for the
clerk, who did not appear. A corporal of the National Guards proposed to
try an experiment on the major and the pad with the bayonet fastened to
a chassepot; thereupon major and pad suddenly disappeared behind the
wings.

The next inventor exhibits a fire-extinguisher; the audience require
more than a verbal explanation; some of them propose to set the Alcazar
on fire. A small panic, checked in time; and the various demonstrations
are proceeded with amidst shouts, and laughter, and jokes. They yield no
practical results, but they kill time. They are voted the next best
thing to the theatre.

By this time we were shut off from the outer world. On the 17th of
September, at night, the last train of the Orleans Railway Company had
left Paris. The others had ceased working a day or so before, and placed
their rolling stock in safety. Not the whole of it, though. A great many
of the third-class carriages have had their seats taken out, the luggage
and goods vans have been washed, the cattle trucks boarded in, and all
these transformed into temporary dwellings for the suburban poor who
have been obliged to seek shelter within the walls of the capital. The
interiors of the principal railway stations present scenes that would
rejoice the hearts of genre-painters on a large scale. The washing and
cooking of all these squatters is done on the various platforms, the
carriages have become parlor and bedroom in one, and there has even been
some ingenuity displayed in their decoration. The womankind rarely stir
from their improvised homes; the men are on the fortifications or
roaming the streets of Paris. Part of the household gods has been stowed
inside the trucks, the rest is piled up in front. The domestic pets,
such as cats and dogs, have, as yet, not been killed for food, and the
former have a particularly good time of it, for mice and rats abound,
especially in the goods-sheds. Here and there a goat gravely stalking
along, happily unconscious of its impending doom; and chanticleer
surrounded by a small harem trying to make the best of things.

Of course, the sudden and enormous influx of human beings could not be
housed altogether in that way, but care has been taken that none of them
shall be shelterless. All the tenantless apartments, from the most
palatial in the Faubourg St. Honore and Champs-Elysees to the humblest
in the popular quarters, have been utilized, and the pot-au-feu simmers
in marble fireplaces, while