officers (why will they wear stays?) in baggy
trousers promenaded gravely, and inspected
us suspiciously. Yet no one asked us for
passports; the inspection of luggage went on
as quietly as usual, and we were free to
depart.

Now, I dwell, when in Paris, in a hostelry
in the Rue St. Honoré, close to the church
of St. Roch. To reach its hospitable porte-
cochère, one is apt, when tired, sleepy, and
encumbered—with a carpet-bag, a hat-box, and
a great coat or two—to take a cab; and, being
resolved to take one, I sallied forth into the
court-yard of the terminus. There were no
cabs, no omnibuses, no vehicles of any description.
Not even a wheelbarrow. Berlines,
citadines, fiacres, dames blanches, sylphides,
coucous, voitures bourgeoises—all the
multifarious varieties of French equipages, had
disappeared. The shops were shut, and the
streets were apparently deserted, though
impassable. The truth was, I had stepped into
a besieged city.

I asked one of the railway porters where I
could get a vehicle? "Monsieur," he replied,
very politely, "nowhere." Could I walk
down the Rue St. Denis, and so by the Boulevards
into the Rue St. Honoré? "Monsieur,
it is impossible; circulation is impeded."
What was I to do? My friend, the porter,
had got an hour for his breakfast, and he
would be enchanté to carry my bag, and
to conduct me to my destination by streets
where there was no apprehension of
disturbance.

And so we set out. I longed for the most
extortionate of cabmen. I could have
embraced the most insolent of omnibus conductors.
Tramp, tramp, tramp, through dreadful little
streets choked with mud; now, stopped by
barricades in course of construction or of
demolition: now, entangled in a mob of the lowest
riff-raff; thieves, gamins—vagabonds of every
description—flying before the gendarmes: now
stopped by a cordon of soldiery drawn across a
street, hustled into the presence of the
commanding officer, interrogated, brow-beaten, and
dismissed. When I state that the railway
terminus is near Montmartre, and that I
entered Paris by the Barrière de l'Etoile, the
courteous reader who knows Paris can form
some idea of how very muddy, weary, and
savage-tempered I was when I arrived at
mine inn; earnestly desiring to be able to
take "mine ease" in it.

Everybody knows the court-yard of a French
hotel. How the host of waiters, chamber-
maids, porters, and general hangers-on, all
appearing to have nothing to do, lounge
about, doing it thoroughly, all day long. How
the landlord sits placidly, in a species of alcove
summer-house, smoking cigarettes, drinking
sugar and water, and surveying each new
comer with the satisfied look of a boa-
constrictor just getting over the digestion of his
last rabbit, and ready for a new one ; how
the cook—"chèf," we beg his pardon—flirts,
white-capped and white-jacketed, with the
pretty daughter of the concièrge. On the
momentous morning of my arrival, all these things
were changed. Waiters, chambermaids, boots,
landlord, cook, commissionnaires,  concièrge,
were huddled together in the hall. The cab-
men attached to the hotel, slumbered within
their vehicles, reduced to a state of
compulsory inactivity. The porter—a torpid
Auvergnat—vaguely impressed with a conviction
that there was danger somewhere, had let
loose an enormous dog, with rather more of the
wolf in his composition than was agreeable.
The concièrge's pretty daughter had
disappeared from human ken altogether; the
concièrge himself, deprived of his usual solace of
the feuilleton of the "Constitutionnel," smoked
morbidly, gazing with a fixed and stony
rigidity of vision at one of the dreadful
proclamations of the Government, which was
pasted against his lodge, and which conveyed
the ominous intimation that every one found
with arms in his hands, on, behind, or about,
a barricade, would be instantly shot—fusillé
sur le champ.

Everything, in fact, spoke of the state of
siege. The newspapers were in a state of
siege; for the Government had suspended all
but its own immediate organs. The offices
of the sententious "Siècle," the mercurial
"Presse," the satiric "Charivari," the jovial
"Journal pour Rire," were occupied by the
military; and, to us English, they whispered
even of a park of artillery in the Rue Vivienne,
and of a Government proof-reader in the printing-
office of "Galignani's Messenger," striking
out obnoxious paragraphs by the dozen. The
provisions were in a state of siege; the milk
was out, and no one would volunteer to go to
the crêmiers for more; the cabs, the
commissionnaires with their trucks, were besieged; the
very gas was slow in coming from the main, as
though the pipes were in a state of siege.
Nobody could think or speak of anything but this
confounded siege. Thought itself appeared to
be beleaguered; for no one dared to give it
anything but a cautious and qualified utterance.
The hotel was full of English ladies and
gentlemen, who would have been delighted to
go away by the first train on any of the
railways; but there might just as well have
been no railways, for all the good they
were, seeing that it was impossible to get
to or from the termini with safety. The
gentlemen were valorous, certainly—there was
a prevalence of "who's afraid?" sentiments;
but they read the French Bradshaw
earnestly, and gazed at the map of Paris with
nervous interest—beating, meanwhile, the
devil's tattoo. As for the ladies, dear
creatures, they made no secret of their extreme
terror and despair. The one old lady, who is
frightened at every thing, and who will not even
travel in an omnibus, with a sword in a case,
for fear it should go off, was paralysed with fear,
and could only ejaculate, "Massacre!" The
strong-minded lady of a certain age, who had