a shamefaced air, and that individual was
a civil engineer, instructed by the
Provisional Government to go and look after
the fortifications of Le Havre. The rest
of us—I read it in the faces of my
companions—all had a twinge of remorse at
turning our backs at such a time on the
city which had harboured us so long.

Nothing more than ordinary happened at
our starting, until we reached the fortifications,
when we all strained our necks out of
windows to see how the railway had been
flanked by new stone walls, and was ready
to be banked up with earthworks at a
moment's notice. The train moved slowly
over the moat on a temporary wooden
bridge, and then we passed into the military
zone outside the fortifications, which
was a desert of houses in ruins, and of
heaps of bricks and mortar, as far as the
eye could reach round the fortifications on
either side. Such a scene of desolate ruin,
made solely for a defensive purpose, has
never, perhaps, been witnessed before.
Further on we passed a military camp, with
sentinels on guard. The soldiers looked
not very trim, and had a sad, worn look,
which the first tap of the drum, as it
sounds the pas de charge, will, doubtless,
change to one of better augury. The next
two or three stations had loopholes for
musketry cut into their side walls; then
everything wore its usual air, and we fell
into infinite talk about all the means of
defence which the city could make use of,
and which it had put in practice. This
man had seen the big steel cannon dragged
up to the top of Montmartre, with twenty-
four horses to each cannon; that man
declared that there were three million kilos
of powder in the city, and Chassepots and
tabatières enough for all its defenders;
one argued about the fascines which were
to be steeped in petroleum, and thrown
into the moat, and set on fire wherever the
Prussians should approach the ramparts;
the other knew that half Paris was undermined
to blow up the enemy if he should
get on the walls, &c. Of all the four, the
civil engineer, bound for Le Havre, was
the most sober in talk, and the best
informed; his idea was that the Prussians
certainly would march upon Havre, and
that the German plan assuredly was not to
make close siege of Paris, but to block up
all her communications, and to try to take
her by famine, while they themselves made
all the richest provinces of France
contribute to their support. After a short
time our journey became as monotonous as
all railway journeys are. Country passengers
got in and out, and talked about
market prices; women got into our
carriage, and gossiped, just as if we were in a
time of profound peace; and babies in the
train screeched and squalled just as usual,
for no apparent reason, except, perhaps, to
assert that a baby's prerogative is to cry as
much and when it pleases, to show its
infantine sense of its autocracy and
irresponsibility. The general tone of the provincials
we met with was hearty and confident;
they did not seem a whit discouraged
by disaster; they counted on the defence
of Paris as a means of bringing the German
invasion to a standstill, while the provinces
should have time to organise themselves,
and throw armies in the rear of the
invaders. The spirit of the inhabitants about
Dieppe, which we reached in due course,
was, we were told, excellent. The look,
however, of many of the people whom we
met about the streets and in the restaurants
and cafés was by no means encouraging.
The greater part of them were evidently
refugees from Paris, and a blank, crestfallen
air was their chief characteristic; they had
fled from the duty and peril of defending
the metropolis, and had evidently fallen
terribly in their own esteem.

The afternoon had been dark and lowering,
and towards night the rain fell in torrents.
A pleasant night this to be prowling
about Dieppe till three A.M., at which
time the steamer was to start for
Newhaven. We resolved, therefore, after dining
at one of the table d'hôtes of the town, and
looking in at the Café Suisse, to go at once
to the boat, and take our berth, and wait
there calmly for the hour of starting. We
walked, then, down the plashy quay, to the
spot where the white funnel of the steamer
loomed drearily through the rain, and
descended the ladder from the quay on to the
rain-sodden deck of the steamer.

But, alas! we had reckoned without our
host, or rather the host of fugitives whom
we found on board the boat. The chief cabin
was so crammed with occupants, that not
only was not a single berth unoccupied, but
there was not sitting room even to be found
on a single bench. A pleasant prospect to
have to cross the Channel in a standing
position, amid a host of refugees in every
stage of sea-sickness, or to content ourselves
with a cold seat open to the weather on the
brassbound stairs! The engineer had, we
heard, just disposed of his cabin forwards
for the small douceur of a sovereign, and
this was the last available sleeping
accommodation on board the boat. We departed
then with bag and baggage moodily from the