It is very strange what opposite opinions one hears about the condition of the poor. Some persons say that there is no distress, others that it cannot be greater. The fact is, the men were never better off, the women and children never so badly off. Every man can have enough to eat and too much to drink by dawdling about with a gun. As his home is cold and cheerless, when he is not on duty he lives at a pothouse. He brings no money to his wife and children, who consequently only just keep body and soul together by going to the national cantines, where they get soup, and to the Mairies, where they occasionally get an order for bread. Almost all their clothes are in pawn, so how it is they do not positively die of cold I cannot understand. As for fuel even the wealthy find it difficult to procure it. The Government talks of cutting down all the trees and of giving up all the clothes in pawn; but, with its usual procrastination, it puts off both these measures from day to day. This morning all the firewood was requisitioned. At a meeting of the Mayors of Paris two days ago, it was stated that above 400,000 persons are in receipt of parish relief. The troops outside Paris are gradually being brought back inside. A trench has been dug almost continuously from Drancy to Aubervilliers, and an attempt has been made to approach Le Bourget by flying sap. The ground, is, however, so hard, that it is much like attempting to cut through a rock. To my mind the whole thing is merely undertaken in order to persuade the Parisians that something is being done. For the moment they are satisfied. "The Prussians," they say, "have besieged us; we are besieging the Prussians now." What they will say when they find that even these operations are suspended, I do not know. The troops have suffered terribly from the cold during these last few days. Twelve degrees of frost "centigrade" is no joke. I was talking to some officers of Zouaves who had been twenty hours at the outposts. They said that during all this time they had not ventured to light a fire, and that this morning their wine and bread were both frozen. In the tents there are small stoves, but they give out little warmth. Even inside the deserted houses it is almost as cold as outside. The windows and the doors have been converted into firewood, and the wind whistles through them. The ambulance waggons of the Press alone have brought in nearly 500 men frost-bitten, or taken suddenly ill. From the batteries at Bondy and Avron there has been some sharp firing, the object of which has been to oblige the Prussians to keep inside the Forest of Bondy, and to disquiet them whenever they take to digging anywhere outside it. The plain of Avron is a very important position as it commands the whole country round. The end of Le Bourget, towards Paris appears entirely deserted. An ambulance cart went up to a barricade this morning which crosses the main street, when a Prussian sentinel emerged and ordered it