m with horror; the letters even
that he received from his sister Henriette, to whom he had written
immediately after the armistice, annoyed him by their tone of entreaty,
their ardent solicitations that he would come home to Remilly and rest.
He refused point-blank; he would go later on when the Prussians should
be no longer there.

And so Maurice went on leading an idle, vagabondish sort of life, in a
state of constant feverish agitation. He had ceased to be tormented by
hunger; he devoured the first white bread he got with infinite gusto;
but the city was a prison still: German guards were posted at the gates,
and no one was allowed to pass them until he had been made to give an
account of himself. There had been no resumption of social life as yet;
industry and trade were at a standstill; the people lived from day
to day, watching to see what would happen next, doing nothing, simply
vegetating in the bright sunshine of the spring that was now coming on
apace. During the siege there had been the military service to occupy
men's minds and tire their limbs, while now the entire population,
isolated from all the world, had suddenly been reduced to a state of
utter stagnation, mental as well as physical. He did as others did,
loitering his time away from morning till night, living in an atmosphere
that for months had been vitiated by the germs arising from the
half-crazed mob. He read the newspapers and was an assiduous frequenter
of public meetings, where he would often smile and shrug his shoulders
at the rant and fustian of the speakers, but nevertheless would go away
with the most ultra notions teeming in his brain, ready to engage in
any desperate undertaking in the defense of what he considered truth and
justice. And sitting by the window in his little bedroom, and looking
out over the city, he would still beguile himself with dreams of
victory; would tell himself that France and the Republic might yet be
saved, so long as the treaty of peace remained unsigned.

The 1st of March was the day fixed for the entrance of the Prussians
into Paris, and a long-drawn howl of wrath and execration went up from
every heart. Maurice never attended a meeting now that he did not hear
Thiers, the Assembly, even the men of September 4th themselves, cursed
and reviled because they had not spared the great heroic city that
crowning degradation. He was himself one night aroused to such a pitch
of frenzy that he took the floor and shou