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

man who had been the author of his wound; and these two, after exchanging shots on the battle-field, exchanged cigars on the way home, with mutual assurances of everlasting friendship, in a language invented for the occasion. Such is war, from the soldier's point of view.

Tuesday, October 18.-Paris has been thrown, these last few days, into great uneasiness, by news from the provinces, which the Government is suspected of withholding. On Saturday, M. Portalis, editor of the Vérité, a new paper, which is, in fact, the old Electeur Libre minus, M. Arthur Picard, reproduced in the form of questions, a number of despatches communicated to him by an American friend, from a copy of the Standard, which had found its way to a certain embassy. M. Portalis, accordingly, "interpellates" the Government in the columns of his paper with great emphatic notes of interrogation, large print, and the usual devices of Parisian editorship. "Is it true," he demands, "that the army of the Loire has been worsted in several engagements?—that a Red Republic has been proclaimed at Lyons?—that an armistice, proposed by Count Bismarck, has been refused by the Government of National Defence?" This parliamentary form of interpellation, applied to journalism, is a somewhat novel mode of circulating news, but it

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shows what precautions are rendered necessary by the present nervous state of public feeling and the wavering policy of the Government. The number of the Vérité, which contained this information was immediately bought up on the Boulevards, and the Government found itself obliged to depart from its so-called diplomatic reserve. The Official Journal broke the ice on Sunday, by inserting a long prosy note-the composition of some third-rate scribewhich attempts to evade M. Portalis' questions, denounces the Standard as a journal notoriously hostile to France," and threatens the editor of the Vérité with a prosecution for disturbing the public peace. The effect of this note is, that the more intelligent classes have lost all confidence in the statements of the Government, and that the great majority, whom any official falsehood, however gross, will always lull to sleep, have felt even their confidence shaken by the severe measures taken against M. Portalis, who is confined in the Conciergerie prison. A symptom of this distrustful anxiety is the eagerness with which people question foreigners, assuming them to have access to mysterious sources of information. Colonel Lindsay's arrival here, which was only notified in the public papers a few hours after his departure, has caused a great deal of excitement. All Englishmen are supposed to have had