at my door was
heard, and the red head of my landlady's first-born appeared.

"Monsieur is wanted down stairs," said the boy, with an alarmed look. I
hurried down and out into the street, only to be met by a messenger from
the Hotel de Ville, with the information that later despatches
contradicted the victory. The shock to my feelings can only be
appreciated by a writer who feels that he has consumed thirty or forty
pages of foolscap in vain. I had been over two hours at that work. I had
put all the brains I possessed in it. Many of the sentences so pleased
me that I had turned back with pardonable conceit to read them over and
admire them: but now, like a destroying angel, came the news that shook
from beneath my beautiful superstructure its very foundations, and left
me nothing but the humiliation of so much time and labor lost.

I went back to my room, and cast myself on the bed in deep affliction.
If I had been a single man I believe I could have hanged myself without
a pang. Sheer mortification soon lulled me to sleep, however, and when a
second banging at my door awakened me it was nightfall, and there were
sounds of rapid movement and confusion outside. I put my head out of the
window and heard a voice below, shouting:

"The Germans are coming!"

"S'death!" said I to myself, "what am I going to do?" My last stitch of
clothing, save what I had on my back, was in the hands of the
_blanchisseuse_, and PIERRE of the carrot "top" had possession of my
only pair of trousers for the purpose of cleaning them the following
morning. It would not have been a pleasant paragraph for me to read in
the newspapers that a correspondent bearing my name had been captured
_in puris naturalibus_. It would never do for an American to be taken
_sans culottes_, and then have the story of his surprise reviewed by
English and Yankee critics.

I don't know what I might have done in my distress; but kind fortune
favored me, for the landlady, anticipating the probability of my being
disturbed by the commotion, knocked at the door to say that it was a
false alarm, and that the Germans, though victorious, had halted ten or
twelve miles from the city. Promptly, therefore, I dashed into the midst
of another review of the French situation, predicated upon the late
French defeat. It was what I might call a perfect "stinger." It used
France up completely. The _grande nation_ wasn't left a peg to stand on;
and as for King WILLIAM, I proved him