution. "What would you have?" was the answer. "Killing is not at all amusing. We were killing this morning at the Prefecture of Police. But they say this is reprisal. The Versaillais have been killing our generals." Soon Henrion was called upon to open the fourth corridor. "I must go and get the keys," he answered. He had them in his hand at the moment. He went rapidly away, flung the keys into a heap of filth, and rushed out of the prison. By means of a twenty-franc gold piece that he had with him, he passed out of the gates of Paris, and sought refuge with the Bavarians at Vincennes. Meantime another bunch of keys was found, and the executioners, led by Ferré, Lolive, and Mégy,--that member of the Commune whom none of them seemed to know,--hurried upstairs. In the crowd were _gamins_ and women, National Guards, Garibaldians, and others, but chiefly the _Vengeurs de Flourens_, a corps of which an Englishman who served the Commune said: "They were to a man all blackguards."