the French Academy in
Paris, among them Segur, Mignet, Dufaure, d'Haussonville, Legouve,
Cuvillier-Fleury, Barbier and Vitet.

Moon. Intense cold. The Prussians bombarded Saint Denis all night.

From Tuesday to Sunday the Prussians hurled 25,000 projectiles at us.
It required 220 railway trucks to transport them. Each shot costs 60
francs; total, 1,500,000 francs. The damage to the forts is estimated at
1,400 francs. About ten men have been killed. Each of our dead cost the
Prussians 150,000 francs.

January 5.--The bombardment is becoming heavier. Issy and Vanves are
being shelled.

There is no coal. Clothes cannot be washed because they cannot be dried.
My washerwoman sent this message to me through Mariette:

"If M. Victor Hugo, who is so powerful, would ask the Government to give
me a little coal-dust, I could wash his shirts."

Besides my usual Thursday guests I had Louis Blanc, Rochefort and Paul
de Saint Victor to dinner. Mme. Jules Simon sent me a Gruyere cheese. An
extraordinary luxury, this. We were thirteen at table.

January 6.--At dessert yesterday I offered some bonbons to the ladies,
saying as I did so:

_Grace a Boissier, chere colombes,
Heureux, a vos pieds nous tombons.
Car on prend les forts par les bombes
Et les faibles par les bonbons_.

The Parisians out of curiosity visit the bombarded districts. They go
to see the shells fall as they would go to a fireworks display. National
Guards have to keep the people back. The Prussians are firing on the
hospitals. They are bombarding Val-de-Grace. Their shells set fire to
the wooden booths in the Luxembourg, which were full of sick and wounded
men, who had to be transported, undressed and wrapped up as well as they
could be, to the Charite Hospital. Barbieux saw them arrive there about
1 o'clock in the morning.

Sixteen streets have already been hit by shells.

January 7.--The Rue des Feuillantines, which runs through the place
where the garden of my boyhood used to be, is heavily bombarded. I was
nearly struck by a shell there.

My washerwoman having nothing to make a fire with, and being obliged to
refuse work in consequence, addressed a demand to M. Clemenceau, Mayor
of the Ninth Arrondissement, for some coal, which she said she was
prepared to pay for. I endorsed it thus:

"I am resigned to everything for the defence of Paris, to die of hunger
and cold, and even to