y, during which Paris lay agonizing without a
murmur. The shops had ceased to open their doors; in the lonely streets
the infrequent wayfarer never met a carriage. Forty thousand horses had
been eaten; dogs, cats and rats were now luxuries, commanding a high
price. Ever since the supply of wheat had given out the bread was made
from rice and oats, and was black, damp, and slimy, and hard to digest;
to obtain the ten ounces that constituted a day's ration involved
a wait, often of many hours, in line before the bake-house. Ah, the
sorrowful spectacle it was, to see those poor women shivering in the
pouring rain, their feet in the ice-cold mud and water! the misery and
heroism of the great city that would not surrender! The death rate had
increased threefold; the theaters were converted into hospitals. As soon
as it became dark the quarters where luxury and vice had formerly held
carnival were shrouded in funereal blackness, like the faubourgs of
some accursed city, smitten by pestilence. And in that silence, in
that obscurity, naught was to be heard save the unceasing roar of the
cannonade and the crash of bursting shells, naught to be seen save the
red flash of the guns illuminating the wintry sky.

On the 28th of January the news burst on Paris like a thunderclap that
for the past two days negotiations had been going on, between Jules
Favre and M. von Bismarck, looking to an armistice, and at the same time
it learned that there was bread for only ten days longer, a space of
time that would hardly suffice to revictual the city. Capitulation was
become a matter of material necessity. Paris, stupefied by the hard
truths that were imparted to it at that late day, remained sullenly
silent and made no sign. Midnight of that day heard the last shot
from the German guns, and on the 29th, when the Prussians had taken
possession of the forts, Maurice went with his regiment into the camp
that was assigned them over by Montrouge, within the fortifications.
The life that he led there was an aimless one, made up of idleness and
feverish unrest. Discipline was relaxed; the soldiers did pretty much as
they pleased, waiting in inactivity to be dismissed to their homes. He,
however, continued to hang around the camp in a semi-dazed condition,
moody, nervous, irritable, prompt to take offense on the most trivial
provocation. He read with avidity all the revolutionary newspapers he
could lay hands on; that three weeks' armistice, concluded