Gallic Hodge sees his face reflected in
gigantic mirrors the like of which he never saw before. The dwellings
that have been merely vacated by their tenants who have flitted to
Homburg and Baden-Baden, to Nice and elsewhere, are as yet not called
into requisition by the authorities.

From the moment we were cut off from the outer world, the spy mania,
which had been raging fiercely enough before, became positively
contagious. There is not the slightest doubt that there were spies in
Paris, but I feel perfectly certain that they were not prowling about
the streets, and that to have caught them one would have had to look
among the personnel of the ministries. For a foreigner, unless he spoke
French without the slightest accent, to have accepted such a mission,
would have been akin to madness; and there were and are still few
foreigners, however well they may know French, who do not betray their
origin now and then by imperfect pronunciation. Besides, there was
nothing to spy in the streets; nevertheless, the spy mania, as I have
already said, had reached an acute crisis. The majority of the National
Guard seemed to have no other occupation than to look for spies. A poor
Spanish priest was arrested because he had been three times in the same
afternoon to the cobbler for the only serviceable pair of shoes he
possessed. Woe to the man or woman who was ill-advised enough to take
out his pocket-book in the streets. If you happened to be of studious
habits, or merely inclined to sit up late, the lights peeping through
the carelessly drawn curtains exposed you to a sudden visit from half a
dozen ill-mannered, swaggering National Guards, your concierge was
called out of his bed, while you were taken to the nearest commissary of
police to explain; or, what was worse still, to the nearest military
post, where the lieutenant in command made it a point to be altogether
soldier-like--according to his ideas, _i. e._ brutal, rude, disgustingly
familiar. You might get an apology from the police-official for having
been disturbed and dragged through the streets for no earthly reason;
the quasi-military man would have considered it beneath his dignity to
offer one.

Of course, every now and then, one happened to meet with a gentleman who
was only too anxious to atone for the imbecile "goings-on" of his men,
and I was fortunate enough to do so one night. It was on the 20th of
September, when the feelings of the Parisians had already been