thirty sous as a National Guard. But he little knows the true Parisian
who imagines a seigneur of the Chaussee d'Antin, the oracle of those with
whom he lived, and one who knew life so well that he had preached
prudence to a seigneur of the Faubourg like Alain de Rochebriant,
stooping to apply for the wages of thirty sons. Rations were only
obtained by the wonderful patience of women, who had children to whom
they were both saints and martyrs. The hours, the weary hours, one had
to wait before one could get one's place on the line for the distribution
of that atrocious black bread, defeated men,--defeated most wives if only
for husbands, were defied only by mothers and daughters. Literally
speaking, Lemercier was starving. Alain had been badly wounded in the
sortie of the 21st, and was laid up in an ambulance. Even if he could
have been got at, he had probably nothing left to bestow upon Lemercier.

Lemercier gazed on the announcement of the bombardment, and the Parisian
gaiety, which some French historian of the siege calls _douce
philosophie_, lingering on him still, he said, audibly, turning round to
any stranger who heard: "Happiest of mortals that we are! Under the
present Government we are never warned of anything disagreeable that can
happen; we are only told of it when it has happened, and then as rather
pleasant than otherwise. I get up. I meet a civil gendarme. 'What is
that firing? which of our provincial armies is taking Prussia in the
rear? 'Monsieur,' says the gendarme, 'it is the Prussian Krupp guns.'
I look at the proclamation, and my fears varuish,--my heart is relieved.
I read that the bombardment is a sure sign that the enemy is worn out."

Some of the men grouped round Frederic ducked their heads in terror;
others, who knew that the thunderbolt launched from the plateau of Avron
would not fall on the pavements of Paris, laughed and joked. But in
front, with no sign of terror, no sound of laughter, stretched, moving