The following description of General Cluseret is decidedly true in regard to the feeling of security entertained by all Americans in Paris while he remained in power:
"Cluseret, though, it is said, a naturalized American,
is a soldier of a very different type from such as Dombrowski.
He has less of the capacity, probably, required
by a general on the battle-field handling troops, but in
the closet he is immeasurably superior. He is indefatigably
active, and of insatiate ambition, greedy of power to
such excess that, as was said of Sir Robert Walpole, he
has preferred to risk losing it all rather than to sacrifice
ever so little of it, and would rather see a too able man
among his opponents than among his friends. He has
gradually and steadily gathered all power into his own
hands, and has made no secret of his resolution to resist
and resent all interference on the part of laymen in what
he considers the all-absorbing question of the moment—the
effectual defence of Paris. He has rare firmness of
character and few scruples. A Frenchman, who had the
honor the other day of being his prisoner, narrated to me
a very characteristic conversation which Cluseret had held
with him. The General rather ridiculed the notion of
private hostages being wanted by the Commune, when it
held such infinitely more valuable hostages as, say, the
banks of Paris, and professed his readiness to release all
the prisoners, though he took care to guard himself against
all suspicion of hesitating to take their lives. 'I don't
want to take one life unnecessarily; but if at the last
moment I should be called on to kill 10,000 people, I
would rather make arrangements for killing 15,000, in
order to be on the safe side, than run the risk of
not killing the 10,000." He is, in fact, what one calls a
thoroughly practical man, somewhat of the shrewd Yankee
type; and there is, perhaps, some foundation for the sus-
