p along
the trenches; and wade knee deep in mud through the fields. The
Prussians, who have grown of late malevolent even toward civilians,
occasionally send a ball far over one's head. They always fire too high.
French soldiers are generally cooking food. They are anxious for news,
and know nothing about what is going on. As a rule they relate the
episode of some _combat d'avantposte_ which took place the day before.
The episodes never vary. 5 P.M.--Get back home; talk to doctors about
interesting surgical operations; then drop in upon some official to
interview him about what is doing. Official usually first mysterious,
then communicative, not to say loquacious, and abuses most people except
himself. 7 P.M.--Dinner at a restaurant; conversation general; almost
everyone in uniform. Still the old subjects--How long will it last? Why
does not Gambetta write more clearly? How sublime we are; what a fool
everyone else is. Food scanty, but peculiar. At Voisins to-day the bill
of fare was ass, horse, and English wolf from the Zoological Garden. A
Scotchman informed me that this latter was a fox of his native land,
and patriotically gorged himself with it. I tried it, and not being a
Scotchman, found it horrible, and fell back upon the patient ass. After
dinner, potter on the Boulevards under the dispiriting gloom of
petroleum; go home and read a book. 12 P.M.--Bed. They nail up the
coffins in the room just over mine every night, and the tap, tap, tap,
as they drive in the nails, is the pleasing music which lulls me to
sleep. Now, I ask, after having endured this sort of thing day after day
for three months, can I be expected to admire Geist, Germany, or Mr.
Matthew Arnold? I sigh for a revolution, for a bombardment, for an
assault, for anything which would give us a day's excitement.

I enclose you Gambetta's latest pigeon despatch. His style is so
grandiloquently vague that we can make neither head nor tail of it. We
cannot imagine what has become of Aurelles de Paladine and of the army
of Keratry. The optimists say that Gambetta means that Bourbaki and
Chanzy have surrounded Frederick Charles; the pessimists, that Frederick
Charles has got between them. The general feeling seems to be that the
provinces are doing more than was expected of them, but that they will
fail to succour us. Here some of the newspapers urge Trochu to make a
sortie, in order to prevent reinforcements being sent to Frederick
Charles, others deprecate