inion
as to whether it would be more in the interests of the country to turn
it out at present, or to wait, until the Prussians were defeated, and
then do so. They are all very angry at the counter-manifestation of the
bourgeois against them in the Commune. "The Government," said one of
them to me, "is weak and incapable, it means to deceive us, and is
thinking more of bringing back the Comte de Paris than of defending the
town. We do not wish it to be said that we compromise the success of the
defence by agitation, but either it must show more energy, or we will
drive it from the Hotel de Ville." I quoted to my friend Mr. Lincoln's
saying, about the mistake of changing a horse when half-way over a
river. "That is all very well," replied a citizen, who was discussing
some fiery compound at a table near me, "but we, unfortunately, have
only an ass to carry us over, and he will be swept away down the stream
with us on his back." Somebody now asked me what I was doing in Paris. I
replied that I was the correspondent of an English newspaper. Several
immediately shook me by the hand, and one of them said to me, "Pray tell
your countrymen that we men of Belleville are not what the bourgeois and
their organs pretend. We do not want to rob our neighbours; all we ask
is, to keep the Prussians out of Paris." He said a good deal more which
it is needless to repeat, but I willingly fulfil his request, to give
my testimony that he, and thousands like him, who are the bugbear of the
inhabitants of the richer districts of the city, are not by any means as
black as they are painted. They are impulsive and somewhat inclined to
exaggerate their own good qualities and the faults of others; they seem
to think that anyone who differs from them must be a knave or a fool,
and that the form of government which they prefer ought at once to be
established, whether it obtains the suffrages of the majority or not;
their knowledge, too, of the laws of political and social economy is, to
say the least, vague; but they are honest and sincere, mean what they
say, do not mistake words for deeds, and after the dreary inflated
nonsense one is compelled to listen to from their better educated
townsmen, it is refreshing to talk with them. From the Belleville
pothouse I went to the Faubourg St. Germain. In this solemn abode of a
fossil aristocracy I have a relative--a countess. She is, I believe, my
cousin about sixteen times removed, but as she is the only p