r there across the river. But in front of Champigny and
Bry the army fell up against the park walls of Coeuilly and Villiers,
that the Prussians had converted into impregnable fortresses, more than
a quarter of a mile in length. The men's courage faltered, and after
that the action went on in a half-hearted way; the 3d corps was slow in
getting up, the 1st and 2d, unable to advance, continued for two days
longer to hold Champigny, which they finally abandoned on the night of
December 2, after their barren victory. The whole army retired to the
wood of Vincennes, where the men's only shelter was the snow-laden
branches of the trees, and Maurice, whose feet were frost-bitten, laid
his head upon the cold ground and cried.

The gloom and dejection that reigned in the city, after the failure of
that supreme effort, beggars the powers of description. The great sortie
that had been so long in preparation, the irresistible eruption that was
to be the deliverance of Paris, had ended in disappointment, and three
days later came a communication from General von Moltke under a flag of
truce, announcing that the army of the Loire had been defeated and that
the German flag again waved over Orleans. The girdle was being drawn
tighter and tighter about the doomed city all whose struggles were
henceforth powerless to burst its iron fetters. But Paris seemed to
accumulate fresh powers of resistance in the delirium of its despair.
It was certain that ere long they would have to count famine among the
number of their foes. As early as October the people had been restricted
in their consumption of butcher's meat, and in December, of all the
immense herds of beeves and flocks of sheep that had been turned loose
in the Bois de Boulogne, there was not a single creature left alive, and
horses were being slaughtered for food. The stock of flour and wheat,
with what was subsequently taken for the public use by forced sale, it
was estimated would keep the city supplied with bread for four months.
When the flour was all consumed mills were erected in the railway
stations to grind the grain. The supply of coal, too, was giving out;
it was reserved to bake the bread and for use in the mills and arms
factories. And Paris, her streets without gas and lighted by petroleum
lamps at infrequent intervals; Paris, shivering under her icy mantle;
Paris, to whom the authorities doled out her scanty daily ration of
black bread and horse flesh, continued to hope-