y he opened their door
with a certain amount of gentle violence, and after a diligent search,
discovered in the larder two onions, some potatoes, and a ham. These,
with a fowl, which I believe has been procured honestly, are to
constitute our Christmas dinner.

It is very strange what opposite opinions one hears about the condition
of the poor. Some persons say that there is no distress, others that it
cannot be greater. The fact is, the men were never better off, the women
and children never so badly off. Every man can have enough to eat and
too much to drink by dawdling about with a gun. As his home is cold and
cheerless, when he is not on duty he lives at a pothouse. He brings no
money to his wife and children, who consequently only just keep body and
soul together by going to the national cantines, where they get soup,
and to the Mairies, where they occasionally get an order for bread.
Almost all their clothes are in pawn, so how it is they do not
positively die of cold I cannot understand. As for fuel even the wealthy
find it difficult to procure it. The Government talks of cutting down
all the trees and of giving up all the clothes in pawn; but, with its
usual procrastination, it puts off both these measures from day to day.
This morning all the firewood was requisitioned. At a meeting of the
Mayors of Paris two days ago, it was stated that above 400,000 persons
are in receipt of parish relief.

The troops outside Paris are gradually being brought back inside. A
trench has been dug almost continuously from Drancy to Aubervilliers,
and an attempt has been made to approach Le Bourget by flying sap. The
ground, is, however, so hard, that it is much like attempting to cut
through a rock. To my mind the whole thing is merely undertaken in order
to persuade the Parisians that something is being done. For the moment
they are satisfied. "The Prussians," they say, "have besieged us; we are
besieging the Prussians now." What they will say when they find that
even these operations are suspended, I do not know. The troops have
suffered terribly from the cold during these last few days. Twelve
degrees of frost "centigrade" is no joke. I was talking to some officers
of Zouaves who had been twenty hours at the outposts. They said that
during all this time they had not ventured to light a fire, and that
this morning their wine and bread were both frozen. In the tents there
are small stoves, but they give out little warmth. Even