Note 104 — Chapter IX

Certain infamous evidence must be quoted in full in order to give a notion of the delirium tremens of the great bourgeoisie when speaking of the Commune. Four months after these events the Prefect Ducros, the inventor of the famous bridges of the Marne, deposed before the Commission d'Enquête sur le 18 Mars: "They did not respect his corpse; they cut off his head. In the night, horrible to say, one of the men who had participated in the assassination, and who has been put on his trial, came to a café offering those present pieces of M. De l'Espée's skull, and cracking under his teeth pieces of the same skull." And Ducros dared to add: "The man had been arrested, put on his trial, and acquitted." Horrible imaginings, which even the Radicals of St. Etienne have stigmatised.