take their cue
from Victor Hugo's "highfalutin'" remonstrance to King William; on the
contrary, it was the poet who translated their sentiments. It was not a
case of "one fool making many;" but of many mute inglorious visionaries
inspiring a still greater one, who had the gift of eloquence, which
eloquence, in this instance, bordered very closely on sublimated drivel.

Nevertheless, the whole of Paris became suddenly transformed into one
vast drill-ground, and the clang of arms resounded through the city day
and night. For the time being, the crowds left off singing, albeit that
they listened now and then devoutly and reverently to itinerant
performers, male and female, who had paraphrased the patriotic airs of
certain operas for the occasion. The "Pars beau mousquetaire," etc., of
Halevy, became "Pars beau volontaire;" the "Guerre aux tyrans," of the
same composer, "Guerre aux all'mands,"[82] and so forth.

[Footnote 82: The first from "Les Mousquetaires de la Reine;"
the second from "Charles VI."--EDITOR.]

All the theatres had closed their doors by this time, the
Comedie-Francaise being last, I believe; though, almost immediately
afterward, it threw open its portals once more for at least two
performances a week, and often a third time, in aid of the victims of
the siege. Meanwhile, several rooms were being got ready for the
reception of the wounded; the new opera-house, still unfinished, was
made into a commissariat and partly into a barracks, for the provincial
Gardes Mobiles were flocking by thousands to the capital, and the camps
could not hold them all. For once in a way the Parisian forgot to chaff
the provincial who came to pay him a visit; and considering that, even
under such circumstances, all drill and no play would make Jacques a
dull boy, he not only received him very cordially, but showed him some
of the lions of the capital, at which the long-haired gaunt and stolid
Breton stared without moving a muscle, only muttering an unintelligible
gibberish, which might be an invocation to his ancient pagan gods, or a
tribute of admiration; while the more astute and cynical, though
scarcely more impressionable Normand, ten thousand of which had come
from the banks of the Marne, showed the thought underlying all his daily
actions, in one sentence: "C'est _ben_ beau, mais ca a coute beaucoup
d'argent; fallait mieux le garder en poche." Even at this supreme
moment, he remembered, with a kind of