'At this time my attention was exclusively turned to foreign affairs, and immediately after my Black Sea speech I started for Paris. I took with me an appointment as a Daily News correspondent--not that I intended to correspond, but only because it would explain my presence. Having been unable to leave London during the first days of the rising of March 18th, which developed into the Commune of Paris, I left it with my brother on April 2nd, and reached Creil at night, and St. Denis in the morning. From Creil I wrote to my grandmother: "We shall reach Paris in the morning. It is no use writing, and we shall not be able to write to you." We drove into Paris, and at once went to the Hotel de Ville, where we found the famous Central Committee sitting. We obtained from some Garibaldian officers of the Staff a special pass to leave Paris in order to see Gustave Flourens, for whom I was carrying a private letter from a friend of his in London.... The drums were beating through the streets all day, and great numbers of National Guards were under arms attempting to march upon Versailles, and there was heavy fighting, which we witnessed from a distance. 'We counted 160 battalions of National Guards all carrying the red flag, and saw altogether, as near as we could compute, almost 110,000 men. That all Paris was in the movement at this time was clear, not only from this fact, but also from the following: that on March 26th between 226,000 and 227,000 electors voted, a full vote for Paris considering the great number of persons who, having left Paris before the siege, had not returned. In the municipal elections after the Commune, when the Conservatives had come back and made a great attempt to win, the total number of voters was only 186,000. I noticed at the Hôtel de Ville that the Parisians had a great many sailors in uniform with them. These were sailors who had remained in Paris after serving there during the siege, and my pass was handed to me by a splendid specimen of a French tar wearing the name of the _Richelieu_ on his hat. I was one of the few persons not in the insurrection (and these were mostly killed) who saw the pictures in the Hôtel de Ville so late--that is, so soon before the fire which destroyed them all--and I recognized old friends which I had known from 1855, when I was there at the great ball. Those who showed us from room to room were chiefly Garibaldian Poles, among them the Dombrowskis, one of whom was killed, and two of whom I afterwards befriended in London in their exile.