em into
such misfortunes to be honored and comforted while they were suffering
the consequences of his selfishness, recklessness, negligence, and
incapacity?

Thus eighty thousand men capitulated at Sedan, and were marched
as prisoners into Germany; one hundred and seventy-five thousand
French soldiers remained shut up in Metz, besides a few thousands
more in Strasburg, Phalsbourg, Toul, and Belfort. But the road
was open to Paris, and thither the various German armies marched,
leaving the Landwehr, which could not be ordered to serve beyond the
limits of Germany, to hold Alsace and Lorraine, already considered
a part of the Fatherland. The Prussians did not reach Paris till
September 19, two weeks after the surrender at Sedan,--which seemed
rather a lull in the military operations of a war in which so much
had occurred during one short month.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SIEGE OF PARIS.

Though the surrender of the emperor and his army at Sedan took place
on September 2, nothing whatever was known of it by the Parisian
public until the evening of September 4, when a reporter arrived
at the office of the "Gaulois" with a Belgian newspaper in his
pocket. The "Gaulois" dared not be the first sheet to publish the
news of such a disaster; but despatches had already reached the
Government, and by degrees rumors of what had happened crept through
the streets of the capital. No one knew any details of the calamity,
but every one soon understood that something terrible had occurred.

The Legislative Assembly held a midnight session; but nothing was
determined on until the morning, when the Empire was voted out,
and a Republic voted in.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. Every Parisian was in the street,
and, wonderful to say, all faces seemed to express satisfaction. The
loss of an army, the surrender of the emperor, the national disgrace,
the prospect of a siege, the advance of the Prussians,--were things
apparently forgotten. Paris was charmed to have got rid of so unlucky
a ruler,--the emperor for whom more than seven millions of Frenchmen
had passed a vote of confidence a few months before. He seemed to
have no longer a single friend, or rather he had _one:_ in the
Assembly an elderly deputy stood up in his place and boldly said that
he had taken an oath to be faithful to the Emperor Napoleon, and
did not think himself absolved from it by his misfortunes.

[Illustration: _JULES SIMON._]

It was almost in a moment,