nion that if there were a Commune there would also be
hams and sausages in plenty. We still pay, he says, the budget of the
clergy, as though Bonaparte were still on the throne, instead of having
rationed the large appetites and forced every one to live on 1fr. 50c. a
day. In order to make his meaning clear the orator uses the following
comparison. Suppose, he says, that I am a peasant, and that I have
fattened a chicken. (Excitement.) Were I obliged to give the wings to
the clergy, the legs to the military, and the carcass to civil
functionaries, there would be nothing of my chicken left for me. Well,
this is our case. We fatten chickens; others eat them. It would be far
wiser for us to keep them for ourselves. (Yes, yes.) A Pole, the Citizen
Strassnowski, undertakes to defend the Government. He obtains a hearing,
but not without difficulty. You complain that the Government, he says,
has not cast more cannon. Where were the artillerymen? (Ourselves.) But
three months ago you were citizens, you were not soldiers. In making you
march and counter-march in the streets and on the ramparts you have been
converted into soldiers. The Government was right therefore to wait.
(Murmurs.) The orator is not angry with the German nation; he is angry
only with the potentates who force the people to kill each other; and he
hopes that the day will come when the European nations will shake hands
over the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Balkan, and the mountains of Carpathia.
(Feeble applause and murmurs.) A citizen begs the audience to have
patience with the Citizen Strassnowski, who is a worthy man and a
volunteer; but the citizen then reproaches the worthy man for having
attempted to defend a Government whose incapacity is a matter of
notoriety. Come now, Citizen Strassnowski, he says, what has the
Government done to merit your praise? It has armed us and exercised us;
but why? To deliver us over with our guns and our cannons to the
Prussians after we have all caught cold on the ramparts. Has it tried to
utilise us? No, it has passively looked on whilst the Prussians
surrounded Paris with a triple circle of citadels. We are told every day
that the armies of the provinces will deliver us. We do not see them. We
are not even secure in Paris. Every kind of story is afloat. Yesterday
it was reported that General Schmitz had betrayed us; to-day it is an
actress who has arrested a spy whose cook was on intimate terms with a
cook of the member of the G