n
cannon-balls. As to the legality of the thing, we do not much care about
that; we have seen so many governments, more or less legal, that we are
somewhat _blases_ on that point; and a few millions of votes have
scarcely power enough to put us in good humour with shot and shell.
Certainly the Commune, such as the men at the Hotel de Ville have
constituted it, is not a brilliant prospect. It arrests priests, stops
newspapers, wishes to incorporate us, in spite of ourselves, in the
National Guard; robs us--so we are told; lies inveterately--that is
incontestable, and altogether makes itself a great bore; but what does
that matter?--human nature is full of weaknesses, and prefers to be
bored than bombarded.

[Illustration: MARINE GUNNER AND STREET-BOY.

During the Prussian siege the sailors of the French navy played an
important part, their bravery, activity, and ingenuity being much
esteemed by the Parisians. Some, of them took the red side, and manned
the gun-boats on the Seine. Knowing the prestige attached to the brave
marines, the Communist generals made use of the naval clothes found in
the marine stores, and dressed therein some of the valliant heroes of
Belleville and Montmartre.]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 46: The game of pitch-halfpenny, in, which, in France, a cork
(_bouchon_), with halfpence on the top of it, is placed on the ground.]

[Footnote 47: General Eudes was the Alcibiades, or rather the Saint
Just, of the Commune. He had the face and manners of a fashionable
_tenorino_, the luxurious taste of the Athenian, the cruel inflexibility
of Robespierre's protege. He was born at Bonay, in the arrondissement of
Coutances. His father was a tradesman of the Boulevard des Italians. In
his examination before the Council of War in August, 1870, Eudes called
himself a shorthand writer and law student, though his real position was
said to be that of a linendraper's clerk. His first notable exploit was
the assassination of a fireman at La Villette. For this crime he was
brought before the First Council of War at Paris. Here he informed the
President, in somewhat unparliamentary terms, that "the betrayers of the
country were not the Republicans, and that to destroy the Imperial
Government was to annihilate the Prussians." In spite of the eloquent
appeal of his counsel, he was condemned to death. The events of the
fourth of September prevented the execution of this sentence, and he
lived to take an active part in the