letter. A good many messengers depart; a
good many return almost at once, finding the task impossible; those that
do not return have presumably been shot by the Prussians, for not a
single one reached his destination.

Then we begin to turn our thoughts to the sheep-dog as a carrier of
messengers, or rather to the smuggler's dog, thousands of which are
known to exist on the Belgian and Swiss frontiers. The postal
authorities go even so far as to promise two hundred francs for every
batch of despatches if delivered within twenty-four hours of the
animal's departure from his starting-place, and fifty francs less for
every twenty-four hours' delay; but the animals fall a prey to the
Prussian sentries, not one of them succeeds in reaching the French
outposts. The carrier-pigeon is all we have left.

Still, we are not discouraged; and in less than a month after the
investment, the Parisians begin to clamour for their favourite
amusement--the theatre. There are, of course, many divergencies of
opinion with regard to the fitness of the measure, and we get some
capital articles on the subject, studded with witty sentences and
relieved by historical anecdotes, showing that, whatever they may not
know, French journalists have an inexhaustible fund of parallels when it
becomes a question of the playhouse. "In '92 the Lillois went peacefully
to the theatre while the shells were pouring into the devoted city. Why
should we be less courageous and less cheerful than they?" writes one.
"Nero was fiddling while Rome was burning," writes another, "but Paris
is not on fire yet; and, if it were, the Nero who might be blamed for
the catastrophe is at Wilhelmshoehe, where, we may be sure, he will not
eat a mouthful less for our pangs of hunger. If he does not fiddle, it
is because, like his famous uncle, he has no ear for music."

"Whatever may happen," writes M. Francisque Sarcey in the _Gaulois_,
"art should be considered superior to all things; the theatre is not a
more unseemly pleasure under the circumstances than the perusal of a
good book; and it is just in the darkest and saddest hours of his life
that a man needs a diversion which will, for a little while, at least,
prevent him from brooding upon his sufferings."

To which "Thomas Grimm," of _Le Petit Journal_, who is on the opposite
side, replies: "If I may be allowed to intervene in so grave a question,
I have no hesitation in saying that the time for singing and amusing
ourse