g for them, that they cannot understand why, although there
were but few Chassepots in the city, every citizen should not be given
one. It is indeed necessary to live here and to mix with all classes to
realise the fact that the Parisians have until now lived in an ideal
world of their own creation. Their orators, their statesmen, and their
journalists, have traded upon the traditions of the First Empire, and
persuaded them that they are a superior race, and that their
superiority is universally recognised. Utterly ignorant of foreign
languages and of foreign countries, they believe that their literature
is the only one in the world, and that a Frenchman abroad is adored as
something little less than a divinity. They regard the Prussians round
their city much as the citizens of Sparta would have regarded Helots,
and they are so astonished at their reverses, that they are utterly
unable to realise what is going on. As for trying to make them
comprehend that Paris ought to enjoy no immunity from attack which
Berlin or London might not equally claim, it is labour lost. "The
neutrals," I heard a member of the late Assembly shouting in a cafe,
"are traitors to civilisation in not coming to the aid of the Queen of
Europe." They did their very best, they declare, to prevent Napoleon
from making war. Yet one has only to talk with one of them for half an
hour to find that he still hankers after the Rhine, and thinks that
France wishes to be supreme in Europe.

_October 8th._

Yesterday I happened to be calling at the Embassy, when a young English
gentleman made his appearance, and quietly asked whether he could take
any letters to England. He is to start to-day in a balloon, and has paid
5,000f. for his place. I gave him a letter, and a copy of one which I
had confided on Wednesday to an Irishman who is trying to get through
the lines. I hear that to-morrow the Columbian Minister is going to the
Prussian Headquarters, and a friend of mine assures me that he thinks if
I give him a letter by one o'clock to-day this diplomatist will take it.
The Corps Diplomatique are excessively indignant with the reply they
have received from Count Bismarck, declining to allow any but open
despatches through the Prussian lines. They have held an indignation
meeting. M. Kern, the Swiss Minister, has drawn up a protest, which has
been signed by himself and all his colleagues. The Columbian Minister
is to be the bearer of it. It bombards Bismarck