had not been
sufficiently humble towards him; she came to him in tears, but he was
obdurate, and he only consented at last to make a gown for her on
condition that she would put it on for the first time in his shop. The
Empress, who dealt with him, sent to tell him that if he did not abate
his prices she would leave him. "You cannot," he replied, and in fact
she could not, for she stood by him to the last. A morning dress by this
artist, worth in reality about 4l., cost 30l.; an evening dress, tawdry
with flounces, ribbons, and bad lace could not be had under 70. There
are about thirty shops in Paris where, as at this man-milliner's, the
goods are not better than elsewhere, but where they cost about ten
times their value. They are patronised by fools with more money than
wits, and chiefly by foreign fools. The proprietor of one of these
establishments was complaining to me the other day of what he was losing
by the siege; I told him that I sympathised with him about as much as I
should with a Greek brigand, bewailing a falling off of wealthy
strangers in the district where he was in the habit of carrying on his
commercial operations. Whenever the communications are again open to
Paris, and English return to it, I would give them this piece of
advice--never deal where _ici on parle Anglais_ is written up; it means
_ici on vole les Anglais_. The only tradesmen in Paris who are making a
good thing out of their country's misfortunes are the liquor sellers and
the grocers; their stores seem inexhaustible, but they are sold at
famine prices. "I who speak to you, I owe myself to my country. There is
no sacrifice I would not make rather than capitulate to those Huns,
those Vandals," said a grocer to me, with a most sand-the-sugar face,
this morning, as he pocketed about ten times the value of a
trifle--candles, in fact, which have risen twenty-five per cent. in the
last two days--and folding his arms, scowled from under his kepi into
futurity, with stern but vacuous resolution.

_January 6th._

I have just returned from Point-du-Jour, where I went with Mr. Frank
Lawley in order to see myself what truth there was in the announcement
that we were being bombarded. Point-du-Jour is the point where the Seine
issues from Paris. The circular railroad passes over the river here on a
high brick viaduct, which makes a species of fortification. The hills
outside the city form a sort of amphitheatre, in which are situated the
towns of