Page:The Rise and Fall on the Paris Commune in 1871.djvu/541

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  • structed, arms were thrown in confusion on the ground,

and all took to flight.

The Commune had disappeared, but Gambon's good resolutions came too late.

Eudes, another member of the Committee of Public Safety, was shot at Vincennes.

Okolowitch, who was wounded at the time of the arrest of Cluseret by the Commune, was placed in an ambulance on the Champs Elysées. He had there a special tent, and a sentinel mounted guard close by. Monday, the 22d, he was suddenly awakened by an officer, who said to him:

"You are my prisoner."

"Ah!" cried he, " the Commune arrests me?"

Soon undeceived, he was transferred a prisoner to Versailles.

But the members of the Commune were not all arrested or executed by regular troops. Many were taken and shot by their own soldiers.

Mathieu, member of the Commune, was one of these. Wednesday morning, the Federals led to the Pont Neuf an individual dressed in civilian's clothes, no other than Mathieu, who had been arrested in the morning, and upon whom had been found a sum amounting to one million five hundred thousand francs.

The insurgents accused him of having received this sum from Versailles for opening one of the gates to the regular troops.

The ex-member of the Commune, notwithstanding his protestations of innocence, was placed with his back against the pedestal of the statue of Henry IV, one of the Federals bound his eyes with a handkerchief, and a few seconds after six shots resounded.

Mathieu fell dead, his head crushed by the balls. His body was then picked up by two or three insurgents, who,