This afternoon, hearing that egress was allowed at the Barriere de Neuilly, I started out in a fiacre, to see what was to be seen in that direction. Along the Avenue de Neuilly there were encampments of soldiers of the line and Mobiles. At the bridge of Neuilly my fiacre was stopped, but having explained to the commander of the picket that I wanted to take a walk, and shown my papers, for some reason best known to himself, he allowed me to go forward on foot. In Courbevoie all the houses were shut up, except those occupied by troops, and the windows of these were filled with sandbags. Right and left trees were being cut down, and every moment some old poplar was brought to the ground. I passed through Courbevoie, as no one seemed to notice me, and held on to the right until I struck Asnieres. It is a species of French Greenwich, full of hotels, tea-gardens, and restaurants. The last time I had been there was on a Sunday, when it was crowded with Parisian bourgeois, and they were eating, drinking, dancing, and making merry. The houses had not been destroyed, but there was not a living soul in the place. On the promenade by the river the leaves were falling from the trees under which were the benches as of old. The gay signs still hung above the restaurants, and here and there was an advertisement informing the world that M. Pitou offered his hosts beer at so much the glass, or that the more ambitious Monsieur Some One Else was prepared to serve an excellent dinner of eels for 2fr., but I might as well have expected to get beer or eels in Palmyra as in this village where a few short weeks ago fish, flesh, and fowl, wine and beer were as plentiful as at Greenwich and Richmond during the season. Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," I said to myself, and I should have repeated some lines from this admirable poem had I remembered any; as I did not, I walked on in the direction of Colombes, vaguely ruminating upon Pompeii, Palmyra, fish dinners at Greenwich, and the mutability of human things. I had hardly left Asnieres, however, and was plodding along a path, when I was recalled to the realities of life by half-a-dozen Mobiles springing up from behind a low wall, and calling upon me to stop, while they enforced their order by pointing their muskets at my head. I stood still, and they surrounded me. I explained that I was an Englishman inhabiting Paris, and that I had come out to take a walk. My papers were brought out and narrowly inspected. My passport, that charter of the Civis Romanus, was put aside as though it had been a document of no value. A letter from one of the authorities, which was a species of unofficial _laisser passer_, was read, and then a sort of council of war was held about what ought to be done with me. They seemed to be innocent and well meaning peasants; they said that they had orders to let no one pass, and they were surprised that I had got so far without being stopped. I told