and commenced an inspection from the left of the line. Walking down slowly and eying the ranks, the General stopped here and there, tapping a man on the shoulder or beckoning him out of the rear ranks. In most cases, without further parley, the individual thus selected was marched out into the center of the road, where a small supplementary column was thus soon formed. … It was evident that there was considerable room for error. A mounted officer pointed out to General Galliffet a man and a woman for some particular offense. The woman, rushing out of the ranks, threw herself on her knees, and, with out-stretched arms, protested her innocence in passionate terms. The General waited for a pause, and then with most impassable face and unmoved demeanor said: "Madame, I have visited every theater in Paris, your acting will have no effect on me" (ce n'est pas la peine de jouer la comédie). … It was not a good thing on that day to be noticeably taller, dirtier, cleaner, older, or uglier than one's neighbors. One individual in particular struck me as probably owing his speedy release from the ills of this world to his having a broken nose. … Over a hundred being thus chosen, a firing party told off, and the column resumed its march, leaving them behind. A few minutes afterwards a dropping fire in our rear commenced, and continued for over a quarter of an hour. It was the execution of these summarily-convicted wretches.
This Galliffet, "the kept man of his wife, so notorious for her shameless exhibitions at the orgies of the Second Empire," went during the war by the name of the French "Ensign Pistol." And it was with this Galliffet, as Minister of War, that the "Socialist" Millerand, as Minister of Commerce, entered the Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet of the so-called Republican Defense, formed at the time of the Dreyfus affair! The murderer Galliffet and the traitor Millerand! Fit colleagues indeed in a bourgeois conspiracy having in view the disorganization of the socialist movement and the consequent perpetuation of wage-slavery!
The London Evening Standard of June 8, 1871, printed this paragraph from its Paris correspondent:—
