_April 30th._--Yesterday and to-day read a number of interesting documents treating of negotiations with Cluseret, the present general of the Commune, and took note of them for future use. In the first of these, dated the 10th instant, Fabrice was instructed by telegraph to say in reply to Cluseret that he would listen to any overtures which the latter might desire to make to him, and bring them to the knowledge of the Chancellor. The telegram then continued: “If he should then call upon you it might be possible, without actually negotiating, to lead him to say how the Commune would propose to raise the money for us. You might also be able to bring home to him the helplessness of the whole affair, and in that way form an opinion as to the prospects of an attempt at mediation between Paris and Versailles. In reply to a despatch of the 21st of April, in which Fabrice says that the Commune has no money, and that in order to raise some it has already seized upon the property of societies and individuals, the Chief said that the general should nevertheless sound them as to the surrender of Paris to us, but only for purposes of information and report. The idea that the Commune could be really considered solvent had been entirely foreign to the telegram of the 10th instant. It was only a reconnaissance for the purpose of ascertaining the intentions and resources of the holders of power in Paris. Fabrice reports from Soissy on the 27th instant that Holstein, who had remained behind with him, had had a meeting with Cluseret, and that the Commune was disposed to pay a sum of 500,000,000 francs, of which 300,000,000 was in hand, in the form of securities belonging to the city, while the remaining 200,000,000 could be raised by the sale of the Octroi dues. In return for this the Germans would be required to abstain from taking any part in the stoppage of supplies, and not to deliver any of the forts occupied by them to the Versailles Government. A desire was also expressed that we should endeavour to bring about an understanding as to a _modus vivendi_ between the two belligerent parties. There was a twofold basis upon which this could be effected. One was that the city should be disarmed, but should not be occupied by the troops of the Versailles Government, and that it should be granted a communal administration, together with security against a recurrence of Hausmann or Pietri Budgets. The second was the dissolution of the present National Assembly, which had exhausted its mandate, and a fresh appeal to France, whose decision would be accepted by Paris. Cluseret had described the Socialist and other excesses as a phase of this ‘drôle de mouvement’ which had now passed away. He treated the military siege of the city as an impossibility, but begged, in the event of Versailles being, in spite of all human probability, victorious, that they should not be permitted to destroy Paris. This, as well as the expectation that we might mediate, was only