ocratique, should be sent at once into all the States of
the civilised world--how? by balloons. Money corrupts the world as now
composed: but the money at the command of the masses could buy all the
monarchs and courtiers and priests of the universe.' At that sentiment,
vehemently delivered, the applauses were frantic, and Fox in his
excitement began to bark. At the sound of his bark one man cried out,
'That's a Prussian!' another, 'Down with the spy!' another, 'There's an
aristo present--he keeps alive a dog which would be a week's meal for
a family!' I snatch up Fox at the last cry, and clasp him to a bosom
protected by the uniform of the National Guard.

"When the hubbub had subsided, your son, M. Rameau, proceeded, quitting
mankind in general, and arriving at the question in particular most
interesting to his audience--the mobilisation of the National Guard;
that is, the call upon men who like talking and hate fighting to talk
less and fight more. 'It was the sheerest tyranny to select a certain
number of free citizens to be butchered. If the fight was for the mass,
there ought to be la levee en masse. If one did not compel everybody
to fight, why should anybody fight?' Here the applause again became
vehement, and Fox again became indiscreet. I subdued Fox's bark into a
squeak by pulling his ears. 'What!' cries your poet-son, 'la levee en
masse gives us fifteen millions of soldiers, with which we could crush,
not Prussia alone, but the whole of Europe. (Immense sensation.) Let us,
then, resolve that the charlatans of the Hotel de Ville are incapable of
delivering us from the Prussians; that they are deposed; that the Ligue
of the Democratie Cosmopolite is installed; that meanwhile the Commune
shall be voted the Provisional Government, and shall order the Prussians
to retire within three days from the soil of Paris.'

"Pardon me this long description, my dear M. Rameau, but I trust I
have satisfactorily explained why victory obtained in the teeth of
his eloquent opinions, if gratifying to him as a Frenchman, must be
mortifying to him as a politician."

The old Rameau sighed, hung his head, and crept away. While, amid this
holiday illumination, the Parisians enjoyed the panorama before them,
the Freres Chretiens and the attendants of the various ambulances were
moving along the battle-plains; the first in their large-brimmed hats
and sable garbs, the last in strange motley costume, many of them in
glittering uniform