e may be, he is convinced that the interests of his
country require that he should be one of its rulers. The men of '48 who
have returned from exile are surprised that they are almost forgotten by
the present generation, which regards them as interesting historical
relics, and puts its faith in new gods. At the clubs every evening the
Government is denounced for refusing to admit into its ranks this or
that patriot, or adjourning the municipal elections, and for not sending
revolutionary agents into the provinces. A newspaper this morning makes
the excellent suggestion that M. Blanqui, M.F. Pyat, and their principal
adherents should be invited to proceed at once to the provinces in a
balloon, invested with the rank of Government agents. "They cannot," it
adds, "do so much harm there as they are doing here; and then, too, the
balloon may burst." Personally, I should be glad to see a moderate
Republic established here, for I regard a Court as a waste of public
money; but it seems to me that Republicans should remember that it is
for the nation, and not for them, to decide what shall henceforward be
the form of government.

CHAPTER IV

_September 30th._

We are still beating our tom-toms like the Chinese, to frighten away the
enemy, and our braves still fire off powder at invisible Uhlans. The
Prussians, to our intense disgust, will not condescend even to notice
us. We jeer at them, we revile them, and yet they will not attack us.
What they are doing we cannot understand. They appear to have withdrawn
from the advanced positions which they held. We know that they are in
the habit of making war in a thoroughly ungentlemanly manner, and we
cannot make up our minds whether our "attitude" is causing them to
hesitate, or whether they are not devising some new trick to take us by
surprise. That they are starving, that their communications with Germany
are cut off, that their leaders are at loggerheads, that the Army of the
Loire will soon be here to help us to demolish them, we have not the
slightest doubt. The question is no longer whether Paris will be
taken--that we have solved already--it is whether the Prussians will be
able to get back to the Rhine. We are thankful that Bismarck did not
accept Jules Favre's offer of a money indemnity. We would not give a
hundred francs now to ensure peace or an armistice. I went this morning
into a shop, the proprietor of which, a bootmaker, I have long known,
and I listened wit