I enclose you Gambetta's latest pigeon despatch. His style is so grandiloquently vague that we can make neither head nor tail of it. We cannot imagine what has become of Aurelles de Paladine and of the army of Keratry. The optimists say that Gambetta means that Bourbaki and Chanzy have surrounded Frederick Charles; the pessimists, that Frederick Charles has got between them. The general feeling seems to be that the provinces are doing more than was expected of them, but that they will fail to succour us. Here some of the newspapers urge Trochu to make a sortie, in order to prevent reinforcements being sent to Frederick Charles, others deprecate it as a useless waste of life. General Clement Thomas, who succeeded Tamisier about a month ago in the command of the National Guards, seems to be the right man in the right place. He is making great efforts to convert these citizens into soldiers, and stands no nonsense. Not a day passes without some patriotic captain being tried by court-martial for drunkenness or disobedience. If a battalion misbehaves itself, it is immediately gibbeted in the order of the day. The newspapers cry out against this. They say that Clement Thomas forgets that the National Guards are his children, and that dirty linen ought to be washed at home. "If this goes on, posterity," they complain, "will say that we were little more than a mob of undisciplined drunkards." I am afraid that Clement Thomas will not have time to carry out his reforms; had they been commenced earlier, there is no reason why Paris should not have had on foot 100,000 good troops.