me. _Les
Nouvelles_ heads an article "English Spies," and proposes that to
simplify the question of whether they are spies or not, all English in
Paris should at once be shot. I cannot say that I personally have found
any ill-feeling to exist against me because I am an Englishman.
Yesterday afternoon I was in a crowd, and some one suggested that I was
a spy; I immediately mounted on a chair and explained that I was a
"journaliste Anglais," and pointed out to my friends that they ought to
be obliged to me for remaining here. "If any one doubts me," I added,
"let us go to the nearest commissary." No one did doubt me, and fifty
patriots immediately shook hands with me. The French people are apt to
form hasty judgments sometimes, and to act on them still more hastily,
but if one can get them to listen for a moment, they are reasonable, and
soon their natural good nature asserts itself. The zealous but
well-intended Mobiles are the most dangerous, for they shoot you first
and then apologise to your corpse. An order is placarded to-day of
Governor Trochu's, announcing that anyone trying to pass the lines will
be sent before the Courts Martial, or if he or she runs away when
ordered to stop, will be shot on the spot. This latter clause allows a
very great latitude for zeal, more particularly as the "lines" just now
are little more than a geographical expression. Their Emperor is a
prisoner, the enemy is thundering at their gates, they are shut up here
like rats in a hole; they have been vanquished in the only engagement
they have had with their besiegers, and yet the Parisians believe that,
compared with them, the Germans are an inferior race, and, like the
slave before Marius, will shrink abashed before the majesty of Paris.
"If we," say their newspapers, "the wisest, the best, the noblest of
human beings, have to succumb to this horde of barbarians that environ
us, we shall cease to believe in the existence of a Providence."

The movement on the part of the "Ultras" to elect at once a municipality
is gaining strength. Yesterday several chiefs of the faubourg battalions
of the National Guard interviewed Jules Ferry on the subject. Ledru
Rollin has declared himself in favour of it, and this morning there are
evidences that the Government is inclined to give way to the pressure,
for a decree is published in the _Journal Officiel_ ordering a
registration of voters. The worst of Frenchmen is that, no matter how
patriotic each on