"Wanted, 10,000 Parisians ready to allow themselves to be killed, in order that their fellow-citizens may pass down to posterity as heroes!" The attempt to obtain volunteers having miserably failed, and fathers of families having declined to risk their valuable lives whilst one single bachelor remains out of reach of the Prussian guns, the Government has now issued a decree calling to arms all bachelors between the age of 25 and 35. If this measure had been taken two months ago it might have been of some use, but it is absurd to suppose that soldiers can be improvised in a few days. I must congratulate my friends here upon the astounding ingenuity which they show in discovering pretexts to avoid military service. It is as difficult to get them outside the inner ramparts as it is to make an old fox break cover. In vain huntsman Trochu and his first whip, Ducrot, blow their horns, and crack their whips; the wily reynard, after putting his nose outside his retreat, heads back, and makes for inaccessible fastnesses, with which long habit has made him familiar. That General Trochu will be able to beat the Prussians no one supposes; but if he can manage to get even 5,000 of the heroes who have for the last two months been professing a wish to die for the honour of their country under fire, he will have accomplished a most difficult feat. For the last few days the newspapers, one and all, have been filled with details of the negotiations which were supposed to be going on at Versailles. Russia, it was said, had forwarded an ultimatum to the King of Prussia, threatening him with a declaration of war in case he persisted in besieging Paris, or in annexing any portion of French territory. Yesterday morning the _Journal Officiel_ contained an announcement that the Government knew absolutely nothing of these negotiations. The newspapers are, however, not disposed to allow their hopes of peace to be destroyed in this manner, and they reply that "it being notorious that no member of the Government can speak the truth, this official denial proves conclusively the contrary of what it states." It is indeed difficult to know who or what to believe; all I know for certain is, that M. Jules Favre assured Mr. Washburne on Saturday night that since M. Thiers had quitted Paris he had had no communication with the outer world, and did not even know whether the Tours delegation was still there. Men may lie for a certain time, and yet be believed, but this "arm of war" has been so abused by our rulers, that at present their most solemn asseverations meet with universal incredulity--not, indeed, that the Parisians are cured of their mania for crediting every tale which comes to them from any other source--thus, for instance, every newspaper has contained the most precise details from eye-witnesses of a conflict which took place two nights ago before the battery of Hautes-Bruyeres, in which our "braves Mobiles" took between two and three thousand prisoners, and slew