Before the mairie he found a crowd shouting at some flags, surmounted by eagles, which had just, they said, been taken from the Versaillese. Wounded were being brought from the Bastille. Mademoiselle Dimitrieff, wounded herself, supported Frankel, wounded at the barricade of the Faubourg St. Antoine. Wroblewski just arriving from the Butte aux Cailles, Delescluze offered him the command-in-chief. "Have you a few thousand resolute men?" asked Wroblewski. "A few hundred at most," answered the delegate. Wroblewski could not accept any responsibility of command under such unequal conditions, and continued to fight as a simple soldier. He was the only general of the Commune who had showed the qualities of a chef-de-corps. He always asked to have those battalions sent him which everybody else declined, undertaking to utilise them. The attack was coming nearer and nearer the Chateau d'Eau. This place, constructed with the object of checking the faubourgs, and opening into eight large avenues, had not been really fortified. The Versaillese, masters of the Folies-Dramatiques Theatre and of the Rue du Chateau d'Eau, attacked it by turning the Prince Eugene Barracks. House by house they tore the Rue Magnan from the _pupilles de la Commune_. Brunel, after facing the enemy for four days, fell wounded in the thigh. The _pupilles_ carried him away on a litter across the Place du Chateau d'Eau amidst a shower of bullets. From the Rue Magnan the Versaillese soon reached the barracks, and the Federals, too few in number to defend this vast monument, had to evacuate it. The fall of this position uncovered the Rue Turbigo, thus enabling the Versaillese to occupy the whole upper part of the third arrondissement, and to surround the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. After a rather long struggle the Federals abandoned the barricade of the Conservatoire, leaving behind them a loaded mitrailleuse. A woman also remained. As soon as the soldiers were within range she discharged the mitrailleuse at them. The barricades of the Boulevards Voltaire and Dejazet's Theatre had henceforth to sustain the whole fire of the Prince Eugene Barracks, the Boulevard Magenta, the Boulevard St. Martin, the Rue du Temple, and the Rue Turbigo. Behind their fragile shelter the Federals gallantly received this avalanche. How many men have been called heroes who never showed a hundredth part of this simple courage, without any stage effects, without a history, which shone forth during these days in a thousand places in Paris! At the Chateau d'Eau a young girl of nineteen, rosy and charming, with black, curling hair, dressed as a marine fusileer, fought desperately a whole day. At the same place a lieutenant was killed in front of the barricade; a child of fifteen, Dauteuille, went to pick up the kepi of the dead man in the thick of the bullets, and brought it back amidst the cheers of his companions.