One o'clock in the morning. Paris sleeps tranquilly. Such, my friend, is the Paris of the brigand. You have seen this Paris thinking, weeping, combating, working, enthusiastic, fraternal, severe to vice. Her streets free during the day, are they less safe in the silence of the night? Since Paris has her own police crime has disappeared.[177] Each one is left to his instincts, and where do you see debauchery victorious? These Federals, who might draw milliards, live on ridiculous pay compared with their usual salaries. Do you at last recognise this Paris, seven times shot down since 1789, and always ready to rise for the salvation of France? Where is her programme, say you? Why, seek it before you, and not at the faltering Hotel-de-Ville. These smoking ramparts, these explosions of heroism, these women, these men of all professions united, all the workmen of the earth applauding our combat, all monarchs, all the bourgeois coalesced against us, do they not speak loudly enough our common thought, and that all of us are fighting for equality, the enfranchisement of labour, the advent of a social society? Woe to France if she does not comprehend! Leave at once; recount what Paris is. If she dies, what life remains to you? Who, save Paris, will have strength enough to continue the Revolution? Who save Paris will stifle the clerical monster? Go, tell the Republican provinces, "These proletarians fight for you too, who perhaps may be the exiles of to-morrow." As to that class, the purveyor of empires, that fancies it can govern by periodical butcheries, go and tell them, in accents loud enough to drown their clamours, "The blood of the people will enrich the revolutionary field. The idea of Paris will arise from her burning entrails and become an inexorable firebrand with the sons of the slaughtered." FOOTNOTES: [176] Funeral of Lieutenant Chatelet, of the 61st. [177] See the evidence of the chief of police, M. Claude, _Enquete sur le 18 Mars_. vol. ii. p. 106. CHAPTER XXVI. "La porte de St. Cloud vient de s'abatre. Le general Douai s'y est precipite."--_M. Thiers aux Prefets, le 21 Mai._ THE VERSAILLESE ENTER PARIS ON SUNDAY, 21ST MAY. AT THREE O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON--THE COUNCIL OF THE COMMUNE DISSOLVES. The great attack approached; the Assembly drew up in battle-array. On the 16th May it refused to recognise the Republic as the Government of France, and voted public prayers by 417 voices out of 420. On the 17th the army established its breach batteries against the gates of La Muette, Auteuil, St. Cloud, Point du Jour, Issy. The batteries in the rear continued to pound the enceinte of the Point du Jour and to confound Passy. The pieces of the Chateau de Brecon ruined the Montmartre cemetery, and reached as far as the Place St. Pierre. We had five arrondissements under shell.