them we can actually distinguish without a glass, and yet not a shot comes from them. Yesterday, the gates of the Bois de Boulogne were opened, and a crowd of several thousand persons walked and drove round the lake. Over their heads one of the bastions was throwing shells into Montretout, but it seemed to occur to no one that Montretout might return the compliment, and throw a few shells, not over their heads, but into their midst. One of the most curious phases in this remarkable siege is, that the women seem to consider the whole question a political one, which in no way regards them--they neither urge the men to resist, nor clamour for peace. _Tros Tyriusque_ seems much the same to them; a few hundreds have dressed themselves up as vivandieres, the others appear to regret the rise in the price of provisions, but to trouble their heads about nothing else. If they thought that the cession of Alsace and Lorraine would reduce the price of butchers' meat, they would in a sort of apathetic way be in favour of the cession; but they are so utterly ignorant of everything except matters connected with their toilettes and M. Paul de Kock's novels, that they confine themselves to shrugging their shoulders and hoping for the best, and they support all the privations to which they are exposed owing to the siege without complaint and without enthusiasm. The word armistice being beyond the range of their vocabulary, they call it "l'amnistie," and imagine that the question is whether or not King William is ready to grant Paris an amnesty. As AEneas and Dido took refuge in a cave to avoid a shower, so I for the same reason found myself with a young lady this morning under a porte cochere. Dido was a lively and intelligent young person, but I discovered in the course of our chance conversation that she was under the impression that the Russians as well as the Prussians were outside Paris, and that both were waging war for the King of Spain. Sedan, I also learnt, was in the neighbourhood of Berlin.