play checkers
with Destiny. I had no hankering for a closer interview with FLOURENS.
He and I could never had got at a basis peace. There is no harmony in
the method of our mental "jointings." I would have given "stamps" to
have got his head under a quiet village pump, but I wouldn't have
undertaken to reason with him for all the gold of the Credit Mobilier.
There is another creamy idiot, trying his "level best" to smash things
here. Look at him! JULES VALLES! a patriot by name and a Pat-rioter by
nature, with enough hair on his head to stuff a gabion, and not sense
enough beneath it to accommodate a well-informed parrot. These fellows
call FAVRE a "milk-sop," and the trouble of it is that FAYRE
occasionally gives them reason for doing so. Strolling through the
_Passage des Princes_ this morning, I saw TROCHU and accosted him.
"General," I said, probably with some trifling vindictiveness in my
heart, "isn't there a grease vat in Paris sufficiently large to boil
down Monsieur FLOURENS and his friends?" He might have thought that I
was a little overheated, or that some of the _Grand Cafe_ "tangle-foot"
had got into my head; but his looks undeniably indicated that he did not
regard this as an unusually _cool_ proposal. He simply said, "Oh my!" in
tolerably good English, and then I continued:

"You mistake me, General. I was not born in New Zealand. There is
nothing of the cannibal about me, and I trust the supply of provisions
in Paris won't compel us to eat each other just yet; but if there is no
satisfaction for the stomach in putting a tun or two of boiling fat
around GUSTAVE FLOURENS, can you think of anything better calculated to
produce serenity in the public mind?"

He didn't answer me then. It couldn't be expected, perhaps; but I am
still of the impression that this conundrum is gradually working towards
a solution in the brain of the Commander-in-Chief. I hope it don't lay
heavily there; I wouldn't do anything to distress him. If GOLDWIN SMITH
were expounding political economy to him in one ear, and HORACE GREELEY
talking agriculture in the other, the poor man couldn't be more bothered
than he is. No, no; far be it from me to add one harrowing burden to his
already heavy load; but when a man sees the porter-house steak of
Liberty a burning up on the grid-iron of war, why shouldn't he put forth
his "flipper" and save it if he can? And there's another conundrum: but
it's for PUNCHINELLO and his hemisphere of adore