It is truly wonderful how many men eminent in various departments Buloz managed to enrol among the contributors to the _Revue_. Of course, his strict adherence to the rule he had laid down of rigidly exercising his prerogative as director led many who had written a few articles for the _Revue_ to abandon it in disgust. Still, many even of these returned after years of separation to their old love. Buloz maintained his even course undaunted by storms of criticism. He was to be found early and late at work, constantly reading, correcting proofs, busying himself as to the punctuation, the type, even the appearance of the title-pages. He himself was wont to define his position thus: "I am the public: all I ask is to be instructed or interested. If a work neither instructs nor interests me, the chances are that it will produce no better effect on the real public for whom it is written." He was always fearing that something would intervene to prevent the publication appearing by the 1st or the 15th of each month, and became almost feverishly agitated as the calendar pointed to the near approach of the day of publication. He received a severe blow by the death in 1869 of Louis Buloz, an intelligent, active and devoted young man who had already become the sharer of his father's toils. He went off to the estate he had purchased in 1859 in Savoy, commanding a view of the Valley of Chambery and the Lake of Bourget. While in this charming retreat the news reached him of the successive French defeats, culminating in the surrender of Sedan, the revolution of the 4th of September and the march of the Germans upon Paris. Without paying heed to his already weakened condition of health, he set out at once for Paris. Duty called him there, as he considered, and every other consideration was hushed. "What," his friends asked, "could the _Revue_ do in a besieged city, separated from so large a proportion of its readers and contributors?" Buloz was deaf to their remonstrances, and, struggling bravely against the enormous difficulties of his position, he managed, with the aid of a few devoted writers like M. de Mazade and Vitel, to get the _Revue_ out regularly during all those painful, weary weeks. When at length Paris capitulated, on the 28th of January, 1871, the world first knew to what straits the _Revue_ had been reduced. Its means had become completely exhausted. There was no paper left, nor were there funds to replenish the stock of the printing-office, even supposing that such a stock could have been purchased at that time. Yet, terrible as had been the struggle to keep up the _Revue_ during the siege, there was yet a harder task in store for M. Buloz and his family. After the capitulation he and his associates at once set about organizing afresh the entire machinery of the _Revue_. This occupied some six weeks, and when all the arrangements had been completed one contributor after another left the city. M. Buloz, too, went away.