I went to the Hotel de Ville this afternoon, to see whether anything was going on there. Several battalions passed by, but they did not demonstrate _en passant_. The place was full of groups of what in England would be called the "dangerous classes." They were patiently listening to various orators who were denouncing everything in general, and the Government in particular. The principal question seemed to be that of arms. Frenchmen are so accustomed to expect their Governments to do everything for them, that they cannot understand why, although there were but few Chassepots in the city, every citizen should not be given one. It is indeed necessary to live here and to mix with all classes to realise the fact that the Parisians have until now lived in an ideal world of their own creation. Their orators, their statesmen, and their journalists, have traded upon the traditions of the First Empire, and persuaded them that they are a superior race, and that their superiority is universally recognised. Utterly ignorant of foreign languages and of foreign countries, they believe that their literature is the only one in the world, and that a Frenchman abroad is adored as something little less than a divinity. They regard the Prussians round their city much as the citizens of Sparta would have regarded Helots, and they are so astonished at their reverses, that they are utterly unable to realise what is going on. As for trying to make them comprehend that Paris ought to enjoy no immunity from attack which Berlin or London might not equally claim, it is labour lost. "The neutrals," I heard a member of the late Assembly shouting in a cafe, "are traitors to civilisation in not coming to the aid of the Queen of Europe." They did their very best, they declare, to prevent Napoleon from making war. Yet one has only to talk with one of them for half an hour to find that he still hankers after the Rhine, and thinks that France wishes to be supreme in Europe. _October 8th._