For two days the captain kept Count Orsi in his office and encouraged him to write to any friends he might have in Versailles. Count Orsi named M. Grévy (afterwards president) as having been for years his legal adviser, and he wrote a few lines to various other persons. But there were no posts, and in the confusion of Versailles at that moment there seemed little chance that his notes would reach their destination. Two days later an order came to Satory to send all prisoners to Versailles, and the kind-hearted captain was forced to return Count Orsi to the column of his fellow-prisoners. At Versailles they were shut up in the wine-cellars of the palace, forty-five feet underground. The prisoners confined there were the very dregs and scum of the insurrection. The cellars had only some old straw on the floors, left there by the Prussians. There were six hundred men confined in this place, and the torture they endured from the close air, the filth, and the impossibility of lying down at night was terrible. Count Orsi was ten days in this horrible prison. At last one evening he heard his name called. His release had come. On going to the door he was taken before a superior officer, who expressed surprise and regret at the mistake that had been committed, and at once set him at liberty. A brave little boy, charged with one of his notes, had persevered through all kinds of difficulties in putting it into the hands of the English lady to whom it was addressed. This lady and the Italian ambassador had effected Count Orsi's release. He was ill with low fever for some weeks in consequence of the bad air he had breathed during his confinement. Subsequently he discovered that personal spite had caused his arrest as a friend of the Commune. My next account of those days is drawn from the experience of the Marquis de Compiègne,[1] one of the Versailles officers. He was travelling in Florida when the Franco-Prussian war broke out, but hastened home at once to join the army. He fought at Sedan and was taken prisoner to Germany, but returned in time to act against the Commune. Afterwards he became an explorer in the Soudan, and in 1877 was killed in a duel. [Footnote 1: His narrative was published in the "Supplément Littéraire du Figaro."] On the 20th of May, news having reached Versailles that the first detachment of regular troops had made their way into Paris, M. de Compiègne hastened to join his battalion, which he had that morning quitted on a few hours' leave. As they approached the Bois de Boulogne at midnight, the sky over Paris seemed red with flame. They halted for some hours, the men sleeping, the officers amusing themselves by guessing conundrums; but as day dawned, they entered Paris through a breach in the defences. The young officer says,--