overnment. Why these reports? Because the
Government has no moral support, and no one feels confidence in it. In
the meantime the food gets less and less, and this morning at eight
o'clock all the bakers in this arrondissement had closed their shops.
(True, true; we waited five hours at the closed doors.) When we get the
bread, it is more like plaster than bread. In the third arrondissement,
on the other hand, it is good and plentiful. So much for the organising
spirit of the Government. We have to wait hours for bread, hours for
wood, and hours for meat; and frequently we do not get either bread,
meat, or wood. Things cannot last long like this, my worthy
Strassnowski. The speaker concludes by urging the people to take the
direction of their affairs into their own hands. (Cries of "Vive la
Commune.") The President urges his hearers to subscribe towards a
society, the object of which is civic instruction. The club breaks up,
the President is applauded."

Here is another description of a club meeting from the same journal:--

"The laurels of Belleville prevented La Villette from sleeping. La
Villette, therefore, determined to have, like her rival, a central
democratic and social club, and yesterday she inaugurated in the Salle
Marseillaise an opposition to the "Club Favie." In some respects the
Marseillaise club is even more democratic than her parent. The Salle is
a sort of barn, and the _sans culottes_ themselves, notwithstanding
their horror of all luxury, hardly found its comforts sufficient for
them. The Club Favie, with its paintings on the walls and its lustres,
has a most aristocratic air in comparison with this new hall of
democracy. To judge by its first seance, the Club Marseillaise promises
well. Last night enough treasons were unveiled to make the fortune of
most other clubs for a week at least. From the commencement of the war
we have been in the meshes of a vast network of treason; and these
meshes can only be broken through by the Commune and the Republic. The
conspiracy was hatched long ago between the Emperors and the Kings, and
the other enemies of the people. The war had been arranged amongst them,
and it is an error to suppose that we were beaten at Rhichshofen or
Sedan. "No," cried an orator, with conviction, "we have never been
defeated; but we have been betrayed." ("True." Applause. "We are still
betrayed.") The men of the Hotel de Ville imitate Bonaparte, and, like
him, they have an understandin