leave his family, but dared not do it. He hesitated so long, that
at last, one evening,

"You may unpack the trunks," he said to his wife. "Paris is
invested; and no one can now leave."

XVIII

In fact, the news had just come, that the Western Railroad, the last
one that had remained open, was now cut off.

Paris was invested; and so rapid had been the investment, that it
could hardly be believed.

People went in crowds on all the culminating points, the hills of
Montmartre, and the heights of the Trocadero. Telescopes had been
erected there; and every one was anxious to scan the horizon, and
look for the Prussians.

But nothing could be discovered. The distant fields retained their
quiet and smiling aspect under the mild rays of the autumn sun.

So that it really required quite an effort of imagination to realize
the sinister fact, to understand that Paris, with its two millions
of inhabitants, was indeed cut off from the world and separated from
the rest of France, by an insurmountable circle of steel.

Doubt, and something like a vague hope, could be traced in the tone
of the people who met on the streets, saying,

"Well, it's all over: we can't leave any more. Letters, even,
cannot pass. No more news, eh?"

But the next day, which was the 19th of September, the most
incredulous were convinced.

For the first time Paris shuddered at the hoarse voice of the cannon,
thundering on the heights of Chatillon. The siege of Paris, that
siege without example in history, had commenced.

The life of the Favorals during these interminable days of anguish
and suffering, was that of a hundred thousand other families.

Incorporated in the battalion of his ward, the cashier of the Mutual
Credit went off two or three times a week, as well as all his
neighbors, to mount guard on the ramparts,--a useless service
perhaps, but which those that performed it did not look upon as such,
--a very arduous service, at any rate, for poor merchants, accustomed
to the comforts of their shops, or the quiet of their offices.

To be sure, there was nothing heroic in tramping through the mud,
in receiving the rain or the snow upon the back, in sleeping on the
ground or on dirty straw, in remaining on guard with the thermometer
twenty degrees below the freezing-point. But people die of pleurisy
quite as certainly as of a Prussian bullet; and many died of it.

Maxence showed himself but rarely at Rue St. Gilles: enlisted