and waving their handkerchiefs to the troops.  The presence of the soldiery seemed to reassure everybody.  The concierges were seated before their doors with pipes in their mouths, recounting to attentive listeners the perils from which they had escaped; how balls pierced the mattresses put up at the windows, and how the Federals had got into the houses to hide.  One said, “I found three of them in my court; I told a lieutenant they were there, and he had them shot.  But I wish they would take them away; I cannot keep dead bodies in the house.”  Another was talking with some soldiers, and pointing out a house to them.  Four men and a corporal went into the place indicated, and an instant afterwards my friend heard the cracking of rifles.  The concierge rubbed his hands and winked at the bystanders, while another was saying, “They respect nothing those Federals; during the battle they came in to steal.  They wanted to take away my clothes, my linen, everything I have, but I told them to leave that, that it was not good enough for them, that they ought to go up to the first floor, where they would find clocks and plate, and I gave them the key.  Well, Messieurs, you would never believe what they have done, the rascals!  They took the key and went and pillaged everything on the first floor!” My friend had heard enough, and passed on.  The agitation everywhere was very great.  The soldiers went hither and thither, rang the bells, went into the houses; and brought out with them pale-faced prisoners.  The inhabitants continued to smile politely, but grimly.  Here and there dead bodies were lying in the road.  A man who was pushing a truck allowed one of the wheels to pass over a corpse that was lying with its head on the curbstone.  “Bah!” said he, “it won’t do him any harm.”  The dead and wounded were, however, being carried away as quickly as possible.

[Illustration:  SHELL HOLE—­A CONVENIENT SEAT.]

[Illustration:  IN THE RUES.]

[Illustration:  SHOT MARKS—­EN PROFIL.]

[Illustration:  ON THE BOULEVARDS]

[Illustration:  PLUS DE LUMIERE!!]

[Illustration:  PLUS D’OMBRE!]

[Illustration:  BULLET HOLE—­EN FACE]

The cannon had now ceased roaring, and the fight was still going on close at hand—­at the Tuileries doubtless.  The townspeople were tranquil and the soldiery disdainful.  A strange contrast; all these good citizens smiling and chatting, and the soldiers, who had come to save them at the peril of their lives, looking down upon them with the most careless indifference.  My friend reached the Boulevard Haussmann; there the corpses were in large numbers.  He counted thirty in less than a hundred yards.  Some were lying under the doorways; a dead woman was seated on the bottom stair of one of the houses.  Near the church of “La Trinite” were two guns, the reports from which were deafening; several of the shells fell on a bathing establishment in the Rue Taitbout opposite the Boulevard.  On the Boulevard