I have breakfast--horse, _cafe au lait_--the _lait_ chalk and water--the portion of horse about two square inches of the noble quadruped. Then I buy a dozen newspapers, and after having read them, discover that they contain nothing new. This brings me to about eleven o'clock. Friends drop in, or I drop in on friends. We discuss how long it is to last--if friends are French we agree that we are sublime. At one o'clock get into the circular railroad, and go to one or other of the city gates. After a discussion with the National Guards on duty, pass through. Potter about for a couple of hours at the outposts; try with glass to make out Prussians; look at bombs bursting; creep along the trenches; and wade knee deep in mud through the fields. The Prussians, who have grown of late malevolent even toward civilians, occasionally send a ball far over one's head. They always fire too high. French soldiers are generally cooking food. They are anxious for news, and know nothing about what is going on. As a rule they relate the episode of some _combat d'avantposte_ which took place the day before. The episodes never vary. 5 P.M.--Get back home; talk to doctors about interesting surgical operations; then drop in upon some official to interview him about what is doing. Official usually first mysterious, then communicative, not to say loquacious, and abuses most people except himself. 7 P.M.--Dinner at a restaurant; conversation general; almost everyone in uniform. Still the old subjects--How long will it last? Why does not Gambetta write more clearly? How sublime we are; what a fool everyone else is. Food scanty, but peculiar. At Voisins to-day the bill of fare was ass, horse, and English wolf from the Zoological Garden. A Scotchman informed me that this latter was a fox of his native land, and patriotically gorged himself with it. I tried it, and not being a Scotchman, found it horrible, and fell back upon the patient ass. After dinner, potter on the Boulevards under the dispiriting gloom of petroleum; go home and read a book. 12 P.M.--Bed. They nail up the coffins in the room just over mine every night, and the tap, tap, tap, as they drive in the nails, is the pleasing music which lulls me to sleep. Now, I ask, after having endured this sort of thing day after day for three months, can I be expected to admire Geist, Germany, or Mr. Matthew Arnold? I sigh for a revolution, for a bombardment, for an assault, for anything which would give us a day's excitement.