res to Chatillon and Bougival,
while general headquarters, with King William, Bismarck, and General von
Moltke, were established at Versailles. The gigantic blockade, that no
one believed could be successfully completed, was an accomplished fact;
the city, with its girdle of fortifications eight leagues and a half
in length, embracing fifteen forts and six detached redoubts, was
henceforth to be transformed into a huge prison-pen. And the army of the
defenders comprised only the 13th corps, commanded by General Vinoy, and
the 14th, then in process of reconstruction under General Ducrot, the
two aggregating an effective strength of eighty thousand men; to which
were to be added fourteen thousand sailors, fifteen thousand of the
francs corps, and a hundred and fifteen thousand mobiles, not to
mention the three hundred thousand National Guards distributed among the
sectional divisions of the ramparts. If this seems like a large force
it must be remembered that there were few seasoned and trained soldiers
among its numbers. Men were constantly being drilled and equipped; Paris
was a great intrenched camp. The preparations for the defense went
on from hour to hour with feverish haste; roads were built, houses
demolished within the military zone; the two hundred siege guns and the
twenty-five hundred pieces of lesser caliber were mounted in position,
other guns were cast; an arsenal, complete in every detail, seemed
to spring from the earth under the tireless efforts of Dorian, the
patriotic war minister. When, after the rupture of the negotiations at
Ferrieres, Jules Favre acquainted the country with M. von Bismarck's
demands--the cession of Alsace, the garrison of Strasbourg to be
surrendered, three milliards of indemnity--a cry of rage went up and
the continuation of the war was demanded by acclaim as a condition
indispensable to the country's existence. Even with no hope of victory
Paris must defend herself in order that France might live.

On a Sunday toward the end of September Maurice was detailed to carry a
message to the further end of the city, and what he witnessed along
the streets he passed through filled him with new hope. Ever since the
defeat of Chatillon it had seemed to him that the courage of the people
was rising to a level with the great task that lay before them. Ah!
that Paris that he had known so thoughtless, so wayward, so keen in the
pursuit of pleasure; he found it now quite changed, simple, earnest,