“Where are you going?” asked I.—“We do not know,” says one; “Report says we are going to Montmartre,” adds the other.[5] They were really going to Montmartre. At five o’clock in the morning the 88th Regiment of the line occupied the top of the hill and the little streets leading to it, a place doubtless familiar to some of them, who on Sundays and fête days had clambered up the hill-sides in company with apple-faced rustics from the outskirts, and middle-class people of the quarter; taking part in the crowd on the Place Saint-Pierre, with its games and amusements, and “assisting,” as they would say, at shooting in a barrel, admiring the ability of some, whilst reviling the stupidity of others; when they had a few sous in their pockets they would try their own skill at throwing big balls into the mouths of fantastic monsters, painted upon a square board, while their country friends nibbled at spice-nuts, and thought them delicious. But on this 18th of March morning there are no women, nor spice-nuts, nor sport on the Place Saint-Pierre: all is slush and dirt, and the poor lines-men are obliged to stand at ease, resting upon their arms, not in the best of humour with the weather or the prospect before them. Ah! and the guns of the National Guard that frown from their embrasures on the top of the hill, have they been made use of against the Prussians? No! they have made no report during the siege, and were only heard on the days on which they were christened and paid for; elegant things, hardly to be blackened with powder, that it was always hoped would be pacific and never dangerous to the capital. Cruel irony! those guns for which Paris paid, and those American mitrailleuses, made out of the savings of both rich and poor, the farthings of the frugal housewife, and the napoleons of the millionaires; the contributions of the artists who designed, and the poets who pen’d, are ruining Paris instead of protecting it. The brass mouths that ate the bread of humanity are turned upon the nation itself to devour it also.