is bitten with it. That the
thing was perfectly feasible, was proved subsequently by M. Lockroy, but
the latter did not imitate the nigger who dug up the potatoes an hour
after he had planted them, to see if they were growing. That thoroughly
inexperienced persons should have indulged in such wild fancies is
perhaps not to be wondered at; but M. Joigneux was not one of these, yet
he provided an Englishman, who had come to propose the experiment to
him, with all the necessary funds. "I was perfectly certain that I
should never see him again," he said afterwards; but, with all due
deference, we may take this as a shamefaced denial of his credulity.
"Contrary to my expectations," M. Joigneux went on, when he told us the
tale a few nights afterwards at the Cafe de la Paix--he lived in the Rue
du 4 Septembre,--"my Englishman did come back, accompanied by a porter
who carried the requisite material. I did not interfere with him in the
least, but merely watched him. I knew that in England they did produce
'greenstuff' in that way; though I was also aware of the difference
between a few blades and a serious crop."

Others, more ingenious still, began to argue that if it was possible to
produce vegetables in a fortnight by means of light and a few handfuls
of mould, it could not be difficult to produce mushrooms with a much
thicker layer of mould and in the darkness of a cellar.

Fortunately there is, as yet, a very decent kitchen-garden to fall back
upon. It lies between the fortifications and the forts; it has been
somewhat pillaged at first, but the authorities have organized several
companies of labourers from among those whom they have not been able to
provide with arms, and those who do not dig or delve keep watch against
depredation. They have a very simple uniform--a black kepi with crimson
piping, and a crimson belt round their waists. They are exposed to a
certain danger, for every now and then a stray German bullet lays one of
them low, but, upon the whole, their lot is not a hard one.

"We have still nearly everything we want," writes a facetious
journalist; "and now that good and obliging fellow, Gambetta, is going
to fetch us some cream cheese from the moon for our dessert."

In fact, during the last few days, we have been informed of the Minister
of the Interior's impending departure for Tours by balloon on the 7th of
October, and by twelve o'clock on that day the little Place St. Pierre,
right on the heights o