at a sage had uttered yesterday. They feed every day on the vaunts and
falsehoods which their newspapers offer them, and they digest them
without a qualm. While they expect the provinces to come to their aid,
they are almost angry that they should venture to act independently of
their guidance. They are childishly anxious to send out commissaries to
take the direction of affairs in Normandy and Touraine, for the
provincials are in their eyes slaves, born to serve and to obey the
capital. Indeed, they have not yet got over their surprise that the
world should continue to move now that it is deprived of its pivot. All
this folly may not prevent their fighting well. Fools and braggarts are
often brave men. The Parisians have an indomitable pride, they have
called upon the world to witness their achievements, and the thought of
King William riding in triumph along the Boulevards is so bitter a one,
that it may nerve them to the wildest desperation. If, however, Bazaine
capitulates, and the armies of the Loire and of Lyons are only the
figments of their own brains, it may be that they will bow to what they
will call destiny. "Heaven has declared against us," is an expression
that I already hear frequently uttered. It is indeed as impossible to
predicate here, as it is in London, what may be the mood of this fickle
and impulsive population a week hence. All I can positively say is, that
at the present moment they are in "King Cambyses' vein." We ought not to
judge a foreign nation by our own standard, but it is impossible not to
re-echo Lord Bolingbroke's "poor humanity" a hundred times a day, when
one reads the inflated bombast of the newspapers, and hears the nonsense
that is talked by almost everyone; when one sees the Gaul marching off
to the ramparts convinced, because he wears a kepi and a sword, that he
is a very Achilles; when regiments solemnly crown a statue with laurel
crowns, and sign round robins to die for their country. All these antics
ought not to make one forget that these men are fighting for the holiest
of causes, the integrity of their country, and that the worst of
Republics is better than the best of feudal monarchies; but I confess I
frequently despair of their ever attaining to the dignity of free men,
until they have been further tried in the school of adversity.

Yesterday M. Jules Favre, in reply to a deputation from the Club of the
Folies Bergeres, stated that he was not aware that the Orleans Princ