elf, he allowed me to go forward on foot. In
Courbevoie all the houses were shut up, except those occupied by troops,
and the windows of these were filled with sandbags. Right and left trees
were being cut down, and every moment some old poplar was brought to the
ground. I passed through Courbevoie, as no one seemed to notice me, and
held on to the right until I struck Asnieres. It is a species of French
Greenwich, full of hotels, tea-gardens, and restaurants. The last time I
had been there was on a Sunday, when it was crowded with Parisian
bourgeois, and they were eating, drinking, dancing, and making merry.
The houses had not been destroyed, but there was not a living soul in
the place. On the promenade by the river the leaves were falling from
the trees under which were the benches as of old. The gay signs still
hung above the restaurants, and here and there was an advertisement
informing the world that M. Pitou offered his hosts beer at so much the
glass, or that the more ambitious Monsieur Some One Else was prepared to
serve an excellent dinner of eels for 2fr., but I might as well have
expected to get beer or eels in Palmyra as in this village where a few
short weeks ago fish, flesh, and fowl, wine and beer were as plentiful
as at Greenwich and Richmond during the season. Goldsmith's "Deserted
Village," I said to myself, and I should have repeated some lines from
this admirable poem had I remembered any; as I did not, I walked on in
the direction of Colombes, vaguely ruminating upon Pompeii, Palmyra,
fish dinners at Greenwich, and the mutability of human things. I had
hardly left Asnieres, however, and was plodding along a path, when I was
recalled to the realities of life by half-a-dozen Mobiles springing up
from behind a low wall, and calling upon me to stop, while they enforced
their order by pointing their muskets at my head. I stood still, and
they surrounded me. I explained that I was an Englishman inhabiting
Paris, and that I had come out to take a walk. My papers were brought
out and narrowly inspected. My passport, that charter of the Civis
Romanus, was put aside as though it had been a document of no value. A
letter from one of the authorities, which was a species of unofficial
_laisser passer_, was read, and then a sort of council of war was held
about what ought to be done with me. They seemed to be innocent and well
meaning peasants; they said that they had orders to let no one pass, and
they were surpr