unless they are excited, the French poorer classes, nothing can be more insolent than that of the third-class dandies who reserve their valour for the interior of the town, or who, if ever they venture outside of its fortifications, take care to skulk beneath the protection of the cross of Geneva. The _Journal Officiel_ contains a decree breaking up the battalion of Belleville. These warriors, says their own Commander, ran away in the presence of the enemy, refused the next day to go to the front, and commenced fighting with their neighbours from La Villette. M. Gustave Flourens, who is the hero of these men of war, and who, although exercising no official rank in the battalion, insisted upon their accepting him as their chief, is to be brought before a Council of War. My next-door neighbour, Franchetti, died yesterday, and was buried to-day. He was a fine, handsome young man, well off, happily married, and, as the commander of the Eclaireurs of the Seine, has done good service during the siege. As he was an Israelite, he was followed to the grave by the Rothschilds and many other of his co-religionists. _December 8th._ M. de Sarcey, in the _Temps_ of to-day, enters into a lengthy argument to prove that the Parisians are heroic. "Heroism is positive and negative," he says, "and we have, for the sake of our country, deprived ourselves during several months of the power to make money, and during this time we have existed without many of the comforts to which we are accustomed." Now, I by no means wish to undervalue the sacrifices of the Parisians, but heroism is not the word for them. So long as there are enough provisions in the town to enable every one to live without feeling the pangs of hunger, they have no opportunity to show negative heroism. So long as the town is not assaulted, and they do not take part in sorties, they cannot be said to be actively heroic. A blockade such as the Prussians have instituted round Paris, is no doubt most disagreeable to its inhabitants. In submitting to it, undoubtedly they show their patriotism and their power of passive endurance. Heroism is, however, something more than either patriotism or endurance--it is an exceptional quality which is rarely found in this world. If the Parisians possessed it, I should admire them; because they do not, no one has a right to blame them.