"I shot at the Versailles troops in 1871, as I had shot at the royal guard in 1830 and on the municipals in 1848. After 1830 I received the Medal of July; after 1848 the compliments of M. de Lamartine. This time I am going to get transportation or death. "There are insurrections which please you. You raise columns to them, you give their names to streets, you give yourselves the offices, the promotions, and the big salaries, and we folks, who made the revolution, you call us great citizens, heroes, a nation of brave men, etc. That's the coin we are paid with. "And then there are other insurrections which displease you. As a result, transportation, death. Well, you see, if you hadn't complimented us so after the first ones, perhaps we wouldn't have made the last. If you hadn't raised the Column of July at the entrance of our neighborhood, we wouldn't perhaps have gone and demolished the Vendome Column in your neighborhood. Those two penny trumpets didn't agree. One had to upset the other, and that is what happened. "Now, why I threw away my captain's uniform on the 26th of May, why I was in a blouse when I was arrested, I will tell you. When I learned that the gentlemen of the Commune, instead of coming to shoot with us behind the barricades, were at the Hotel de Ville distributing among themselves thousand-franc notes, were shaving their beards, dyeing their hair, and hiding themselves in caves, I did not wish to keep the shoulder-straps they had given me. "Besides, shoulder-straps embarrassed me. 'Captain Martin' sounded idiotic. 'Insurgent Martin'--why, that's well and good. I wanted to end as I had begun, die as my father had died, as a rioter in a riot, as a barricader behind a barricade. "I could not get killed. I got caught. I belong to you. But I wish to beg a favor of you. I have a son, a child of seventeen; he is at Cherbourg, on the hulks. He fought, it is true, and he does not deny it; but it is I who put a musket in his hand, it is I who told him that his duty was there. He listened to me. He obeyed me. That is all his crime. Do not sentence him too harshly. "As for me, you have got me; do not let me go, that's the advice I give you. I am too old to mend; and then, what can you expect? Nothing can change it. I was born on the wrong side of the barricade." THE CHINESE AMBASSADOR In the beginning of the year 1870 some English and French residents had been massacred in China. Reparation was demanded. His Excellency Tchong-Keon, Tutor of the Heir-apparent and Vice-President of the War Department, was sent to Europe as Ambassador Extraordinary to the English and French governments. Tchong-Keon has recently published at Pekin a very curious account of his voyage. One of my friends who lives in Shanghai, and who possesses the rare talent of being able to read Chinese easily, sent me this faithful translation of a part of Tchong-Keon's book: HAVRE, _September 12, 1870_.