along with the help of sticks. It is difficult to conceive by what
aberration the authorities allowed the Parisians to obtain that woeful
glimpse of the misfortunes of France. The men in question ought never to
have been sent to Paris at all. They might well have been cared for
elsewhere. As it happened, the sorry sight affected all who beheld it.
Some were angered by it, others depressed, and others well-nigh terrified.

As a kind of set-off, however, to that gloomy spectacle, fresh rumours of
French successes began to circulate. There was a report that Bazaine's
army had annihilated the whole of Prince Frederick-Charles's cavalry, and,
in particular, there was a most sensational account of how three German
army-corps, including the famous white Cuirassiers to which Bismarck
belonged, had been tumbled into the "Quarries of Jaumont" and there
absolutely destroyed! I will not say that there is no locality named
Jaumont, but I cannot find any such place mentioned in Joanne's elaborate
dictionary of the communes of France, and possibly it was as mythical as
was the alleged German disaster, the rumours of which momentarily revived
the spirits of the deluded Parisians, who were particularly pleased to
think that the hated Bismarck's regiment had been annihilated.

On or about August 30, a friend of my eldest brother Adrian, a medical
man named Blewitt, arrived in Paris with the object of joining an
Anglo-American ambulance which was being formed in connection with the Red
Cross Society. Dr. Blewitt spoke a little French, but he was not well
acquainted with the city, and I was deputed to assist him whilst he
remained there. An interesting account of the doings of the ambulance in
question was written some sixteen or seventeen years ago by Dr. Charles
Edward Ryan, of Glenlara, Tipperary, who belonged to it. Its head men were
Dr. Marion-Sims and Dr. Frank, others being Dr. Ryan, as already
mentioned, and Drs. Blewitt, Webb, May, Nicholl, Hayden, Howett,