The wounded man, hearing the cry and recognizing the dear young voice, opened his eyes, and pulling himself together for a supreme effort, tried limply to wave his hand. His lips moved, and during the short halt tried to utter a few words, but voice would not come to his bidding; he uttered no sound, his eyes closed again, and quickly his bearers turned the corner and he was out of sight. That dumb farewell was the last of him. The final act can have been but a small matter to him, for he was, indeed, little more than a corpse already. The poor child stood there shaking from head to foot and weeping on the bosom of her bonne, and the crowd dispersed. It was a harrowing scene, it was a pathetic scene, the pathos of which could hardly be forgotten by any who witnessed it. After nearly half a century I can still see that grim procession of death, and the young girl’s shriek of agony rings in my ears. Those were days of horror. Retribution had come with no halting foot; shrifts were short, and justice wasted no time over inquiries; it was even said that a good many innocents perished with the guilty. Whether that is true or not is hard to say, but it was an accusation which in the circumstances was sure to be made. An outcry was raised against the four generals of the Republican armies, Vinoy, Ladmisault, Cissey and Donay, to whom the guardianship of Paris, divided into four parts, was entrusted. But far more virulent than any of the attacks upon them were the charges that were brought—most unfairly, since they only obeyed orders—against the Marquis de Gallifet and his dragoons. Those charges came from the white-livered party, set on by such Communists as had managed by hook or by crook to escape observation and save their skins. These did not hesitate to accuse Gallifet of wholesale murders of innocent men and women when the executions took place outside the Arc de l’Etoile. From inquiries which I made on the spot and at the time, I believe that he did no more than his duty. Gallifet was a most determined man, to whom duty was something sacred, bound to be carried out to the letter at any cost. He was, moreover, a born soldier, loving his men as they loved him, and cut to the quick by the deaths of so many comrades. As a cavalry leader, all men recognized his great worth. Brave as the steel of his own sword, utterly reckless of his life, as he had shown in the disastrous Mexican campaign and in the Great War, his courage was so infectious that his troopers would have followed him had he ordered the charge to be sounded against all the hosts of Satan. War was for him something very real, not to be treated with half measures or milksop compromises. He was a fighter, and he fought in deadly earnest.