Emperor, who knew not even how a Caesar should die, is a prisoner; his creatures are enjoying their booty in ignoble ease, not daring even to fight for the country which they have betrayed. The gay crowd has taken to itself wings; an emasculated bourgeoisie, grown rich upon fashionable follies, and a mob of working men, unused to arms, and distrustful even of their own leaders, are cowering beneath the ramparts of Paris, opposing frantic boasts, pitiful lamentations, unskilled valour, to the stern discipline of the legions of Germany, whose iron grasp is contracting closer and closer every day round the vaunted capital of modern civilization. You know better than we do what is passing in the provinces, but I can answer for it that the Parisians, low as they have fallen, are not so lost to every impulse of honour as to be ready to welcome back in triumph the prime cause of their degradation, the man of December and of Sedan. Titania, in the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, idealizes the weaver, and invests him with every noble attribute, and then as soon as she regains her senses, turns from him with disgust and exclaims, "Oh, how mine eyes do loathe thee now." So it was and so it is with Paris and Napoleon, "None so poor to do him honour now." The Government is daily becoming more and more military, and the Parisian Deputies are becoming little more than lay figures. M. Gambetta, the most energetic of them, has left for the provinces. MM. Jules Favre, Picard, and Pelletan are almost forgotten. Rochefort devotes himself to the barricades, and M. Dorian, a hard-headed manufacturer, is occupying himself in stimulating the manufacture of cannon, muskets, and munitions of war. These gentlemen, with the exception of the latter, are rather men of words than of action. They do neither harm nor good. Of General Trochu, into whose hands, by the mere force of circumstances, all civil and military authority is concentrating, _Bonum virum, facile dixeris, magnum libenter_. He is, I believe, a good general and a good administrator. Although he awakens no enthusiasm, confidence is felt by the majority in his good sense. It is thought, however, that he is wanting in that energy and audacity which are requisite in a leader, if victory is to be wrested from the Germans. He forgets that time is not his ally, and that merely to hold Paris until that surely inevitable hour arrives when the provisions are exhausted will neither save France nor her capital. He is a man slow to form a plan, but obstinate in his adherence to it; unwilling to move until he has his forces perfectly under control, and until every administrative detail is perfected--better fitted to defend Troy for ten years than Paris for a few months--in fact, a species of French M'Clellan.