for a house-to-house fight.  The incessant groaning of big and small guns reduced to an uncanny murmur all the other sounds that came from armed men ceaselessly crying out to one another from barricade to barricade, and from one house to another, which they had broken through.  Pitch brands burnt here and there, pale-faced figures lay prostrate around the watch-posts, half dead with fatigue, and any unarmed wayfarer forcing a path for himself was sharply challenged.  Nothing, however, that I have lived through can be compared with the impression that I received on my entry into the chambers of the Town Hall.  Here was a gloomy, and yet fairly compact and serious mass of people; a look of unspeakable fatigue was upon all faces; not a single voice had retained its natural tone.  There was a hoarse jumble of conversation inspired by a state of the highest tension.  The only familiar sight that survived was to be found in the old servants of the Town Hall in their curious antiquated uniform and three-cornered hats.  These tall men, at other times an object of considerable fear, I found engaged partly in buttering pieces of bread, and cutting slices of ham and sausage, and partly in piling into baskets immense stores of provisions for the messengers sent by the defenders of the barricades for supplies.  These men had turned into veritable nursing mothers of the revolution.

As I proceeded further, I came at last upon the members of the provisional government, among whom Todt and Tschirner, after their first panic-stricken flight, were once more to be found gliding to and fro, gloomy as spectres, now that they were chained to the performance of their heavy duties.  Heubner alone had preserved his full energy; but he was a really piteous sight:  a ghostly fire burned in his eyes which had not had a wink of sleep for seven nights.  He was delighted to see me again, as he regarded my arrival as a good omen for the cause which he was defending; while on the other hand, in the rapid succession of events, he had come into contact with elements about which no conclusion could shape itself to his complete satisfaction.  I found Bakunin’s outlook undisturbed, and his attitude firm and quiet.  He did not show the smallest change in his appearance, in spite of having had no sleep during the whole time, which I afterwards heard was a fact.  With a cigar in his mouth he received me, seated on one of the mattresses which lay distributed over the floor of the Town Hall.  At his side was a very young Pole (a Galician) named Haimberger, a violinist whom he had once asked me to recommend to Lipinsky, in order that he might give him lessons, as he did not want this raw and inexperienced boy, who had become passionately attached to him, to get drawn into the vortex of the present upheavals.  Now that Haimberger had shouldered a gun, and presented himself for service at the barricades, however, Bakunin had greeted him none the less joyfully.  He had drawn him down to sit by his side on the couch, and