“Citizens! your representatives will fight and die with you, if fall we must; but, in the name of our glorious France, mother of all the popular revolutions, the permanent source of ideas of justice and unity, which should be and which will be the laws of the world, march to the encounter of the enemy, and let your revolutionary energy prove to him that Paris may he sold, but can never be delivered up or conquered.

“The Commune confides in you, and you may trust the Commune!

“The civil delegate at the Ministry of War,

“(Signed)

“CH.  DELESCLUZE.

“Countersigned by the Committee of Public Safety:—­Antoine Arnauld, Billioray, E. Eudes, F. Gambon, G. Ranvier.”

Such was the despairing cry of the insurrection at bay.]

[Footnote 102:  See Appendix, No. 9.]

[Footnote 103:  There are no private undertakers and funeral furnishers in Paris.  It is all done by a company, under the supervision of Government, a very large concern, called the Pompes Funebres.]

[Footnote 104:  Jules Valles was one of the most conspicuous among the men of the 18th of March.  He had been journalist, working printer, a clerk at the Hotel de Ville, editor of a newspaper, pamphleteer, and cafe orator in turn, but always noisy and boastful.  Andre Gill, the caricaturist, once drew him as an undertaker’s dog, dragging a saucepan behind him, and the caricature told Valles’ story well enough.  In face he was ugly, but energetic in expression, almost to ferociousness.

He was born at Puy, in 1833, and on leaving the college of Nantes, came to study law in Paris, but politics occupied him chiefly, and he soon got himself shut up in Mazas as a political prisoner.  After some time spent in confinement, he obtained his liberty, and published at Nantes, a pamphlet under the title of “Money:  by a literary man become a journalist;” and the pamphlet, having gained him some slight popularity, he was engaged, later, on the Figaro, to write the reports of the Bourse, and in the meantime he eked out his slender salary by working as a clerk at the Hotel de Ville.  When Ernest Feydeau brought out the Epoque, in 1864, Jules Valles published a few articles in its columns, and a little later became a writer on the Evenement, with the magnificent salary of eighteen thousand francs a year.  A month afterwards, he was without occupation again, but he soon re-appeared with a new journal of his own, La Rue, La Sue, in its turn, however, only lived during a few numbers, and Jules Valles now took up cafe politics, and practised table oratory at the Estaminet de Madrid, where he fostered and expounded the projects which he has since brought to so fearful a result.

In 1869, he became one of the most inveterate speakers at election meetings, and presented himself as a candidate for the Corps Legislatif.  He was not elected, but the profession of opinions that he then made was certain to obtain him a seat in the Communal Assembly.  One of the last articles in the Cri du People of Jules Valles announced the fatal resolution of defending Paris by all possible means.  An article finishing with this prophetic sentence, “M.  Thiers, if he is chemist enough will understand us.”]