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On Sunday, May 21, the Versailles army began to make its way into Paris, and the Commune, seeing its fantastic and terrible power about to pass away, tried to startle the world by its excesses. Orders were sent at once to Mazas to send the archbishop, the priests, Senator Bonjean, suspected spies, and sergents de ville to that part of the prison of La Roquette reserved for condemned criminals.
Every moment it was expected that the roof of the prison would fall in, when suddenly the reservoir on the top of the building gave way, and the flames were checked by a rush of water. Braquond had said to Judge Bonjean a few days before he was sent from the Prefecture to Mazas, "I can stay here no longer. I am going to escape to Versailles."
There, four days later, when the Versaillais had full possession of the city, they were found. The archbishop and the Abbé Duguerrey were taken to the archbishop's house with a guard of honor, and are buried at Notre Dame. The two Jesuit fathers were buried in their own cemetery, and Judge Bonjean and the hospital chaplain sleep in honored graves in Père la Chaise.
The Archbishop of PARIS, the Curé of the Madeleine, President BONJEAN, with priests, gendarmes, soldiers, and other victims to the number of 64, have been shot, and 168 others were only saved by the arrival of the troops. This massacre of distinguished and inoffensive men is one of those crimes which never die, and which blacken for ever the memory of their authors.
"Haste, haste!" cried Desmarais, hurrying to the waves, as a boat, now winding the cliff, became darkly visible: "haste, Bertrand, here are Bonjean and his men; but they are pursued!"
Darboy, as we know, was the archbishop; Bonjean, judge of the Court of Appeals; Allard, head-chaplain to the hospitals, who had been unwearied in his services to the wounded; Clerc and Ducoudray were Jesuit fathers; Duguerrey was pastor of the Madeleine. Jecker was a banker who had negotiated Mexican loans for the Government.
In the evening of the 22d the victims forty of them the good Darboy, Duguerry, Bonjean, and others were piled into a transport-wagon with only a board placed across, where they could sit, and were taken to the place of execution. The Archbishop seemed suffering; probably the privations he had endured had weakened him.
M. Bonjean replied: "As a magistrate I command you to remain; as a prisoner I implore you. What would become of those under your care if the friends of the Commune were set over them?" The officer who held it for the Commune was Colonel Brunei, an excellent middle-aged man, far too good for his associations.
This sainted man was the first to be shot. He died instantly; but President Bonjean crossed his arms and, standing erect, stared full in the faces of his assassins with his brave eyes fastened on theirs. This seemed to have troubled them, for of the nineteen balls they fired not one touched his head they fired too low but all his bones were broken. These details are too dreadful.
One of the most important of the "hostages" who suffered death at the hands of the Commune the most important person of their lay victims M. Bonjean, was President of the Court of Cassation, and it was only the fact of his holding a high position, and being respected by all persons whose respect was worth having, that can have rendered him odious.
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