ctions of a municipality
to-morrow, because they have hopes that the Government intend to yield
on this question. The Prefect of the Police is actively engaged in an
attempt to throw light upon Pietri's connection with the plots which
periodically came to a head against the Empire. Documents have been
discovered which will show that most of these plots were got up by the
Imperial police. Pietri, Lagrange, and Barnier, a _juge d'instruction_,
were the prime movers. A certain Bablot received 20,000fr. for his
services as a conspirator.

The complaints of the newspapers against the number of young men who
avoid military duty by hooking themselves on in some capacity or other
to an ambulance are becoming louder every day. For my part I confess
that I look with contempt upon any young Frenchman I meet with the red
cross on his arm, unless he be a surgeon. I had some thoughts of making
myself useful as a neutral in joining one of these ambulances, but I was
deterred by what happened to a fellow-countryman of mine who offered his
services. He was told that thousands of applicants were turned away
every day, and that there already were far more persons attached to
every ambulance than were necessary.

Dr. Evans, the leading spirit of the American ambulance, the man whose
speciality it was to have drawn more royal teeth, and to have received
more royal decorations than any other human being, has left Paris. Mr.
Washburne informs me that there are still about 250 Americans here, of
whom about forty are women. Some of them remain to look after their
homes, others out of curiosity. "I regard," said an American lady to me
to-day, who had been in a southern city (Vicksburg, if I remember
rightly), when it was under fire, "a bombardment as the finest and most
interesting effort of pyrotechnical skill, and I want to see if you
Europeans have developed this art as fully as we have, which I doubt."

_October 2nd._

I wrote to General Trochu yesterday to ask him to allow me to accompany
him outside the walls to witness military operations. His secretary has
sent me a reply to-day regretting that the General cannot comply with my
request. The correspondent of the _Morning Post_ interviewed the
secretary yesterday on the same subject, but was informed that as no
_laisser passer_ was recognised by the Mobiles, and as General Trochu
had himself been arrested, the Government would not take upon itself the
responsibility of granting them.