Let us look at it from a logical point of view, if you please. Does it seem possible to you, that Paris can hold its own against the whole of the rest of France? No, most certainly not. Today, especially, after the disasters that have occurred to the communal insurrectionists of Marseilles, Lyons, and Toulouse—disasters which your lying official reports have in vain tried to transform into successes; today, I say, you cannot possibly nourish any delusive hopes of help from the provinces. In a few days, you will have the whole country in array in front of your ramparts and your ruined fortresses, and then you are lost; yes, lost, in spite of all the blinded heroism of those whom you have beguiled to the slaughter. The only hope you could reasonably have conceived was that of profiting by the first moment of surprise and disorder, which the victorious revolt had occasioned among the small number of hesitating soldiery which then constituted the whole of the French army; to surprise Versailles, inadequately defended, and seize, if it were possible, on the Assembly and the Government. Your sudden revolution wanted to be followed up by a brusque attack, there would then have been some hope—a faint one, I confess, but still a hope, and this plan of Bergeret, by the very reason of its audacity, should not have been condemned by you, who have only succeeded through violence and audacity, and can only go on prospering by the same means. Now what do you mean to do? To resist the whole of France? To resist your enemies inside the walls, besides those enemies outside, who increase in numbers and confidence every day? Your defeat is certain, and from this day forth is only a question of time. You were decidedly wrong to put Bergeret “in the shade” as they say at the Hôtel de Ville,—firstly, because he amused us; and secondly, because he tried the only thing that could possibly have succeeded—an enterprise worthy of a brilliant madman. NOTES: