the middle of it. To be knocked on the head by a shell, merely to gratify one's curiosity, appears to me to be the utmost height of absurdity. Those who put themselves between the hammer and the anvil, come off generally second best, and I determined to defer my visit to the interesting village before me until the question whether it was to belong to Gaul or Teuton had been definitely decided. So I turned off to the left and went to St. Denis. Here everybody was in the streets, asking everybody else for news. The forts all round it were firing heavily. On the Place before the Cathedral there was a great crowd of men, women, and children. The sailors, who are quartered here in great numbers, said that they had carried Le Bourget early in the morning, but that they had been obliged to fall back, with the loss of about a third of their number. Most of them had hatchets by their sides, and they attack a position much as if they were boarding a ship. About 100 prisoners had been brought into the town in the morning, as well as two Freres Chretiens, who had been wounded, and for whom the greatest sympathy was expressed. Little seemed to be known of what was passing. "The Prussians will be here in an hour," shouted one man; "The Prussians are being exterminated," shouted another. "What is this?" cried the crowd, as Monseigneur Bauer, the bishop _in partibus infidelium_ of some place or other, now came riding along with his staff. He held up his two fingers, and turned his hand right and left. His pastoral blessing was, however, but a half success. The women crossed themselves, and the men muttered "farceur." The war which is now raging has produced many oddities, but none to my mind equal to this bishop. His great object is to see and be seen, and most thoroughly does he succeed in his object. He is a short, stout man, dressed in a cassock, a pair of jack-boots with large spurs, and a hat such as you would only see at the opera. On his breast he wears a huge star. Round his neck is a chain, with a great golden cross attached to it; and on his fingers, over his gloves, he wears gorgeous rings. The trappings of his horse are thickly sprinkled with Geneva crosses. By his side rides a standard-bearer, bearing aloft a flag with a red cross. Eight aides-de-camp, arrayed in a sort of purple and gold fancy uniform, follow him, and the _cortege_ is closed by two grooms in unimpeachable tops. In this guise, and followed by this etat major, he is a conspicuous figure upon a field of battle, and produces much the same effect as the head of a circus riding into a town on a piebald horse, surrounded by clowns and pets of the ballet. He was the confessor of the Empress, and is now the aumonier of the Press; but why he wears jack-boots, why he capers about on a fiery horse, why he has a staff of aides-de-camp, and why he has two grooms, are things which no one seems to know. He patronises generals and admirals, doctors and commissariat