Quick! A balloon! There is not a moment to be
lost. The inhabitants of Brive-la-Gaillarde and the mountaineers of
Savoy are thirsting for news; let us shower manna on them. Write away!
Pierre Denis! Pump in your gas, emulators of Godard! And may the four
winds of heaven carry our "Declarations" to the four quarters of France!
Ah! ah! The Versaillais--band of traitors that they are!--did not
calculate on this. They raise soldiers, the simpletons; they bombard our
forts and our houses, the idiots! But we make decrees, and distribute
our proclamations throughout the country by means of an unlimited number
of revolutionary aeronauts. May they be guided by the wind which blows
across the mountains! How the honest labourers, the good farmers, the
eager workers of the departments will rejoice when they receive,
dropping, from the sky, the pages on which are inscribed the rights and
duties of the man of the present day! They will not hesitate one single
instant. They will leave their fields, their homes, their workshops, and
cry, "A musket! a musket!" with no thought that they leave behind them
women without husbands, and children without fathers! They will fly to
us, happy to conquer or die for the glory of Citizen Delescluze and
Citizen Vermorel! What ardour! What patriotism! Already they are on
their way; they are coming, they are come! Those who had no fire-arms
have seized their pickaxes or pieces of their broken ploughs! Hurrah!
Forward! March! To arms, citizens, to arms! Hail to France, who comes to
the rescue of Paris!

All to no purpose. I tell you the people of Brive-la-Gaillarde and the
mountaineers of Savoy have not once thought of taking up arms. They have
never been more tranquil or more resolute on remaining in peace and
quiet than now. When they see one of your balloons--always supposing
that it has any other end in view than of depositing repentant
communists in safe, snug corners, pass the lines of the Versailles
troops--when they see one of your balloons, they simply exclaim,
"Hulloa! Here's a balloon! Where in the world can it come from?" If
some printed papers fall from the sky, the peasant picks them up,
saying, "I shall give them to my son to read, when he returns from
school." The evening comes, the son spells them out, while the father
listens. The son cannot understand; the father falls asleep. "Ah! those
Parisians!" cries the mother. Can you wonder? These people are born to
live and die without knowi