Although Trochu is neither a great general nor a great statesman, he is a gentleman. I am therefore surprised that he allows obscene caricatures of the Empress to be publicly sold in the streets and exhibited in the kiosks. During the time that she occupied the throne in this most scandal-loving town, no scandal was ever whispered against her. She was fond, it is true, of dress, but she was a good mother and a good wife. Now that she and her friends are in exile, "lives of the woman Bonaparte" are hawked about, which in England would bring their authors under Lord Campbell's statute. In one caricature she is represented stark naked, with Prince Joinville sketching her. In another, called "the Spanish cow," she is made a sort of female Centaur. In another she is dancing the Can-can, and throwing her petticoats over her head, before King William, who is drinking champagne, seated on a sofa, while her husband is in a cage hung up to the wall. These scandalous caricatures have not even the merit of being funny, they are a reflection upon French chivalry, and on that of Trochu. What would he say if the Government which succeeds him were to allow his own wife to be insulted in this cowardly manner? Anything more dreary than the Boulevards now in the evening it is difficult to imagine. Only one street lamp in three is lighted, and the _cafes_, which close at 10.30, are put on half-allowance of gas. To mend matters, everyone who likes is allowed to put up a shed on the side walk to sell his goods, or to collect a crowd by playing a dirge on a fiddle. The consequence is that the circulation is rendered almost impossible. I suggested to a high authority that the police ought at least to interfere to make these peripatetic musicians "move on," but he told me that, were they to do so, they would be accused of being "Corsicans and Reactionaries." These police are themselves most ludicrous objects; anyone coming here would suppose that they are members of some new sect of peripatetic philosophers; they walk about in pairs, arrayed in pea jackets with large hoods; and when it is wet they have umbrellas. Their business appears to be, never to interfere with the rights of their fellow-citizens to do what they please, and, so helpless do they look, that I believe if a child were to attack them, they would appeal to the passers-by for protection.