Morning journal and courier., 1884-10-07
part.-rhs suhterranean City.

There are in Paris men and women who are never seen, never heard of, save ill times of terrible commotion, in the nights of con spiracy, in the days of revolt. They live at other times subterranean existence; they gay and busy city round about them and above them. Their existence in ordinary times is undreampt of, even by the majority of men, or remembered only like a bad dream They are wolves in human shape; they thirst for blood; they hunger after plumber; they crave for light and warmth the light of petroleum fires, the heat of blazing palaces, and prisons and churches; no crime is unknown to them; they shrink from no cruelty; there is no secret which they are not possessed of their spies to be found in the palace of kings, in the coun- cI chamber of ministers, even in the bureau of the secret police; they possess the pass words of the secret societies. They know when a conspiracy is on foot, when a revolt is at hand when the murder of a king or an emperor is being matched. They know it be- cause their services are required. They are not the leaders, but the instruments. They execute what others conceive. They are the vast reserve force of the revolution against society. They can always be depended upon, for they pay themselves put of the plumber of city in revolt, of besieged city stofmed They revenge themselves for the ills or wrongs they suffer by bloodshed and by the burning in which they delight.
 There is but one danger which those who make use of this vast army of the morally and socially insane have to fear, and that is their impatience. They long for the harvest while their masters are still engaged in the work of the seed-time. In their hideous un- derground life they move to and fro like wild beasts in Q cage; they curse the slow selfish ness of the masters of their trade. who, while plotting in secret, are living the fat of the land.
 At times, when danger is near at hand, a strange pulsation is felt in the moral atmos phere; a subtle scent as of sulphur fills the air; even the far-of roar of this subterrane- an city, it's cry for blood is heard by the up per world, by that gay city which rests on the thin, frail crust that covers the yawning abyss below. By these foreboding signs men in Paris know a social revolution is near at hand On the sudden the signal for action is given the denizens of the subterranean city issue forth in their might and in their wrath Men shudder- at the sight as ii hell had broken loose.
 In the last half century thrice has Paris witnessed the rising up of this subterranean city; thrice heard and trembled at the shouts of it's men in their rage, the shrleks ot Its women drunk with blood. These men of terror, these women of fury manned the bar rlcades on the three gloflous days or Ju1y. They crowned the citizen-king. They rose against the empire; but were moved down in countless thousands by the grapes shot of Napoleon the Third. They held Paris in pos session during the reign of the commune. Pale-faeed men in b1ouses, with bloodshot eyes and cruel lips, never seen at other times in the light of day, held the streets of Paris and filled the gutters with rivers of blood Women, inspired with the exaltation of fury, were ffercer far than the men, more cruel of heart, bolder in action. It was the women, unsexed by their crimes-for a lost woman is worse than the worst of men-who lit up the petroleum fires, cast burning liquid into the houses, who burnt to the ground and gutted the Tuileries, adding the red glare of fire to streets red with blood When the archbish op of Paris and priest venerated for his virtues and his charity by rich and poor alike were publicly murdered together with two other hostages, the women in their tiger like fury at the sight of blood, when even the most abandoned men shuddered, set up a song of jubilation, cry of delight more horrible than the shrieks of the dying in the streets of Paris, more terrible even than the screams of women and children perishing in the flames. What crimes were committed in secret, what horrors were permeated in the dark during the reign of the Commune, there is none to tell.