Prussians will despair of success, or we shall be able to introduce convoys of provisions." "But if none of these prophecies are realised.--what then?" I have asked a hundred times, without ever getting a clear answer to my question. By some strange process of reasoning in what, as Lord Westbury would say, they are pleased to call their minds, they appear to have arrived at the conviction that Paris never will be taken, because they are unable to realise the possibility of an event which they seem to consider is contrary to that law of nature, which, has made her the capital and the mistress of the world. A victorious army is at their gates; they do not dare even to make a formidable sortie; there is no regular army in the field outside; their provisions have a limit; they can only communicate with the rest of the world by an occasional balloon; and yet they regard the idea of a foreign occupation of Paris much as we do a French invasion of England--a thing so improbable as to be barely possible. Yesterday there were a few groups on the Place de l'Hotel de Ville, but they were rather curious spectators than "manifesters." At about two o'clock the rappel was beaten in the Place Vendome, and several battalions of the National Guard of the quartier marched there and broke up these groups. M. Jules Ferry's head then appeared from the window, and he aired his eloquence in a speech congratulating the friends of order on having rallied to the defence of the Government. It is a very strange thing that no Frenchman, when in power, can understand equal justice between his opponents and his supporters. The present Government is made up of men who clamoured for a Municipal Council during the Empire, and whose first step upon taking possession of the Hotel de Ville was to decree the immediate election of a "Commune." Since then, yielding to the demands of their own supporters, they have withdrawn this decree, and now, if I go unarmed upon the Place de l'Hotel de Ville and cry "Vive la Commune," I am arrested; whereas if any battalion of the National Guard chooses, without orders, to go there in arms and cry, "a bas la Commune," immediately it is congratulated for its patriotism by some member of the Government.