nifestation obtained leave to
send a certain number of delegates to Versailles, in order to make a
second attempt at conciliation with the Government."

Will this new effort be more successful than the preceding one? Will the
company of freemasons obtain what the Republican Union failed in
procuring? I would fain believe it, but cannot. The obstinacy of the
Versailles Assembly has become absolute deafness, though we must admit
that the freemasons' way of trying to bring about reconciliation was
rather singular, somewhat like holding a knife at Monsieur Thiers'
throat and crying out, "Peace or your life!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 66: Memoir, see Appendix 6.]

[Footnote 67: Felix Pyat was born in 1810 at Vierzon. He came to
Paris for the purpose of studying law, but soon abandoned his
intention for the more genial profession of journalist. He
contributed to the _Figaro_, the _Charivari_, the _Revue de Paris_,
and the _National_. In 1848 he was named Commissary-General, and
subsequently deputy of the department of the Cher. Having signed
Ledru-Rollin's call to arms, he was obliged after the events of June
to take refuge in England. Profiting by the amnesty of the fifteenth
of August, 1869, he returned to France, but made himself so
obnoxious to the Government by his virulent abuse of the Empire,
that he was again expelled. The revolution of the fourth of
September allowed him to re-enter France. He commenced an immediate
and violent attack on the new government, which he continued until
his journal, _Le Combat_, was suppressed. Needless to say that he
was one of the chief actors in the insurrections of the thirty-first
of October and the twenty-second of January. He was elected deputy,
but soon resigned, for the purpose of connecting himself with the
cause of the Commune. He edited the _Vengeur_ and the _Commune_
newspapers, and obtained a decree suppressing nearly all rival or
antagonistic publications. At the fall of the Commune he fled no one
knows where.]

LXIV.

No! no! Monsieur Felix Pyat, you must remain, if you please. You have
been of it, you are of it, and you shall be of it. It is well that you
should go through all the tenses of the verb, I am not astonished that a
man as clever as you, finding that things were taking a bad turn, should
have thought fit to give in your resignation. When the house is burning,
one jumps out of window. But your cleverness has been so much pure loss,
for your amiable