Proclaimed; and on the 31st of October, 1870, And The 22nd Of January, 1871, Flourens and Blanqui Made a Fruitless Attempt to Substitute The Red Flag for the Tricolor; But Their Partisans Succeeded on The 18th Of March, when It Was Fortified, and Became the Head-quarters of The Commune of 1871. As soon as they had halted, an officer of the National Guard seized General Clément Thomas by the collar of his coat and shook him violently several times, exclaiming, whilst he held the muzzle of a revolver close to his throat,—“Confess that you have betrayed the Republic.” To this Monsieur Clément Thomas only replied by a shrug of his shoulders; upon this the officer retired, leaving the General standing alone in the front of the wall, with a line of soldiers opposite. Who gave the signal to fire is unknown, but a report of twenty muskets rent the air, and General Clément Thomas fell with his face to the earth. “It is your turn now,” said one of the assassins, addressing General Lecomte, who immediately advanced from the crowd, stepping over the body of Clément Thomas to take his place, awaiting with his back to the wall the fatal moment. “Fire!” cried the officer, and all was over. Half an hour after, in the Rue des Acacias, I came across an old woman who wanted three francs for a bullet—a bullet she had extracted from the plaster of a wall at the end of the Rue des Rosiers. III. It is ten o’clock in the evening, and if I were not so tired I would go to the Hôtel de Ville, which, I am told, has been taken possession of by the National Guards; the 18th of March is continuing the 31st of October. But the events of this day have made me so weary that I can hardly write all I have seen and heard. On the outer boulevards the wine shops are crowded with tipsy people, the drunken braggarts who boast they have made a revolution. When a stroke succeeds there are plenty of rascals ready to say: I did it. Drinking, singing, and talking are the order of the day. At every step you come upon “piled arms.” At the corner of the Passage de l’Elysée-des-Beaux-Arts I met crowds of people, some lying on the ground; here a battalion standing at ease but ready to march; and at the entrance of the Rue Blanche and the Rue Fontaine were some stones, ominously posed one on the other, indicating symptoms of a barricade. In the Rue des Abbesses I counted three cannons and a mitrailleuse, menacing the Rue des Martyrs. In the Rue des Acacias, a man had been arrested, and was being conducted by National Guards to the guard-house: I heard he was a thief. Such arrests are characteristic features in a Parisian émeute. Notwithstanding these little scenes the disorder is not excessive, and but for the multitude of men in uniform one might believe it the evening of a popular fête; the victors are amusing themselves. [Illustration: Sentinels, Rue du Val de Grâce and Boulevard St. Michel]