The daily Alaskan., 1917-01-25

wounded by a shot from the troops and lay bleeding on the pavement.
 Most of the women who fought with | the commune were hags. This woman was not more than twenty years old. She looked up at Le Moyne with pair of large dark eyes. They expressed a spirit of martyrdom.
 It was all plain to Le Moyne. The commune was breaking down. The barricade had been deserted except by this Maid of Orleans, who constituted herself its sole defender.
 Le Moyne turned, called on lieuten- ant to bring the men to rest, then went down the barricade to the wo- man.
 Are you badly wounded?" he asked.
 "No; have broken leg"
 "Who are youp
 "Elise Fourchet."
 "What are you doing here alone be- hind this barricade"
 T could not get the men to stay. They heard that our defenses are bro ken down in other parts, and they dared not remain"
 And you%
 q would not desert"
 By this time the soldiers had climbed the barricade and were waving the tricolor of France from its crest. Le Moyne called upon them to carry it's defender into a house beside it, going with them as they did so. There was | only one person besides the captain and his men, an old woman, who min istered to the wounded girl. A surgeon accompanied the soldiers, and he was called in to set and bandage the bro ken limb.
 Had the damage done by the con- mune ended with its loss of control perhaps the wholesale slaughter of Its votaries which followed would not have taken place. When it's leaders found that they were beaten, adopting the motto of rule or ruin, since they could not rule they resolved to ruin. They murdered the archbishop of Paris and other distinguished persons whom they held as hostages. Not content with this, they undertook to destroy the city. Paris was then full of beau tiful buildings. Many of these were destroyed, including the most interest ing, historically considered, the palace of the Tuileries, the ancient abode of the kings of France.
 It was these acts of vandalism that led the government to get rid, so far as possible, of so dangerous portion of the population of Paris. The captured communists were marched out to the yards of the prisons in which they were confined, stood up with their faces to the walls and shot down by scores. Doubtless many of these be- lieved that they were dying in a sacred cause.
 Captain Le Moyne could he have foreseen these horrors would undoubt- edly have continued to save his pris- oner from the universal sacrifice, though he had but little time, and Elise FOurchet was not in a condition to avail herself of a permitted flight. The only thing the captain could do for her was to leave her with the wo- man who was caring for her. He marched his men away, but the na- honal troops were pouring into the city, and when Mile. Fourchet was found wounded and confessed that she had received a bullet while defending a barricade she was removed to a prison.
 If the communists received a trial they were tried in large numbers to- gether. When Elise Fourchet was brought before a judge for one of these wholesale sentences, noticing she was of a different class from most of the others, he asked her why she had en- gagged in such nefariOus work.
 q fought to build, not to destroy" was her reply. q did not know that we were led by bad men. One of our 1 leaders, Cluseret, fought with the Union armies in the late war between the states of North America, and sup posed that a man who had risked his life in the cause of civil liberty must be representing the same cause In l France"
 The judge was touched by this ap- peal and remanded the prisoner to prison for further evidence. But the Parisians soCn tired of the wholesale slaughter of the communists, and Mile. Fourchet was never again brought to trial In time, when all danger of recurrence of the outbreak had passed, the prison doors of all communists who had not been executed were thrown open, and among those who walked out free was Elise Fourchet.
 She ever afterward had horror of the men who had led so many innocent persons into crime. Not all of them were punished unless by their own consciences. A few escaped, others per ished in the havoc they had made, | while others were banlshed from France. Probably no body of men ever set in motion a revolution that involv- ed so much ruin, not only of historic treasures, but of persons they de n, s, AhofF. nhfaP