taken shots at Arabs, Chinese and Mexicans, our court generals thought that they were going to make a military promenade à Berlin. If the Austrians had been armed with breech-loaders, they would have beaten us at Magenta and Solferino. C'est égal, after Sedan there was a time when peace was possible; England could then have given us the support of her moral influence; active intervention was not necessary-yet she might have remembered that, in the Crimea, the two nations fought side by side as loyal and trusty allies." He expressed great admiration for the "tenacity" and "discipline" of the Anglo-Saxon race. I asked him what he thought of German tenacity, and whether, in his opinion, the hardships of a winter campaign, and exposure to cold, and rain, and frost, might not weaken the moral of the Prussian troops. He replied, with a shrug of his shoulders, "The King of Prussia has made up his mind, and his soldiers will follow him to the very end; they are puffed up with their victories, they live on the land, levy fat contributions, and have plenty of women following in their wake. The married men amongst them forget by degrees their wives and families; in fact, they have everything that keeps soldiers together, and makes them stick to their colours. As for cover, they are housed in the villages, just as you see our troops housed;

their foreposts are, of course, exposed to rain and bad weather, but then they are relieved at regular intervals, and they come back to recruit their health and strength in the houses, and last of all, their generals don't commit a single blunder." He explained their artillery tactics, and the skill with which they dispose their batteries in three rows, each covering the retreat or advance of the one in front; but still, after eulogising the superiority of their generalship, and the discipline of their troops, he none the less expressed great confidence in the final result of the siege. "The army which we now put in line," he said, "is a new army, animated with a new spirit, and morally superior to the old one. The hard lesson we have received will have done us good. We are badly off, it is true, for artillery; but with rifles we can make our way. Once we shall have got hold of the rope, we shall pull ourselves through." I wanted to know what he thought of our prospect of relief from the provinces. "La province!" he said, we must do without it; we must force our way through ourselves, and the provinces will join in the pursuit." The conversation next fell upon the state of the public mind in Paris; the Colonel spoke with great indignation of Flourens and Belleville. "If they budge, we shall march down on Paris, and put them to rights in twenty-four hours; but all this

revolutionary agitation is doing great mischief. There has been a sad falling away of national spirit within the last thirty years, and it is a melancholy sign for the future." On taking leave, the Colonel expressed, with true French courtesy, the hope that I would not retain un trop mauvais souvenir of my night at Gentilly. I assured him that, on the contrary, his reception of me had made it one of the pleasantest recollections which the siege would probably afford ; and we bid each other "adieu," or rather "au revoir," for au revoir sounds better in times of danger like these.

Poor Colonel D-! A man who has accepted the command of a Mobile regiment has virtually signed away his life to his country.

The Colonel's card enabled me to go to the fort, where I found on enquiry that my marine friend had changed his quarters; hence the mistake which led to my detention as a Prussian spy.

The musketry had died away on the line of outposts, and except an occasional gun from the redoubt of Hautes Bruyères, there was nothing to remind one of an impending battle. The troops, who had marched out the day before, were carefully stowed away in the villages, and one could hardly realize the fact that 30,000 men were hidden on a few miles of comparatively open ground, like a couple of police officers lying in ambush for the thief.

CHAPTER IV.

LOST TIME.

Friday, October 14th.-Next day came off the fight at Bagneux, on the slopes of the hill of Chatillon. It terminated as all these engagements invariably do, in the "retreat in good order," which, to the disgust and discomfort of Parisians, is now understood to be the necessary finale of all siege operations. The first positions of the enemy had been won, and a certain number of Bavarian prisoners taken in the village of Bagneux. The troops of the Line showed a certain spirit, and the Mobiles were, for the first time, seriously engaged. They were all surprised by the signal of retreat, which was sounded along the lines shortly after General Trochu had made his appearance on the field, and they seemed utterly at a loss to give any account of the fight to the crowds who pressed eagerly round them; but what can a man be expected to know of a battle in which he has taken part? A vast number of sight-seers, among them several ladies, had come out beyond

the fortifications, to the Plain of Montrouge. Rochefort, with some of his colleagues in the Government, watched the progress of the fight from the Fort of Vanves, which received a few stray shells from the enemy's field-guns, a circumstance which to-day's papers represent as reflecting great credit on the "President of the Barricades," and the Government to which he belongs. The crowd grew very merry at the sight of the helmets brought in by FrancsTireurs and Mobiles on the points of their bayonets, and ran, like children, with clapping of hands and waving of hats, to meet the Bavarian prisoners whom we persist in calling "Prussians." Some of the German wounded were carried off in cabs and private carriages, drawn up in long files behind the ramparts, like on some grand opera-night before the peristyle of the "Italiens." A friend of mine went up to a wounded Bavarian, who was lying behind a bush at a few yards from the Frenchman who had shot him; the Frenchman sat opposite, looking wofully at the Prussien d'en face, and at a gun-shot wound in his left arm. The Bavarian, on seeing my friend approach, raised his arms, as if in the act of levelling an imaginary musket, and shouted "Poum," to warn him off. My friend disarmed the wounded warrior by replying "Nicht Poum," had him picked up and removed into his carriage, together with the French