It was therefore quite true, certain, incontestable. The balls and shells of the Versaillais were not content with killing the combatants and knocking down the forts and ramparts. They were also killing women and children, ordinary passers-by; not only those who were attracted by an imprudent curiosity to go where they had no business, but unfortunates who were necessarily obliged to venture into the neighbouring streets, for the purpose of buying bread. Not only do the shells of the National Assembly reach the buildings situated close to the city walls, but they often fall considerably farther in, crushing inoffensive houses, and breaking the sculpture on the public monuments. No one can deny this. I have seen it with my own eyes. Anyhow, the projectiles fall nearer and nearer the centre. Yesterday they fell in the Avenue de la Grande Armée; to-day they fly over the Arc de Triomphe, and fall in the Place d'Eylau and the Avenue d'Uhrich. Who knows but what to-morrow they will have reached the Place de la Concorde, and the next day perhaps I may be killed by one on the Boulevard Montmartre? Paris bombarded! Take care, gentlemen of the National Assembly! What the Prussians did, and what gave rise to such a clamour of indignation on the part of the Government of the 4th September, it will be both infamous and imprudent for you to attempt. You kill Frenchmen who are in arms against their countrymen,--alas! that is a horrible necessity in civil war,--but spare the lives and the dwellings of those who are not arrayed against you, and who are perhaps your allies. It is all very well to argue that guns are not endowed with the gifts of intelligence and mercy, and that one cannot make them do exactly what one likes; but what have you done with those marvellous marksmen who, during the siege, continually threw down the enemy's batteries and interrupted his works with such extraordinary precision, and who pretended that at a distance of seven thousand metres they could hit the gilded spike of a Prussian helmet? Wherefore have they become so clumsy since they changed places with their adversaries? Joking apart, in a word, you are doing yourself the greatest injury in being so uselessly cruel; every shell overleaping the fortifications is not only a crime, but a great mistake. Remember, that in this horrible duel which is going on, victory will not really remain with that party which shall have triumphed over the other, by the force of arms (yours undoubtedly), but to the one who, by his conduct, shall have succeeded in proving to the neutral population, which observes and judges, that right was on his side. I do not say but what your cause is the best; for although we may have to reproach you with an imprudent resistance, unnecessary attacks, and a wilful obstinacy not to see what was legitimate and honourable in the wishes of the Parisians, still we must consider that you represent, legally, the whole of France. I do not say, therefore, but what your cause is the best; frankly though, can you hope to bring over to your side that large body of citizens, whose confidence you had shaken, by massacring innocent people in the streets, and destroying their dwellings? If this bombardment continues, if it increases in violence as it seems likely to do, you will become odious, and then, were you a hundred times in the right, you will still be in the wrong. Therefore, it is most urgent that you give orders to the artillerymen of Courbevoie and Mont Valérien, to moderate their zeal, if you do not desire that Paris--neutral Paris--should make dangerous comparisons between the Assembly which flings us its shells, and the Commune which launches its decrees, and come to the conclusion that decrees are less dangerous missiles than cannon-balls. As to the legality of the thing, we do not much care about that; we have seen so many governments, more or less legal, that we are somewhat _blasés_ on that point; and a few millions of votes have scarcely power enough to put us in good humour with shot and shell. Certainly the Commune, such as the men at the Hôtel de Ville have constituted it, is not a brilliant prospect. It arrests priests, stops newspapers, wishes to incorporate us, in spite of ourselves, in the National Guard; robs us--so we are told; lies inveterately--that is incontestable, and altogether makes itself a great bore; but what does that matter?--human nature is full of weaknesses, and prefers to be bored than bombarded.