on to fight it out to the
last. The men there have arms, and they have not cared to put on
uniforms. Men, women, and children are all of one mind in the quarters
of the working men. I have been much struck with the difference between
one of these poor fellows who is prepared to die for the honour of his
country, between his quiet, calm demeanour, and the absurd airs, and
noisy brawls, and the dapper uniforms of the young fellows one meets
with in the fashionable quarters. It is the difference between reality
and sham, bravery and bombast.

The newspapers are beginning to complain of the number of Chevaliers of
the Red Cross, who are daily becoming more numerous. Strong men, they
say, should not enrol themselves in a corps of non-combatants. It is
said, also, that at Clamart these chevaliers declined to go under fire
and pick up the wounded, and that the ambulances themselves made a
strategic movement to the rear at the commencement of the combat. The
flag of the Convention of Geneva is on far too many houses. From my
window I can count fifteen houses with this flag floating over them.

We have most wonderful stories about the Prussians, which, although they
are generally credited, I take leave to doubt. Villagers who have
slipped through the lines, and who play the part of the intelligent
contraband of the American Civil War, are our informants. They represent
the Prussian army without food, almost without clothing, bitterly
repenting their advance into France, demoralised by the conviction that
few of their number will be again in their homes. We are treated every
day, too, to the details of deeds of heroism on the part of Mobiles and
Nationaux, which would make Achilles himself jealous. There is, we are
told, a wonderful artilleryman in the fort before St. Denis, the
perfection of whose aim carries death and destruction into the Prussian
ranks.

I am not sorry to learn that the sale of the ultra papers is not large.
M. Blanqui's office was yesterday broken into by some National Guards,
who made it clear to this worthy that he had ill chosen his moment to
attack the Government. I have not myself the slightest dread of a
general pillage. The majority of the working men no doubt entertain
extreme Socialist ideas, but any one of them who declined to make any
distinction between his property and that of his richer neighbours would
be very roughly handled. So long as the Government sticks to its policy
of no surrender, i