who thought themselves heroes when playing a game of corks. The official
placards, the trash in the journals, inspired him with immense disgust,
for they had never lied so boldly or flattered the people with so much
low meanness. It was with a despairing heart and the certitude of final
disaster that Amedee, needing a little sleep after the fatigue, wandered
through Paris's obscure streets, barely lighted here and there by
petroleum lamps, under the dark, opaque winter sky, where the echoes of
the distant cannonading unceasingly growled like the barking of monstrous
dogs.

What solitude! The poet had not one friend, not one comrade to whom he
could confide his patriotic sorrows. Paul Sillery was serving in the
army of the Loire. Arthur Papillon, who had shown such boisterous
enthusiasm on the fourth of September, had been nominated prefet in a
Pyrenean department, and having looked over his previous studies, the
former laureate of the university examinations spent much of his time
therein, far from the firing, in making great speeches and haranguing
from the top of the balconies, in which speeches the three hundred heroes
of antiquity in a certain mountain-pass were a great deal too often
mentioned. Amedee sometimes went to see Jocquelet in the theatres, where
they gave benefit performances for the field hospitals or to contribute
to the molding of a new cannon. The actor, wearing a short uniform and
booted to the thighs, would recite with enormous success poems of the
times in which enthusiasm and fine sentiments took the place of art and
common sense. What can one say to a triumphant actor who takes himself
for a second Tyrtee, and who after a second recall is convinced that he
is going to save the country, and that Bismarck and old William had
better look after their laurels.

As to Maurice Roger, at the beginning of the campaign he sent his mother,