s have been made to drive the Prussians away from Paris in
twenty days.' Of course," added my worthy bourgeois, "this functionary
would not have spoken thus had the Government not revealed its plans to
him." At this moment a well dressed individual entered the shop and
asked for a subscription for the construction of a machine which he had
invented to blow up the whole Prussian army. I expected to see him
handed over to a policeman, but instead of this the bourgeois gave him
two francs! What, I asked, is to be expected of a city peopled by such
credulous fools?

A dispute is going on as to the relative advantages of secular and
religious education. The Mayor of the 23rd arrondissement publishes
to-day an order to the teachers within his domains, forbidding them to
take the children under their charge to hear mass on Sundays. The
municipality has also published a decree doubling the amount contributed
by the city to the primary schools. Instead of eight million francs it
is to be henceforward sixteen millions. This is all very well, but
surely it would be better to put off questions affecting education until
the siege is over. The alteration in the nomenclature of the streets
also continues. The Boulevard Prince Eugene is to be called the
Boulevard Voltaire, and the statue of the Prince has been taken down, to
be replaced by the statue of the philosopher; the Rue Cardinal Fesch is
to be called the Rue de Chateaudun. The newspapers also demand that the
Rue de Londres should be rebaptised on the ground that the name of
Londres is detested even more than Berlin. "If Prussia" (says one
writer) "wages against us a war of bandits and savages, it is England
which, in the gloom of its sombre country houses, pays the Uhlans who
oppress our peasants, violate our wives, massacre our soldiers, and
pillage our provinces. She rejoices over our sufferings."

The headquarters of the Ambulance Internationale are to move to-morrow
from the Palais de l'Industrie to the Grand Hotel. In the Palais it was
impossible to regulate the ventilation. It was always either too hot or
too cold. Another objection to it which was urged by the medical men
was, that one-half of it served as a store for munitions of war.

4 P.M.

So we have been kicked neck and crop out of Bourget. I have got such a
cold that I have been lying up to-day. A friend of mine has just come
in, and tells me that at eight this morning a regiment on their way to
Bourget foun