I’m surprised myself, as I re-read the preceding pages, at the strange contradictions I meet with. During the first few days I was almost favourable to the Commune; I waited, I hoped. To-day all is very different. When I write down in the evening what I have seen and thought in the day, I allow myself to blame with severity men that inspired me formerly with some kind of sympathy. What has taken place? Have my opinions changed? I do not think so. Besides, I have in reality but one opinion. I receive impressions, describing these impressions without reserve, without prejudice. If these stray leaves should ever be collected in a volume, they will at least possess the rare merit of being thoroughly sincere. Is it then, that my nature is modified? By no means. If I were indulgent a month ago, it was that I did not know those of whom I spoke, and that I am of a naturally hopeful and benevolent disposition: if I now show myself severe, it is that—like the rest of Paris—I have learned to know them better. LXIX. The Commune has naturally brought an infinite number of journals into existence. Try, if you will, to count the leaves of the forest, the grains of sand on the seashore, the stars in the heavens, but do not, in your wildest dreams, attempt to enumerate the newspapers that have seen the light since the famous day of the 18th of March. Félix Pyat has a journal, _Le Vengeur_; Vermorel has a journal, _Le Cri du People_; Delescluze has a journal, _Le Reveil_; there is not a member of the Commune but indulges in the luxury of a sheet in which he tells his colleagues daily all the evil he thinks of them. It must be acknowledged that these gentlemen have an extremely bad opinion one of the other. I defy even the _Gaulois_ of Versailles—yes, the _Gaulois_ itself—to treat Félix Pyat as Vermorel treats him, and if it be remembered on the other hand what Félix Pyat says of Vermorel, the _Gaulois_ will be found singularly good-natured. Napoleon cautioned us long ago “to wash our dirty linen at home,” but good patriots cannot be expected to profit by the counsels of a tyrant. So the columns of the Commune papers are devoted to the daily and mutual pulling to pieces of the Commune’s members. But where will these ephemeral sheets be in six months, in one month, or in a week’s time perhaps? The wind which wafts away the leaves of the rose and the laurel, will be no less cruel for the political leaves. Let us then, for the sake of posterity, offer a specimen of what is—or as we shall soon say, what was—the Communalist press of to-day. Be they edited by Marotteau, or Duchesne, or Paschal Grousset, or by any other emulator of Paul-Louis Courier, these worthy journals are all much alike, and one example will suffice for the whole. [Illustration: Vermesch (père Duchesne).[72]]