Note 240 — Chapter XXXIV

General Appert's report is not only silent with regard to these ignominious proceedings, but lies with a placidity that is frightful. He says, for instance, "The prisoners of the pontoons were treated like the sailors, with this difference, that they did no work and got frequent distributions of wine." Of the cages, the vermin, the blows, not a word. In the same manner he recounts, in the style of a pretentious quartermaster, the history of the Commune and of the last struggles. It would be doing him too much honour to point out how his absurd statements contradict each other. And yet it is from these official lies that all bourgeois historians have till to-day compiled their histories.