Monsieur,” said he, turning to me with much politeness, “will you be so kind as to go and fetch those stones from the corner there?” [Illustration: Café Life Under the Commune. Spectacles of Paris.] I did as I was bid, although I thought, with anything but pleasure, that if at that moment the barricade were attacked and taken, I might be shot before I had the time to say, “Allow me to explain.” But the scene which surrounds me interests me in spite of myself. Those grim hags, with their red headdresses, passing the stones I give them rapidly from hand to hand, the men who are building them up only leaving off for a moment now and then to swallow a cup of coffee, which a young girl prepares over a small tin stove; the rifles symmetrically piled; the barricade, which rises higher and higher; the solitude in which we are working—only here and there a head appears at a window, and is quickly withdrawn; the ever-increasing noise of the battle; and, over all, the brightness of a dazzling morning sun—all this has something sinister and yet horribly captivating about it. While we are at work, they talk; I listen. The Versaillais have been coming in all night.[99] The Porte de la Muette and the Porte Dauphine have been surrendered by the 13th and the 113th battalions of the first arrondissement. “Those two numbers 13 will bring them ill-luck,” says a woman. Vinoy is established at the Trocadéro, and Douai at the Point du Jour: they continue to advance. The Champ de Mars has been taken from the Federals after two hours’ fighting. A battery is erected at the Arc de Triomphe, which sweeps the Champs Elysées and bombards the Tuileries. A shell has fallen in the Rue du Marché Saint Honoré. In the Cours-la-Reine the 188th battalion stood bravely. The Tuileries is armed with guns, and shells the Arc de Triomphe. In the Avenue de Marigny the gendarmes have shot twelve Federals who had surrendered; their bodies are still lying on the pavement in front of the tobacconist’s. Rue de Sèvres, the _Vengeurs de Flourens_ have put to flight a whole regiment of the line: the _Vengeurs_ have sworn to resist to a man. They are fighting in the Champs Élysées, around the Ministère de la Guerre, and on the Boulevard Haussman. Dombrowski has been killed at the Château de la Muette. The Versaillais have attacked the Western Saint Lazare station, and are marching towards the Pépinière barracks. “We have been sold, betrayed, and surprised; but what does it matter, we will triumph. We want no more chiefs or generals; behind the barricades every man is a marshal!” [Illustration: Poor Pradier’s statues. Place de La Concorde: LILLE suffers from her friends in fight, whilst STRASBOURG, in crape, mourns the foe of France.] [Illustration: Fire And Water—The effect of fire on the fountains of the Place de la Concorde and the Château d’Eau—Hirondelles de Paris]