of June. All Paris was out of doors. We were not without women-folk
and children. Not only were there the wives and offspring of the
working-classes; but the better halves of many tradespeople and bourgeois
had remained in the city, together with a good many ladies of higher
social rank. Thus, in spite of all the departures, "papa, mamma, and baby"
were still to be met in many directions on that last day preceding the
investment. There were gay crowds everywhere, on the Boulevards, on the
squares, along the quays, and along the roads skirting the ramparts. These
last were the "great attraction," and thousands of people strolled about
watching the work which was in progress. Stone casements were being roofed
with earth, platforms were being prepared for guns, gabions were being set
in position at the embrasures, sandbags were being carried to the
parapets, stakes were being pointed for the many _pieges-a-loups_, and
smooth earthworks were being planted with an infinity of spikes. Some guns
were already in position, others, big naval guns from Brest or Cherbourg,
were still lying on the turf. Meanwhile, at the various city gates, the
very last vehicles laden with furniture and forage were arriving from the
suburbs. And up and down went all the promenaders, chatting, laughing,
examining this and that work of defence or engine of destruction in such a
good-humoured, light-hearted way that the whole _chemin-de-ronde_ seemed
to be a vast fair, held solely for the amusement of the most volatile
people that the world has ever known.

Access to the Bois de Boulogne was forbidden. Acres of timber had already
been felled there, and from the open spaces the mild September breeze
occasionally wafted the lowing of cattle, the bleating of sheep, and the
grunting of pigs. Our live stock consisted of 30,000 oxen, 175,000 sheep,
8,800 pigs, and 6,000 milch-cows. Little did we think how soon those
animals (apart from the milch-cows) would be consumed! Few of us were
aware that, according to Maxime Ducamp's great work on Paris, we had