seen that the Versaillese were remaining quiet in their new positions, and then fresh courage returned to the hearts of the soldiers of the Commune, who were resolved to conquer or die.  The enemy’s army, which they had feared to see in possession of the Tuileries by that time, profiting by the stern lessons of experience and imitating the prudent tactics of the Prussians, conducted its operations with the utmost caution.  The Committee of Public Safety and Delescluze, Delegate at War, directed the defense from their quarters in the Hotel de Ville.  It was reported that a last proposal for a peaceable arrangement had been rejected by them with disdain.  That served to inspire the men with still more courage, the triumph of Paris was assured, the resistance would be as unyielding as the attack was vindictive, in the implacable hate, swollen by lies and cruelties, that inflamed the heart of either army.  And that day was spent by Maurice in the quarters of the Champ de Mars and the Invalides, firing and falling back slowly from street to street.  He had not been able to find his battalion; he fought in the ranks with comrades who were strangers to him, accompanying them in their march to the left bank without taking heed whither they were going.  About four o’clock they had a furious conflict behind a barricade that had been thrown across the Rue de l’Universite, where it comes out on the Esplanade, and it was not until twilight that they abandoned it on learning that Bruat’s division, stealing up along the quai, had seized the Corps Legislatif.  They had a narrow escape from capture, and it was with great difficulty that they managed to reach the Rue de Lille after a long circuit through the Rue Saint-Dominique and the Rue Bellechasse.  At the close of that day the army of Versailles occupied a line which, beginning at the Vanves gate, led past the Corps Legislatif, the Palace of the Elysee, St. Augustine’s Church, the Lazare station, and ended at the Asnieres gate.

The next day, Tuesday, the 23d, was warm and bright, and a terrible day it was for Maurice.  The few hundred federates with whom he was, and in whose ranks were men of many different battalions, were charged with the defense of the entire quartier, from the quai to the Rue Saint-Dominique.  Most of them had bivouacked in the gardens of the great mansions that line the Rue de Lille; he had had an unbroken night’s rest on a grass-plot at one side of the Palace of the Legion of Honor.  It was his belief that soon as it was light enough the troops would move out from their shelter behind the Corps Legislatif and force them back upon the strong barricades in the Rue du Bac, but hour after hour passed and there was no sign of an attack.  There was only some desultory firing at long range between parties posted at either end of the streets.  The Versaillese, who were not desirous of attempting a direct attack on the front of the formidable fortress into which the insurgents