engers before Saturday. We are in want of
fuel as much as of food. A very good thing is to be made by any
speculator who can manage to send us coal or charcoal.

More than 23,000 persons have applied for permits to quit Paris, on the
ground that they are provincial candidates for the Assembly. Of course
this is a mere pretext. A commission, as acting British Consul, has been
sent to Mr. Blount, a banker. Will some M.P. move that the Estimates be
reduced by the salary of the Consul, who seems to consider Paris _in
partibus infidelium_?

The only outsider who has penetrated through the double cordon of
Prussians and French, is your Correspondent at the Headquarters of the
Crown Prince of Saxony. He startled us quite as much as Friday did
Robinson Crusoe. He was enthusiastically welcomed, for he had English
newspapers in one pocket, and some slices of ham in the other.

VERSAILLES, _February 6th._

I am not intoxicated, but I feel so heavy from having imbibed during the
last twenty-four hours more milk than I did during the first six months
which I passed in this planet, that I have some difficulty in collecting
my thoughts in order to write a letter. Yesterday I arrived here in
order to breathe for a moment the air of freedom. In vain my hospitable
friends, who have put me up, have offered me wine to drink, and this and
that delicacy to eat--I have stuck to eggs, butter, and milk. Pats of
butter I have bolted with a greasy greediness which would have done
honour to Pickwick's fat boy; and quarts of milk I have drunk with the
eagerness of a calf long separated from its maternal parent.

Although during the last few months I have seen but two or three numbers
of English papers, I make no doubt that so many good, bad, and
indifferent descriptions of every corner and every alley in this town
have appeared in print, that Londoners are by this time as well
acquainted with it as they are with Richmond or Clapham. Versailles
must, indeed, be a household word--not to say a household nuisance--in
England. It has been a dull, stupid place, haunted by its ancient
grandeurs; with too large a palace, too large streets, and too large
houses, for many a year; and while the presence of a Prussian army and a
Prussian Emperor may render it more interesting, they fail to make it
more lively. Of the English correspondents, some have gone into Paris in
quest of "phases" and impressions; many, however, still remain here,
battening upon t