The Paris of Versailles no longer presented a civilised aspect. Fear, hate, and fiendish brutishness smothered all feelings of humanity. It was a universal "furious madness," said the Siecle of the 26th. "One no longer distinguishes the just from the unjust, the innocent from the guilty. The life of citizens weighs no more than a hair. For a cry, for a word, one is arrested, shot." The ventilators of the cellars were blocked up by order of the army, which wanted to give credit to the legend of the petroleuses. The National Guards of order crept out from their lurking-places, proud of their armlets, offering their services to the officers, ransacking the houses, revindicating the honour of presiding at the fusillades. In the tenth arrondissement the former mayor, Dubail, assisted by the commander of the 109th battalion, led the soldiers to hunt those who had formerly been under his administration. Thanks to the _brassardiers_, the tide of prisoners swelled so that it became necessary to centralise the carnage. The victims were pushed into the mairies, the barracks, the public edifices, where prevotal courts were organised, and shot in troops. When the fusillade proved insufficient the mitrailleuse mowed them down. All did not die at once, and in the night there arose from these bleeding heaps ghastly cries of agony. The shades of night brought back the spectacle of the conflagrations. Where the rays of the sun had only shown sombre clouds, pyramids of fire now appeared. The Grenier d'Abondance illuminated the Seine far beyond the fortifications. The column of the Bastille, entirely perforated by the shells, which had set its covering of crowns and flags on fire, blazed like a gigantic torch. The Boulevard Voltaire was burning on the side of the Chateau d'Eau. The death of Delescluze had been so simple and so rapid, that even at the Mairie of the eleventh arrondissement it was doubted. Towards midnight some members of the Council agreed to evacuate the Mairie. What! always fly before powder and shot! Is the Bastille taken? Does not the Boulevard Voltaire still hold out? The whole strategy of the Committee of Public Safety, its whole plan of battle, was to retreat. At two o'clock in the morning, when a member of the Commune was wanted to support the barricade of the Chateau d'Eau, only Gambon was found, asleep in a corner. An officer awoke him and begged his pardon. The worthy Republican answered, "It is as well it should be I as another; I have lived," and he departed. But the balls already swept the Boulevard Voltaire up to the St. Ambroise Church. The barricade was deserted. FOOTNOTES: [192] Armlet conspirators.