nd the cork. Very good. He plays his last
sou on the famous game, and in the evening, when he returns home, he
carries to his family--what?--the empty bottle!

On the Place two barricades have been made, one across the Rue de la
Paix, and the other before the Rue Castiglione. "Two formidable
barricades," say the newspapers, which may be read thus: "A heap of
paving stones to the right, and a heap of paving stones to the left." I
whisper to myself that two small field-pieces, one on the place of the
New Opera-house, and the other at the Rue de Rivoli, would not be long
before they got the better of these two barricades, in spite of the guns
that here and there display their long, bright cylinders.

The Federals have decidedly a taste for gallantry. About twenty women--I
say young women, but not pretty women--are selling coffee to the
National Guards, and add to their change a few ogling smiles meant to be
engaging.

As to the Column, it has not the least appearance of being frightened by
the decree of the Commune which threatens it with a speedy fall. There
it stands like a huge bronze I, and the emperor is the dot upon it. The
four eagles are still there, at the four corners of the pedestal, with
their wreaths of immortelles, and the two red flags which wave from the
top seem but little out of place. The column is like the ancient honour
of France, that neither decrees nor bayonets can intimidate, and which
in the midst of threats and tumult, holds itself aloft in serene and
noble dignity.

LIII.

Who would think it? They are voting. When I say "they are voting," I
mean to say "they might vote;" for as for going to the poll, Paris seems
to trouble itself but little about it. The Commune, too, seems somewhat
embarrassed. You remember Victor Hugo's song of the Adventurers of the
Sea:

"En partant du golfe d'Otrente
Nous etions trente,
Mais en arrivant a Cadix
Nous n'etions que dix."[59]

The gentlemen of the Hotel de Ville might sing this song with a few
slight variations. The Gulf of Otranto was not their starting point, but
the Buttes Montmartre; though to make up for it they were eighty in
number. On arriving at C----, no, I mean, the decree of the Colonne
Vendome, they were a few more than ten, but not many. What charming
stanzas in imitation of Victor Hugo might Theodore de Banville and
Albert Glatigny write on the successive desertions of the members of the
Comm