wheels; it is either cannon or engines. All around is confusion. I can hear the musketry distinctly, but the noise seems to come from the Champs Élysées; they are not firing at the barricade. I turn and walk towards the Hôtel de Ville: mounted expresses ride constantly past; companies of Federals are here and there lying on the ground around their piled muskets. By the Rue du Louvre there is another barricade; a little further there is another and then another.[100] Close to Saint Germain l’Auxerrois women are busy pulling down the wooden seats; children are rolling empty wine-barrels and carrying sacks of earth. As one nears the Hôtel de Ville the barricades are higher, better armed, and better manned. All the Nationals here look ardent, resolved, and fierce. They say little, and do not shout at all. Two guards, seated on the pavement, are playing at picquet. I push on, and am allowed to pass. The barricades are terminated here, and I have nothing to fear from paving-stones. Looking up, I see that all the windows are closed, with the exception of one, where two old women are busy putting a mattress between the window and the shutter. A sentinel, mounting guard in front of the Café de la Compagnie du Gaz, cries out to me, “You can’t pass here!” I therefore seat myself at a table in front of the café, which has doubtless been left open by order, and where several officers are talking in a most animated manner. One of them rises and advances towards me. He asks me rudely what I am doing there. I will not allow myself to be abashed by his tone, but draw out my pass from my pocket and show it him, without saying a word. “All right,” says he, and then seats himself by my side, and tells me, “I know it already, that a part of the left bank of the river is occupied by the troops of the Assembly, that fighting is going on everywhere, and that the army on this side is gradually retreating.—Street fighting is our affair, you see,” he continues. In such battles as that, the merest gamin from Belleville knows more about it than MacMahon.... It will be terrible. The enemy shoots the prisoners.” (For the last two months the Commune had been saying the same thing.) “We shall give no quarter.”—I ask him, “Is it Delescluze who is determined to resist?”—“Yes,” he answers.[101] “Lean forward a little. Look at those three windows to the left of the trophy. That is the Salle de l’État-Major. Delescluze is there giving orders, signing commissions. He has not slept for three days. Just now I scarcely knew him, he was so worn out with fatigue. The Committee of Public Safety sits permanently in a room adjoining, making out proclamations and decrees.”—“Ha, ha!” said I, “decrees!”—“Yes, citizen, he has just decreed heroism!”[102] The officer gives me several other bits of information. Tells me that “Lullier this very morning has had thirty _réfractaires_ shot, and that Rigault has gone to Mazas to look