solely for
the purpose of allowing France to elect an assembly that should ratify
the conditions of peace, appeared to him a delusion and a snare,
another and a final instance of treason. Even if Paris were forced to
capitulate, he was with Gambetta for the prosecution of the war in the
north and on the line of the Loire. He overflowed with indignation at
the disaster of Bourbaki's army in the east, which had been compelled to
throw itself into Switzerland, and the result of the elections made him
furious: it would be just as he had always predicted; the base, cowardly
provinces, irritated by Paris' protracted resistance, would insist on
peace at any price and restore the monarchy while the Prussian guns
were still directed on the city. After the first sessions, at Bordeaux,
Thiers, elected in twenty-six departments and constituted by unanimous
acclaim the chief executive, appeared to his eyes a monster of iniquity,
the father of lies, a man capable of every crime. The terms of the peace
concluded by that assemblage of monarchists seemed to him to put the
finishing touch to their infamy, his blood boiled merely at the thought
of those hard conditions: an indemnity of five milliards, Metz to be
given up, Alsace to be ceded, France's blood and treasure pouring from
the gaping wound, thenceforth incurable, that was thus opened in her
flank.

Late in February Maurice, unable to endure his situation longer, made up
his mind he would desert. A stipulation of the treaty provided that the
troops encamped about Paris should be disarmed and returned to their
abodes, but he did not wait to see it enforced; it seemed to him that it
would break his heart to leave brave, glorious Paris, which only famine
had been able to subdue, and so he bade farewell to army life and hired
for himself a small furnished room next the roof of a tall apartment
house in the Rue des Orties, at the top of the butte des Moulins, whence
he had an outlook over the immense sea of roofs from the Tuileries to
the Bastille. An old friend, whom he had known while pursuing his law
studies, had loaned him a hundred francs. In addition to that he had
caused his name to be inscribed on the roster of a battalion of National
Guards as soon as he was settled in his new quarters, and his pay,
thirty sous a day, would be enough to keep him alive. The idea of going
to the country and there leading a tranquil life, unmindful of what was
happening to the country, filled hi