enthusiastically applauded by the audience, whose passions seemed to be idealised and softened by the charm of oratory. At last appeared an inventor with a bomb of his own invention. The inventor, was a little man with sparkling ferret eyes and a long grey sorcerer's beard; the bomb was an eighteeninch cylinder, divided into several compartments, with a close resemblance to an overgrown Bologna sausage or a piece of the trans-Atlantic cable. Its parent handled it fondly, and turned it round and round on the table to make a full exhibition of its beauties; whereat an involuntary shudder ran through the crowd, and the Nationals crouched low on their benches-"What if it were to go off?" The inventor proceeds to explain that his bomb explodes like a cracker on touching the soil, and whizzes about right and left, at two feet above the ground, in a wonderful zigzag fashion, with a peculiar gift for finding out the places where the Prussians may lie concealed and "mowing them down" like hay. Here was then an engine which could procure deliverance at the speediest and cheapest rate; yet how had the inventor and the invention been received by Messieurs of the Hôtel de Ville? "They told me, 'Go and make your experiments at Vincennes.' I go to Vincennes, and find the ground always occupied by somebody or something;-'tis

'Come another day'-an excuse with which patriots

are put off. I therefore propose to the Republican League to raise a subscription of a thousand francs for my experiments;-I must have a thousand francs. at least. And the experiments over, we shall carry our bomb to the Government, and put the question to them, 'Do you wish to mow the Prussians down? answer, Yes or No.' And if they don't, why we shall mow them . . . . ha, ha, ha!" and he laughed at his own wit. The President adopted the "baby" in the name of the League, which consented to be its nurse, and required the parent to name it. "Well," said the inventor, scratching his head, "you may call it the-Mower; oui, le Faucheur!" A great sensation was produced by a citizen, who unravelled there and then before us the mysteries of a deep-laid plot, machinated by the Jesuits who have taken Trochu and all the generals into their pay. Everything that is done here and in the country is concerted with a view to surrender: the Republic will be quashed between the Prussians and the Reaction; and the Jesuits will restore a monarchy. "No doubt we shall succeed in defending Paris, we are determined; but then you don't know the Jesuits, they will turn our success to their own advantage. If we hold out here till we are saved by the provinces, you can understand that the

Rurals will make their own terms, [and Kératry will bring a king in his wake. Therefore, I say, Paris must owe her deliverance to her own unaided self." The meeting soon broke up, and we all went home. with the usual serenity and good humour of a French assembly that has been tickled with fine speeches. Workmen crowded round my friend. Andrieu to congratulate him on his speech, which had been the success of the evening. One of them confided to me that the speaking was much better at the Salle de la Redoute than at any other club. "I have been in many a réunion publique, and have nowhere found speakers who knew their public better. I should like to know, tout de même, what the Government thinks of all this: they must have their ears well stuffed with cotton not to hear it; il faut qu'il ait un fameux coton dans les oreilles pour ne pas l'entendre."

I stopped on my way home at the Café de Madrid, where I found a number of my friends engrossed in the discussion of Ledru Rollin's republican manifesto. They were equipped in the uniform of the war battalions, with red scarfs girded round their loins, and were under orders to start next day in the direction of Bourget, where the battle is to come off. But it is clear that the siege is a mere accident in their existence; indeed, the war itself is an episode

in the history of Besieged Paris. Surrounded as they are by the cannon of the Prussians, their preoccupation is to revise the catechism of republican policy. The real drama is being played inside to the accompaniment of the thunder of the forts. In the midst of our discussion, a reporter steps in with the latest on-dit from the boulevard :-"15,000 Prussians have been taken. The news is not yet officially confirmed, mais ça se dit sur le boulevard.” This is our usual cordial before going to bed-the sleeping-draught which composes us to rest, "the cotton with which we stuff our ears" against unpleasant noises-the night-cap of our illusions. Good-night, Paris, and may the hosts of Sennacherib vanish like a morning dream.

CHAPTER IX.

CHRISTMAS.

Tuesday Night, 20th December.-Dinner this evening, for the first time since the siege, at a restaurant. I went with my friend, the lawyer, M. L., to the "Café Gaillon," in the neighbourhood of the Rue de la Paix. Nobody makes a mystery now-a-days of what he eats; so I shall say that we dined off a basin of soup, a slice of roast beef with fried potatoes, a friture of gudgeon-four gudgeons for each of us-plus a dish of French beans; preserved apricots for dessert, and coffee. The beef was so excellent of its kind, that I felt convinced it must be mule; but Germain swore "by the ashes of all he held dearest, that it was beef;" and my friend assured me that there were means, more or less legitimate, of procuring this unknown viand, and that he himself possessed a week's supply of it in his cellar. I was particularly struck with the Englified appearance of the place : each table had its own occupant, who kept himself apart from the rest, and British silence prevailed