[Illustration: VERMESCH (PÈRE DUCHESNE).[72]]
First of all, and generally in enormous type, stand the LATEST NEWS, the news from the Porte Maillot where the friends of the Commune are fighting, and the news from Versailles where the enemies of the country are sitting. They usually run somewhat in this style:--
"It is more and more confirmed that the Assembly of Versailles is surrounded and made prisoner by the troops returned from Germany. The generals of the Empire have newly proclaimed Napoleon: the Third, Emperor. After a violent quarrel about two National Guards whom Marshal MacMahon had had shot, but had omitted to have cooked for his soldiers, Monsieur Thiers sent a challenge to the Marshal, by his two seconds. These seconds were no other than the Comte de Chambord and the Comte de Paris. Marshal MacMahon chose the ex-Emperor and Paul de Cassagnac. The duel took place in the Rue des Reservoirs, in the midst of an immense crowd. The Marshal was killed, and was therefore obliged to renounce the command of the troops. But the Assembly would not accept his resignation.
"We are in the position to assert that a company of the 132nd Battalion has this morning surrounded fifteen thousand gendarmes and sergents-de-ville, in the park of Neuilly. Seeing that all resistance was useless, the supporters of Monsieur Thiers surrendered without reserve. Among them were seventeen members of the National Assembly, who, not content with ordering the assassination of our brothers, had wished also to be present at the massacre.
[Illustration: PASCHAL GROUSSET, DELEGATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS.][73]
"A person worthy of credit has related to us the following fact:--A _cantinière_ of the 44th Battalion (from the Batignolles quarter), was in the act of pouring out a glass of brandy for an artilleryman of the Fort of Vanves, when suddenly the artilleryman was out in two by a Versailles shell; the brave _cantinière_ drank off the contents of the glass just poured out for the dead man who lay in bits at her feet, and took his place at the guns. She performed her new part of artilleryman so bravely, that ten minutes later there was not a single gun uninjured in the Meudon battery. As to those who were serving the pieces there, they were all hurled to a distance of several miles, and amongst them were said to have been recognised--we give this news however with great reserve--Monsieur Ollivier, the ex-minister of the ex-Emperor, and Count von Bismarck, who wished to verify for himself the actual range of the guns that he had lent to his good friends of Versailles."