Johnson, discharging the duties of a Queen's Messenger; and as he repeatedly flourished a cane in a very menacing manner, and the door-porter of the British Embassy--a German, I believe--energetically came to his assistance, he escaped actual molestation, and drove in triumph into the courtyard of the ambassadorial mansion. At this time a great shock was awaiting the Parisians. During the same week the Vicomtesse de Renneville issued an announcement stating that in presence of the events which were occurring she was constrained to suspend the publication of her renowned journal of fashions, _La Gazette Rose_. This was a tragic blow both for the Parisians themselves and for all the world beyond them. There would be no more Paris fashions! To what despair would not millions of women be reduced? How would they dress, even supposing that they should contrive to dress at all? The thought was appalling; and as one and another great _couturier_ closed his doors, Paris began to realize that her prestige was indeed in jeopardy. A day or two after the investment the city became very restless on account of Thiers's mission to foreign Courts and Jules Favre's visit to the German headquarters, it being reported by the extremists that the Government did not intend to be a Government of National Defence but one of Capitulation. In reply to those rumours the authorities issued the famous proclamation in which they said; "The Government's policy is that formulated in these terms: Not an Inch of our Territory. Not a Stone of our Fortresses. The Government will maintain it to the end." On the morrow, September 21, Gambetta personally reminded us that it was the seventy-eighth anniversary of the foundation of the first French Republic, and, after recalling to the Parisians what their fathers had then accomplished, he exhorted them to follow that illustrious example, and to "secure victory by confronting death." That same evening the clubs decided that a great demonstration should be made on the morrow by way of insisting that no treaty should be discussed until the Germans had been driven out of France, that no territory, fort, vessel, or treasure should be surrendered, that all elections should be adjourned, and that a _levee en masse_ should be decreed. Jules Favre responded that he and his colleagues personified Defence and not Surrender, and Rochefort--poor Rochefort!--solemnly promised that the barricades of Paris should be begun that very night. That undertaking mightily pleased the agitators, though the use of the said barricades was not apparent; and the demonstrators dispersed with the usual shouts of "Vive la Republique! Mort aux Prussiens!"