worse confounded. The sergens de ville
having now disappeared from the scene,
National Guards were posted at every
entrance to the stations, and endeavoured,
with fixed bayonets, to restore some sort of
order amid the writhing, struggling masses
who hustled together in desperate rivalry
to reach the office for their ticket, and not
only filled the station itself, but battled and
wrestled on the steps and in the streets
outside. Some, in order that they might fight
with greater freedom, abandoned their
baggage altogether, while others sat themselves
down upon their boxes in the street, and
waited with a calmness like despair for some
abatement of the desperate conflict which
was going on inside. A restaurateur in the
Rue d'Amsterdam told me he had noticed a
family sit in this fashion, perched on their
boxes, for fifteen consecutive hours. At one
time the press was so great that the
companies refused to take any baggage at all;
but the owners of baggage fled all the same,
leaving it behind them like an army in
rout. The wild heaps of boxes and
portmanteaus of every dimension, every shade
of trimness and shabbiness, which were
stacked in all directions, were something
hideous to behold; you walked between
walls of baggage, and mountains of it rose
beyond. Full half of it will never again
find the owners, for there was a very
general absence of addresses. In fact,
each of the termini was for the space of a
few days a very chaos of disordered
baggage, around and about which struggled
and jostled a panic-stricken crowd of
gesticulating men, and haggard women, and
crying children, fleeing from the coming
Prussians. In the course of three or four
days, however, the worst of the panic of flight
was over, and the railway companies, who
seemed for a while to be paralysed by the
enormous amount of extra work thrown
upon their lines, recovered themselves,
luggage was again taken and labelled, and
the stream of fugitives grew less and less,
until the stations presented at last a more
deserted appearance than usual. General
Trochu's announcement, however, revived
anew the impetus of flight; but as the
more panic-stricken had already taken
wing, the latter part of the exodus took
place with greater quiet and regularity.

To a good number of the strangers who
thus went off at the last hour, the
question of going or staying was one of
considerable difficulty to decide upon. We
ourselves were not only influenced by the fear
of finding an uninvited bedfellow in the
form of a bombshell some night whizzing
and sputtering by our side, nor by the fear
of street-fighting, and ultimate sack by the
Prussians, nor by the fear of street-fighting
with the Spectre Rouge and possible sack
by the "Reds", whose appearance we have
been taught to look for at every critical
moment. Those who love Paris—and who
does not love Paris who has resided there
for a few years?—might possibly be
willing to run the risk of a little danger,
and even to take up the revolver and
Chassepot to do her service in emergency;
but how long was it going to last? The
most ardent Parisians were looking
forward to a siege of some two or three
months, in which case one would surely
find oneself cut off from all home
communications. To the Parisian who has
all his household gods, and goods, and
means of subsistence within the walls of
the city, this is a lighter matter than for a
stranger, for whom the occasional postal
deliveries and the receipt of remittances is
a necessity: and as to remittances, how
were they to be cashed? A friend of ours
was going about the day before we left
trying to get an English bank-note changed,
and all in vain; so that it was possible you
might find yourself with a goodly balance
at your English bankers, and a neat packet
of cheques and bank-notes in your desk,
and yet be in danger of dying of starvation.
The investment of so large a city as Paris
must always have a weak spot in it, that is
true; but who could tell whether your
letters would have luck enough always
to find out that weak spot, and to manage
to get through? Regretfully, therefore, and
with some sense of cowardice, we
determined to turn our back for a while on the
beautiful city. To see our friends once more,
and to make some personal arrangements
before submitting to a possible two or three
months' siege, might surely be allowed us;
for if the fates permitted, in three days'
time we intended, assuredly, to be back
again in our haunts, and among our old
Parisian friends, prepared to give them
such moral or other support as
circumstances might require.

As we heard that the bridge over the
Seine at Asnières was to be blown up
punctually at eight P.M on Wednesday evening,
by the order of the omnipotent General
Trochu, and as we had resolved on going
by the Dieppe and Newhaven route, we
betook ourselves to the Gare Saint Lazare
at twelve o'clock on that day. There were
not many travellers in the train, and of
my four companions in my compartment,
I must say there was but one who had not