uarters. We are exceedingly
proud of having burnt down St. Cloud, and we say that if this does not
convince the Prussians that we are in earnest, we will burn down
Versailles. I wonder whether the proverb about cutting off one's nose to
spite one's face has an equivalent in French.

CHAPTER VIII.

_October 19th._

A despatch is published this morning from M. Gambetta, giving a very
hopeful account of things in the provinces. As, however, this gentleman
on his arrival at Tours issued a proclamation in which he announced that
there were one-third more guns in Paris than it is even pretended by the
Government that there are, I look with great suspicion upon his
utterances. The latest declaration of the Government differs essentially
from that which was made at the commencement of the siege. A friend of
mine pointed out to one of its members this discrepancy, when he replied
that the Government had purposely understated their resources at first.
This may be all very fair in war, but it prevents a reasonable person
placing the slightest confidence in anything official. Dr. Johnson did
not believe in the earthquake at Lisbon for one year after the news
reached London, and I shall not believe in the resources of the
provinces until they prove their existence by raising the siege. I am
very curious to discover what is thought of Paris by the world. There is
but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. If really by holding
out for several months the situation can be altered for the better, the
Parisians are right to do so, but if the Government is only humbugging
them with false intelligence, if they are simply destroying their own
villages in the neighbourhood, and exhausting their resources within
the town, whilst a Prussian army is living at the cost of their country,
it seems to me that they are acting like silly schoolboys rather than
wise men, and that there really is something in the sneer of Bismarck
that the Deputies of Paris are determined, _coute qui coute_, to
preserve the power with which the hazards of a revolution invested them.

The newspapers this morning are full of articles lauding M. Jules
Favre's circular, and reviling the proposals of Bismarck. The following
extract from the _Liberte_ will serve as an example of their usual
tone:--"A word of gratitude to the great citizen, to Jules Favre. Let
him know that his honest, eloquent, and brave words give us strength,
dry our tears, and cure our wo