We recognise you, Executive Commission;[77] it is in vain that you disguise yourself in the bloody rags of the Committee of Public Safety, your are still yourself, you are still Félix Pyat, you are still Ranvier, you have never ceased to be Gérardin; you hope to make yourself obeyed more readily under this lugubrious costume, but you mistake. Command us to go and fight, and we will not budge; pursue us, and we will hardly run away; put us in prison, and we will only laugh. You are no more a Terror, than Gil-Pérez the actor is Talma; the knocks you receive have pushed aside your false nose; it is in vain that you decree, that you rob, that you incarcerate; you are too grotesque to be terrible. Even if you carried the parody out to the end, and thought fit to erect a guillotine and sharpen the knife, we should even then decline to look seriously upon you, and were we to see one by one five hundred heads fell into the basket, we should still persist in thinking that your axe was of wood, and your guillotine of cardboard! [Illustration: Dupont, Delegate of Trade and Commerce.] NOTES: [77] The affair of the 30th of April signally disappointed the chiefs of the insurrection, who decreed the formation of a Committee of Public Safety, and caused Cluseret to disappear. “The incapacity and negligence of the Delegate of War having,” they said, “almost lost them the possession of Fort Issy, the Executive Commission considered it their duty to propose the arrest of Citizen Cluseret, which was forthwith decreed by the Commune.” LXXIII. The Parisian _Official Journal_ says: “The members of the Commune are not amenable to any other tribunal than their own” (that of the Commune). Ah! truly, men of the Hôtel de Ville, you imagine that, do you? Have you forgotten that there are such tribunals as court-martials and assizes? LXXIV. M. Rossel is really very unfortunate! What is M. Rossel?[78] Why, the provisional successor of Citizen Cluseret. It was not a bad idea to put in the word _provisional_. The Commune had confided to him the care of military matters, which he had accepted, but with an air of condescension. This “Communeux” looks to me like an aristocrat. At any rate he has not been fortunate. Scarcely had he taken upon himself the safety of Paris, when the redoubt of Moulin-Saquet was surprised by the Versaillais. This accident was not calculated to enhance the courage of the Federals. The whole affair has been kept as dark as possible, but the porter of the house where I live, who was there, has told me strange things.