was hurried, not without having to submit to fresh insults, to where
General Lecomte had been imprisoned since the morning.

From this moment the narrative I have collected differs but little from
that circulated through Paris.

At about four o'clock in the afternoon the two generals were conducted
from their prison by a hundred National Guards, the hands of General
Lecomte being bound together, whilst those of Clément Thomas were free.
In this manner they were escorted to the top of the hill of Montmartre,
where they stopped before No. 6 of the Rue des Rosiers: it is a little
house I had often seen, a peaceful and comfortable habitation, with a
garden in front. What passed within it perhaps will never be known. Was
it there that the Central Committee of the National Guard held their
sittings in full conclave? or were they represented by a few of its
members? Many persons think that the house was not occupied, and that
the National Guards conducted their prisoners within its walls to make
the crowd believe they were proceeding to a trial, or at least to give
the appearance of legality to the execution of premeditated acts. Of one
thing there remains little doubt, namely, that soldiers of the line
stood round about at the time, and that the trial, if any took place,
was not long, the condemned being conducted to a walled enclosure at the
end of the street.

[Illustration: HOTEL DE VILLE, AS FORTIFIED BY THE NATIONAL GUARD,
MARCH, 1871. The Hôtel de Ville of Paris, which witnessed so many
national ceremonies and republican triumphs, was commenced in 1533, and
it was finished in 1628. Here the first Bourbon, Henry IV., celebrated
his entry into Paris after the siege of 1589, and Bailly the _maire_, on
the 17th July, 1789, presented Louis XVI. to the people, wearing a