tuff; but the moral
is--do not employ citizen soldiers for offensive operations. When I
returned into the town at about 5 o'clock this afternoon, the peninsula
of Gennevilliers resembled the course at Epsom on a wet Derby Day. To my
civilian eyes, cavalry, artillery, and infantry, seemed to be in
inextricable confusion.

This morning the bread was rationed all over the city. No one is to have
more than 300 grammes per diem; children only 150. I recommend anyone
who has lived too high to try this regime for a week. It will do him
good. No costermonger's donkey is so overloaded as the stomachs of most
rich people. The Government on December 12 solemnly announced that the
bread never would be rationed. This measure, therefore, looks to me very
much like the beginning of the end. A perquisition is also being made in
search of provisions in the apartments of all those who have quitted
Paris. Another sign of the end. But it is impossible to know on how
little a Frenchman can live until the question has been tested. I went
yesterday into the house of a friend of mine, in the Avenue de
l'Imperatrice, which is left in charge of a servant, and found three
families, driven out of their homes by the bombardment, installed in
it--one family, consisting of a father, a mother, and three children,
were boiling a piece of horse meat, about four inches square, in a
bucket full of water. This exceedingly thin soup was to last them for
three days. The day before they had each had a carrot. The bread is
scarce because the supply ceases before the demand in most quarters, so
that those who come last get none. My friend's servant was giving a
dinner to the English coachman. The sole dish was a cat with mice round
it. I tasted one of the latter, crunching the bones as if it had been a
lark. I can recommend mice, when nothing more substantial is to be
obtained.

I hear that a pigeon has arrived this evening. Its despatch has not yet
been published. The "traitor-mania" still rages. Last night at the
Belleville Club an orator announced an awful discovery--the bread was
being poisoned by traitors. The Correspondent of one of your
contemporaries, having heard that he had been accused of being a
Prussian spy, went to-day to the Prefect of the Police. This august
being told him that he did not suspect him, and then showed him a file
of papers duly docketed relating to each London paper which is
represented here. For my part, although I have not fai