historian. It allows him to mingle with exterminations and carnages, but

it does not permit him to die, because it wishes him to relate them.

In the midst of this inexpressible Pandemonium, Xavier Durrieu met me as

I was crossing the bullet-swept boulevard. He said to me, "Ah, here you

are. I have just met Madame D. She is looking for you." Madame D.[24]

and Madame de la R.,[25] two noble and brave women, had promised Madame

Victor Hugo, who was ill in bed, to ascertain where I was, and to give

her some news of me. Madame D. had heroically ventured into this carnage.

The following incident happened to her. She stopped before a heap of

bodies, and had had the courage to manifest her indignation; at the cry

of horror to which she gave vent, a cavalry soldier had run up behind

her with a pistol in his hand, and had it not been for a quickly opened

door through which she threw herself, and which saved her, she would

have been killed.

It is well known that the total slaughter in this butchery is

unrecorded. Bonaparte has kept these figures hidden in darkness. Such is

the habit of those who commit massacres. They are scarcely likely to

allow history to certify the number of the victims. These statistics are

an obscure multitude which quickly lose themselves in the gloom. One of

the two colonels of whom we have had a glimpse in pages 223-225 of this

work, has stated that his regiment alone had killed "at least 2,500

persons." This would be more than one person per soldier. We believe

that this zealous colonel exaggerates. Crime sometimes boasts of its

blackness.

Lireux, a writer, arrested in order to be shot, and who escaped by a

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The History of a Crime