ham used to meet him at the Café de la Régence, whither he went every day to indulge in his favorite game of chess. Sometimes Bingham had the honor of being his antagonist. "He was unlike most of his countrymen. He had no French exuberance, and always maintained a dignity of manner, which was an effectual bar to familiarity. How ever, he was exceedingly amiable, and often furnished me with information on historical and other topics, for he was well-read, a good classical scholar, and a special admirer of Horace."

Meantime it had become the policy of the Empire to outbid the Liberal agitators and demagogues in the contest for popularity. It had the power of the purse. Its assailants could promise but it could perform. Like its prototypes of imperial Rome, it was generous of panem et circenses. The overcrowded population of Paris was kept in tolerable good humor by abundant work and excellent wages. The demolitions and reconstructions that were supposed to make future émeutes impossible gratified the popular vanity, though they raised the price of lodgings and removed the workmen far from their work. It is an amiable feature of the French democracy that, so long as their own circumstances are easy, they enjoy vicariously the extravagant gaieties of the rulers. The train of carriages driving to the balls and receptions, with the decorated uniforms of the men and the toilets and diamonds of the ladies, give them the cheap pleasures of free public spectacles. It is only when faminestricken as in the first Revolution, or when irritated by such humiliating defeats as those inflicted by the Germans, that the many-headed monster revolts, and raises the cry of "The Aristocrats to the lantern!" These public entertainments were on the most sumptuous scale, and invitations were issued with democratic indiscrimination. Felix Whitehurst, whose métier it was to report the doings of the best society for the bourgeois readers of the Daily Telegraph, gives a vivid and picturesque account of them. He paints the scene towards midnight in the Tuileries,

where every man was bound to appear in uniform, and each of the ladies wore a ball-dress of the period-"as much a costume as any ever worn at masquerade or fancy ball." Tables were groaning under patés de foie gras and truffles en serviette, and there was an incessant flow of Sillery of the choicest vintages. "But to me the most interesting sight," writes the courtly correspondent, "was to see the emperor moving round the circle and talking to his guests, just as monsieur un tel ought to do, and does when he understands the graceful duties of hospitality." Shortly afterwards Baron Haussmann was entertaining three thousand persons at the Hôtel de Ville. The correspondent "looked on with supreme pleasure at a luxury which, while reminding one of the decadence of Rome, now indicates only the wealth of France."

Doubtless both the Préfet of the Seine and his master masked anxious hearts with smiling countenances, for they knew that the guests were dancing In four on a smouldering volcano. years the emperor was a dethroned exile, and before that Baron Haussmann had been undeservedly and ungratefully disgraced; for after nobly carrying out the conceptions he had been authorized to realize he withdrew into private life, a comparatively poor man. Yet in the summer of 1866 the tottering emperor had received a striking testimony to his ascendancy in European politics, when Francis Joseph resigned Venetia into his hands, inviting his mediation for the restoration of peace. In Paris he had always a useful ally in the clever Princess Mathilde, whom he not only pensioned, but had befriended by securing her handsome matrimonial settlements. Yet the salons of the princess's hotel were ever open to brilliant mockers and frondeurs; and it was significant of the times that a piece of wit was invariably welcome, even if it told severel against the régime. As to that Captain Bingham has a characteristic story in which the joke was carried too far to be altogether agreeable to the society. It had come to the princess's ears that M. Billault had a stingingly

hours, with the news of a crushing defeat in his pocket, he said in the Chamber, 'If I could only tell you all I know, Paris would illuminate this evening.' On the other hand, when the news came of the culminating catastrophe of Sedan, the empress bore up heroically under the shock, showing as much moral resolution as personal courage. Had she seen rational chances of effective support, undoubtedly she would have made a stand for the throne, although that has never been a national tradition. Captain Bingham remarks elsewhere on the ease with which French governments have been disposed of since Louis XVI. refused to fight. The vox populi has always spoken with irresistible might, especially when shouting from behind the barricades.

The provisional military régime had abdicated, and now the eloquence of the Palais had its opportunity. The new self-elected government was a government of babblers and lawyers, though, indeed, the warlike Trochu out-talked them all. If brave words could have retrieved national misfortunes, they were the men to charge themselves with the destinies of prostrate France. We can conceive the grim satisfaction with which Bismarck, Moltke, and Von Roon read their patriotic proclamations to the beleaguered citizens. The inflated bombast culminated in Jules Favre's Bobadil-like ultimatum, "Not a stone of our fortresses-not an inch of our soil." Captain Bingham had remained at his post as haphazard correspondent through both the sieges, and in both the lot of the besieged resident was anything but an enviable one. When the Germans had closed in, suspicions were everywhere rife; the cry of treachery was on the lips of each grimy patriot, and a foreign accent was a damnatory pièce de conviction. Trochu himself was arrested for a spy, though the general-in-chief succeeded in establishing his identity. If a house happened to look out towards the detached forts of the enceinte, it was dangerous to light a lamp without closing the shutters, for flashing of signals to the enemy

was a common and capital charge. Out of doors the light began to fail, as gas and paraffin were necessarily economized. The Boulevards of an evening were dismal as Père La Chaise; the trees in the Bois were being felled for fuel; and the Champs Elysées began to resemble the Chicago cattle-yards. Altogether life was desperately dull, and, what was more, it began to be desperately dear. On November 18th, we are told, a plump sewer-rat was selling for three francs, a turkey fetched a couple of guineas, and a pound of butter commanded £2 16s. A month later an egg was priced at 11⁄2 francs, and a rabbit had risen from fourteen to thirty francs. On December 9 Captain Bingham's cook, after standing in the long queue for a couple of hours, came home with rations for three days, consisting of a herring apiece. We had an opportunity of seeing Captain Bingham's butcher-bills, and they included camel, camelopard, elephant, and rhinoceros. It need not be said that it was not every one who could afford to pay fancy prices for strange meats from the Jardins des Plantes et d'Acclimation; and it will always be a mystery how less fortunate individuals contrived to subsist upon public or private charity; also how the fashionable restaurants for long continued to give their customers a creditable dinner for the reasonable charge of one fouis. Still there was a limit even among imprisoned capitalists to fancy prices, and no purchaser could be found for the hippopotamus at £3,200. Three weeks afterwards the city surrendered, and, so far as we know, the behemoth survived.

The costs of the war would have been even more onerous had the Germans realized the resources of France. The famous economist, Leroy Beaulieu, understood them better. He wrote, when the war ransom had been fixed, "We know what sacrifices are imposed upon us by this increase of £400,000,000 to our public debt and the development of our military expenditure. But our neighbors are ignorant of all the resources which French thought and A few French work can furnish."

years afterwards Bismarck became alive to his mistake, and would have retrieved it by a second summary in vasion, had it not been for the interposition of the czar. In these anxious days the writer had a letter from a mannot Captain Bingham-who had access to sources of information the most intimes. Like Bingham, he occupied an apartment looking out on the Arc de Triomphe. And he wrote, "I never dress of a morning without seeing the triumphant Prussians again passing under the Arch."

The Commune was a legacy of the humiliating war, and, as we said, of the extravagant expenditure of the Empire. Paris was discontented, impoverished, and overcrowded with workmen out of employment, from whom the insurrectionary Directory recruited its defenders. The bourgeois Thiers, soldierlike only in theory, was not the man for the critical situation. Had MacMahon been then in charge, events might have been very different. Thiers' best excuse was that he could not trust the soldiers.. Had they looked up to a marshal whose courage they respected, and been under the wholesome terrors of military law, there would have been little fear of their fraternizing with the discontented. The regular uniform has a supreme contempt for shop-keepers of the National Guard and pekins in blouses. As it was, Thiers, though he had such dashing soldiers as De Gallifet at his back, showed a pitiable example of impotence and vacillation. There was no reason why he should not have at once drawn the teeth of the factions by quietly removing the guns parked on the heights of Montmartre. The writer saw them a few days before the impending outbreak practically unguarded. Indeed the cannon had actually been secured, but unfortunately the teams to drag them away had been forgotten. That might have been the error of an incapable subordinate. But Thiers evacuated Paris so promptly that in his panic he would actually have abandoned Valérien, and that key of the attack was only saved by a timely reminder and remon

strance. Then respectable citizens were startled by the depressing news that they had been deserted by Admiral Saisset, the trusty commander of the National Guard, who had followed Thiers to Versailles. The law-abiding men of property had fondly believed that he, at least, would have stuck to his post. The admiral afterwards explained to Bingham that he had acted sorely contre cœur. But Thiers' orders were peremptory, and he was bound to obey.

One of the first striking incidents of the second siege was the demonstration of the Rue de la Paix, which ended in a slaughter of unarmed men. We always doubted whether the Communists were greatly to blame, and Captain Bingham's testimony goes far to exculpate them. A more insane project than for a procession of unarmed citizens to force a line of military posts could hardly have been conceived. But the friends of order were not content with simple persuasion: "the language used was of an excitable, if not a violent character." The National Guard gave them fair warning, and only fired when their line was being broken. Bingham says that the casualties would have been far more numerous had not the Federalists passed the night in the wine-shops. Moreover, it is more than probable that many fired in the air, otherwise the volleys at point blank must have been much more deadly. And the report we had from Laurence Oliphant corresponds with that of Captain Bingham. Oliphant was an eyewitness, and helped afterwards to drag some of the wounded into the offices of Messrs. Blount the bankers. He had been warned, by the by, that he might expect a sign that he had been sinning against the light in declining to quit Paris at the orders of his prophet. He took that bloody drama of the Rue de la Paix as the predicted sign, and straightway sent in his demission as Times correspondent.

The gentlemen of the pavement had been succeeded by the gentlemen of the gutter, and these last were by no means pleasant masters. A strange mixture