we may suppose that this little domestic episode is over.

_January 23rd, morning._

The clubs are closed, and the _Reveil_ and the _Combat_ suppressed.
Numbers of people are coming in from St. Denis, where the bombardment is
getting very hot. Bombs last night fell in one of the islands on the
Seine; so the flood is mounting, and our dry ground is every day
diminishing. I see in an extract from a German paper, that it has been
telegraphed to England that the village of Issy has been entirely
destroyed by the Prussian fire. This is not the case. I was there the
other day, and the village is still there. It is not precisely the spot
where one would wish one's property to be situated, but most of the
houses are, as yet, intact.

CHAPTER XVIII.

_January 27th._

I write this, as I hear that the last balloon is to start to-night. How
lucky for the English public that, just when the siege of Paris ceases,
the conscript fathers of the nation will furnish them with reading at
their breakfast tables. The light, airy wit of Professor Fawcett, and
the pleasant fancy of Mr. Newdegate, will be served up for them with
their hot rolls every morning instead of the bulletins of Count
Moltke--lucky public!

Most of us here are much like heirs at a rich man's funeral. We have
long faces, we sigh and we groan, but we are not quite so unhappy as we
look. The _Journal Officiel_ of this morning announces that Paris will
not be occupied, and that the National Guard will not go to Germany.
This is, we say, very different from a capitulation--it is a political
incident; in a few days I expect to hear it called a victory. The editor
of the _Liberte_--why is this gentleman still alive? for the last three
months he has been making pacts with death--explains that Paris never
would have and never will capitulate, but that an armistice is a very
different sort of thing. Last night, notwithstanding the cold which has
again set in, the Boulevard was blocked up with groups of patriots and
wiseacres discussing the state of things, and explaining what Paris
would agree to and what she would not agree to. Occasionally some
"pure"--a "pure" is an Ultra--threw out that the Parisians themselves
were only reaping what they had sown; but the pure, I need hardly say,
was soon silenced, and it seemed to be generally agreed that Paris has
been sublime and heroic, but that if she has been neither, it has been
the fault of the traitors to whom she h