women, nor spice-nuts, nor sport on the Place Saint-Pierre: all is slush
and dirt, and the poor lines-men are obliged to stand at ease, resting
upon their arms, not in the best of humour with the weather or the
prospect before them.

Ah! and the guns of the National Guard that frown from their embrasures
on the top of the hill, have they been made use of against the
Prussians? No! they have made no report during the siege, and were only
heard on the days on which they were christened and paid for; elegant
things, hardly to be blackened with powder, that it was always hoped
would be pacific and never dangerous to the capital. Cruel irony! those
guns for which Paris paid, and those American mitrailleuses, made out of
the savings of both rich and poor, the farthings of the frugal
housewife, and the napoleons of the millionaires; the contributions of
the artists who designed, and the poets who pen'd, are ruining Paris
instead of protecting it. The brass mouths that ate the bread of
humanity are turned upon the nation itself to devour it also.

But, to return to the 88th Regiment of Line, did they take the guns?
Yes, but they gave them up again, and to whom? why, to a crowd of women
and children; and as to the chiefs, no one seemed to know what had
become of them. It is related, however, that General Lecomte had been
made a prisoner and led to the Château-Rouge, and that at nine o'clock
some Chasseurs d'Afrique charged pretty vigorously in the Place Pigalle
a detachment of National Guards, who replied by a volley of bullets. An
officer of Chasseurs was shot, and his men ran away, the greater part,
it is said, into the wine-shops, where they fraternised with the
patriots, who offered them drink. I was told on the spot that General
Vinoy, who was on horseback, became encircled in a mob of women, had a
stone and a cap[6] thrown at him, and thought it prudent to escape,