The best defence made by the Communists under trial was,
it is said, offered by Paschal Grousset, the Foreign Minister of that body. He repudiated all complicity in the assassinations or in the firing of Paris ; but admitted the charge of insurrection. He believed, he said, in his cause, and if he had won the world would have believed in it too, and he was willing to take all con- sequences. The defence of M. Jourde, the Finance Minister, is nearly the same, with the addition that he saved the Bank of France from pillage, and with millions in his hands lived on two francs a day and sent his children to the public school, a proof of disinterestedness, but not necessarily of innocence. Courbet's defence, on the other hand, is that he was too much of a fool to understand politics, and only entered the Commune to save the art treasures. The prosecution demands death for all ; but it is not likely that either of these three will be executed, or indeed as we hear, anybody else not implicated in the execution of the hostages. Time has softened the statesmen, though not the populace of Versailles, or the majority of the English correspondents.
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