clad in uniforms
by the State, and except those belonging to the marching battalions
really doing duty outside, I do not pity them. With the women and
children the case is different. The latter, owing to bad nourishment and
exposure, are dying off like rotten sheep; the former have but just
enough food to keep body and soul together, and to obtain even this they
have to stand for hours before the doors of the butchers and bakers,
waiting for their turn to be served. And yet they make no complaints,
but patiently suffer, buoyed up, poor people, by the conviction that by
so doing they will prevent the Prussians from entering the town. If one
of them ventures to hint at a capitulation, she is set on by her
neighbours. Self-assertion, however, carries the day. Jules and Jaques
will hereafter quaff many a petit verre to their own heroism; and many a
story will they inflict upon their long-suffering friends redounding to
their own special glory. Their wives will be told that they ought to be
proud to have such men for husbands. But Jules and Jacques are in
reality but arrant humbugs. Whilst they boozed, their wives starved;
whilst they were warmly clad, their wives were in rags; whilst they were
drinking confusion to their enemies in some snug room, their wives were
freezing at the baker's door for their ration of bread. In Paris the
women--I speak of those of the poorer classes--are of more sterling
stuff than the men. They suffer far more, and they repine much less. I
admire the crowd of silent, patient women, huddling together for warmth
every morning, as they wait until their pittance is doled out to them,
far more than the martial heroes who foot it behind a drum and a trumpet
to crown a statue, to visit a tomb, and to take their turn on the
ramparts; or the heroes of the pen, who day after day, from some cosy
office, issue a manifesto announcing that victory is certain, because
they have made a pact with death.

_January 16th._

If I am to believe the Paris papers, the Fort of Issy is gradually
extinguishing the guns of the Prussian batteries which bear on it. If I
am to believe my eyes, the Fort of Issy is not replying at all to these
said guns; and if I am to believe competent military authorities, in
about eighteen days from now at the latest the Fort of Issy will cease
to be a fort. The batteries at Meudon appeared to-day to be of opinion
that its guns were effectually silenced; shells fell thick and fast on
th