n are all
afraid, and in danger. They are suspected of wanting to get away,
but they will be made to stay and to fight for the Commune.'

"Indeed, profound gravity seemed expressed on all men's faces,
and as a body, the patriots looked to me cold, tired, bored, and
hungry, to say nothing of dirty, which they looked, to a man. I
had expressed a wish to see a barricade, so we turned into a small
street apparently closed in by a neatly built wall with holes in
it, through which I saw the mouths of cannon. About this wall men
were swarming both in and out of uniform. They were all armed,
and two or three were members of the Commune, with red sashes and
pistols stuck in them, after the fashion of the theatre. As I looked
out of my cab window, longing to see more, a cheerful young woman,
with a pretty, wan infant in her arms, encouraged me to alight,
and a young man to whom she was talking, a clean, trim, fair young
fellow, with a military look, stepped forward and saluted me. He
seemed pleased at my admiration of the barricade, and having handed
a tin can to the young woman, invited me to come inside. Thence I
beheld the Place Vendome. I had seen it last on Aug. 15, 1868, on
the emperor's fete-day, filled with the glittering Imperial troops.
I saw it again, a wide, empty waste, bounded by four symmetrical
barricades, dotted with slouching figures whose clothes and arms
seemed to encumber them.... I thanked my friend for his politeness,
and returned to my carriage. The young woman smiled at me, as much
as to say: 'Is he not a fine fellow?' I thought he was; and there
may be other fine fellows as much out of place in the ruffianly
mass with which they are associated.

"In the Rue de Rivoli I saw a regiment marching out to engage the
enemy. Among them were some villanous-looking faces. They passed with
little tramp and a good deal of shuffle,--shabby, wretched, silent.
I did not hear a laugh or an oath; I did not see a violent gesture,
and hardly a smile, that day. The roistering, roaring, terrible
'Reds,' as I saw them, were weary, dull men, doing ill-directed
work with plodding indifference.

"I visited a lady of world-wide reputation, who gave me a history
of the past months in Paris so brilliantly and epigrammatically that
I was infinitely amused, and carried away the drollest impressions
of L'Empire Cluseret; but her manner changed when I asked her what
I should say to her friends in England. 'Tell them,' she said,
't