'On the 7th my brother and I were all but killed by a shell from Mont Valérien which suddenly burst, we not having heard it, close to us in a garden at the corner of the Place de l'Étoile and Avenue d'Uhrich, as the Avenue de l'Impératrice had at this time been named, from the General who defended Strasbourg. During the 7th and 8th a senseless bombardment of a peaceable part of Paris waxed warm, and continued for some days uselessly to destroy the houses of the best supporters of the Conservative Assembly without harming the Federalists, who did not even cross the quarter. M. Simon has said that Thiers did not bombard Paris; that he only bombarded the walls of Paris at the two points at which he intended to make a breach.... All I can say is that if this was the intention there must have been someone in command at Mont Valérien who failed to carry it into effect, and who amused himself by knocking the best part of Paris to pieces out of mischief, for no artilleryman could have been so incapable as to fire from hill to hill when intending to fire down into that which, viewed from Mont Valérien, looks like a hole. In 1841, curiously enough, Thiers had been accused, at the time of the erection of the forts of which Mont Valérien was one, of making it possible that Paris should be bombarded in this way, and had indignantly replied, asking the Assembly if they believed that after having _inondé de ses feux la demeure de vos familles_ a Government could expect to be continued in power. But in 1871 he did it, and was continued in power for a time, and that with the triumphant support at the moment of the very persons whose houses he had destroyed. The Commune had a broad back, and that back was made to bear the responsibility of the destruction.'