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"The scene was like that horror from which he had prayed to be saved. His terror was gone. His prayer had been answered." The prisoners on reaching La Roquette were first passed into a hall, where they found the archbishop and several priests. The former was calm, but he was ill, and his features bore marks of acute suffering.
The brothers nevertheless managed to reach it, and for a few minutes remained there, peering into the darkness before them. The sloping street grew broader between the two prisons, the "great" and the "little" Roquette, in such wise as to form a sort of square, which was shaded by four clumps of plane-trees, rising from the footways.
It was, however, more particularly after following the Boulevard Voltaire, and drawing near to the districts of La Roquette and Charonne, that the brothers felt they were returning to a sphere of labour where there was often lack of food, and where life was but so much pain. Pierre found himself at home here.
On seeing the jostling crowd which was already assembled on the Place Voltaire, Pierre understood that it would be impossible for him and his brother to ascend the Rue de la Roquette. Barriers, moreover, must certainly have been thrown across that street.
Before long one could plainly distinguish the black lines of the spectators standing around in a circle, the heads leaning forward from windows and balconies, and the people who had climbed to the very house roofs. The prison of La Petite Roquette over the way had been turned into a kind of tribune for guests; and mounted Gardes de Paris went slowly to and fro across the intervening expanse.
Several distinguished officers were present at the festive board: Captain Montesquieu de Roquette, Sir Horace Vere, Captains St. Hilaire, Meetkerke, De Ryck, and others among them.
As we passed the prison of La Roquette, we heard about ninety rifle-shots and then a mitrailleuse, and were told by the troops that prisoners were being executed. We had great difficulty in passing through the Faubourg St. Antoine, and were stopped by at least five cordons of sentries.
It was only at that late day that the public was informed of the murder of the hostages; the archbishop, the cure of the Madeleine and others, shot at la Roquette on Wednesday, the Dominicans of Arcueil coursed like hares on Thursday, more priests and gendarmes, to the number of forty-seven in all, massacred in cold blood in the Rue Haxo on Friday; and a furious cry went up for vengeance, the soldiers bunched the last prisoners they made and shot them in mass.
Several distinguished officers were present at the festive board: Captain Montesquieu de Roquette, Sir Horace Vere, Captains St. Hilaire, Meetkerke, De Ryck, and others among them.
Then the troops followed in their turn, and into the sordid suburb, that long Rue de la Roquette, already swarming with people as far as eye could reach, there plunged a whole army, foot-soldiers, dragoons, lancers, carabineers, heavy guns with their great mouths in the air, ready to bark, making pavement and windows tremble, but not able to drown the rolling of the drums a sinister and savage rolling which suggested to Felicia's imagination some funeral of an African chief, at which thousands of sacrificed victims accompany the soul of a prince so that it shall not pass alone into the kingdom of spirits, and made her fancy that perhaps this pompous and interminable retinue was about to descend and disappear in the superhuman grave large enough to receive the whole of it.
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