We descend the Rue de Rivoli. On the right, in the Rue Castiglione, a huge barricade obstructs the entrance of the Place Vendome. The issue of the Place de la Concorde is barred by the St. Florentin redoubt, stretching to the Ministry of Marine on its right, and the garden of the Tuileries on its left, with three rather badly directed embrasures eight yards wide. An enormous ditch, laying bare all the arteries of subterranean life, separates the place from the redoubt. The workmen are giving it the finishing stroke, and cover the epaulments with gazon. Many promenaders look on inquisitively, and more than one brow lowers. A corridor skilfully constructed conducts us to the Place de la Concorde. The proud profile of the Strasbourg statue stands out against the red flags. The Communards, who are accused of ignoring France, have piously replaced the faded crowns of the first siege by fresh spring flowers. We now enter the zone of battle. The avenue of the Champs-Elysees unrolls its long-deserted line, cut by the dismal bursting of the shells from Mont-Valerien and Courbevoie. These reach as far as the Palais de l'Industrie, whose treasures the employes of the Commune courageously protect. In the distance rises the mighty bulk of the Arc de Triomphe. The sight-seers of the first days have disappeared, for the Place de l'Etoile has become almost as deadly as the rampart. The shells break off the bas-reliefs that M. Jules Simon had caused to be iron-clad against the Prussians. The main arch is walled up to stop the projectiles that enfiladed it. Behind this barricade they are getting ready to mount some pieces on the platform, which is almost as high as Mont-Valerien. By the Faubourg St. Honore we pass along the Champs-Elysees. In the right angle comprised between the Avenue de la Grande Armee, that of the Ternes, the ramparts, and the Avenue Wagram there is not a house intact. You see M. Thiers "does not bombard Paris, as the people of the Commune will not fail to say." Some shreds of a placard hang from a half-battered wall; it is M. Thiers' speech against King Bomba, which a group of conciliators have been witty enough to reproduce. "You know, gentlemen," said he to the bourgeois of 1848, "what is happening at Palermo. You all have shaken with horror on hearing that during forty-eight hours a large town has been bombarded. By whom? Was it by a foreign enemy exercising the rights of war? No, gentlemen, it was by its own Government. And why? Because that unfortunate town demanded its rights. Well, then, for the demand of its rights it has got forty-eight hours of bombardment!" Happy Palermo! Paris already has had forty days of bombardment.