The bold Britons who tried to run the blockade have returned. They managed to get over the bridge of Neuilly, but were arrested a few yards beyond it and brought back to General Ducrot. One of them was taken in with the passports of the five. "I cannot understand you English," the General said; "if you want to get shot we will shoot you ourselves to save you trouble." After some parley, General Ducrot gave them a pass to go through the French lines, but then he withdrew it, and said he must consult General Trochu. When the spokesman emerged, he found his friends being led off by a fresh batch of patriots for having no passports, but they at length got safely back to the Grand Hotel. Their leader, who is an intelligent man in his way, gives a very discouraging account of what he saw outside. The Mobiles were lying about on the roads, and everyone appeared to be doing much what he pleased. This afternoon I went up to the Trocadero to look at the heights on which they say that there are already Prussian guns. They appear most uncomfortably near. Those who had telescopes declared that they could see both guns and Prussians. We were always told until within a few days that Mont Valerien would protect all that side of Paris. How can the engineers have made such a mistake? This evening I went to call upon one of the chiefs of '48, and had an interesting conversation with him. He says that many think that he and his friends ought to be in the Government, and that eventually they all will be; he added "the Reds are determined to fight, and so long as the Government does not make a humiliating peace they will support it." I tried to get out what he considered a humiliating peace, but he rather fenced with the question. He tells me that at the Folies Bergeres, the headquarters of the ultras, great dissatisfaction is felt with the Committees of the "Clubs" for having gone yesterday to the Hotel de Ville, and endeavoured to force the Government to declare that it would not treat with the Prussians whilst they were on French soil, and to allow them to establish a "Commune" as an _imperium in imperio_. "The army of the Loire," said my friend, "will soon fall on the rear of the Prussians; we have only to hold out for a few weeks, and this, depend upon it, we shall do." Now, to the best of my belief, the army of the Loire only exists on paper, but here was a sensible man talking of it as though it consisted of some 200,000 seasoned troops; and what is more strange, he is by no means singular in his belief. A fortnight ago it was the army of Lyons, now it is the army of the Loire. How reasonable men can allow themselves to put their faith in these men of buckram, I cannot imagine. _September 23rd._