By Friday, May 26, provisions and fodder were exhausted, and it was hard for the soldiers of the Commune to get anything to eat. Our Englishman, in the general disorganization, became separated from his comrades, and joined himself to a small troop of horsemen wearing the red shirt of Garibaldi, who swept past him at a furious gallop. They were making for the cemetery of Père la Chaise. "All is lost!" they cried. "To get there is our only chance of safety." Yet they still shouted to the men and women whom they passed, "All goes well! _Vive la Commune! Vive la République!_" By help of an order to visit all the posts, which the Englishman had in his pocket, they obtained admittance into Père la Chaise. There were five Poles in the party, one Englishman, and one Frenchman; "and certainly," adds the narrator, "they were no credit to their respective nations. It was on their faces that I remarked for the first time that peculiar hunted-down look which was afterwards to be seen on every countenance, and I presume upon my own." Our Englishman rode up to a battery in Père la Chaise, planted on the spot made famous by a celebrated passage in "Le Père Goriot," in which Balzac describes Rastignac, on the eve of finally selling himself to Satan, as standing and gazing down on Paris, to conquer a high place in which is to be his reward. The observer who saw the city from the same spot on the 26th of May, 1871, says,-- "Beneath me lay stretched out like a map the once great and beautiful city, now, alas! given over a prey to fire and sword. I could see smoke rising from many a heap of ruins that but a few short hours before had been a palace or a monument of art. It was impossible, however, to decide what buildings were actually burning, for a thick, misty rain had set in, which prevented my seeing distinctly. In my descent I passed the place where the body of Dombrowski was lying. He had been shot from behind, and the ball had passed through his body. At the gate of the cemetery I found a man waiting for me with news that Belleville was to be our _rendezvous_. Words cannot paint the spectacle that Belleville presented. It was the last place left, the only refuge remaining; and such an assemblage as was collected there it would be difficult to find again. There were National Guards of every battalion, _Chasseurs Fédérés_ in their wonderful uniform,--a sort of cross between Zouave, linesman, and rifleman,--_Enfants Perdus_ in their green coats and feathers (very few of these were to be seen, as they had no claim to quarter, nor did they expect any), _Chasseurs à Cheval_ of the Commune, in their blue jackets and red trousers, leaning idly against the gates of their stables, _Éclaireurs de la Commune_ in blue, Garibaldians in red, hussars, _cantinières_, sailors, civilians, women, and children, all mixed up together in the crowded streets, and looking the picture of anxiety. In the afternoon about four o'clock we were ordered to