Monday, the 3rd of April.[33] A fearful day! I have been hurrying this way and that, looking, questioning, reading. It is now ten o’clock in the evening. And what do I know? Nothing certain; nothing except this, which is awful,—they are fighting. Yes, at the gates of Paris, Frenchmen against Frenchmen, beneath the eyes of the Prussians, who are watching the battle-field like ravens: they are fighting. I have seen ambulance waggons pass full of National Guards. By whom have they been wounded? By Zouaves. Is this thing credible, is it possible? Ah! those guns, cannon, and mitrailleuses, why were they not all claimed by the enemy—all, every one, from soldiers and Parisians alike? But little hindrance would that have proved. It had been resolved—by what monstrous will?—that we should be hurled to the very bottom of the precipice. These Frenchmen, who would kill Frenchmen, would not be checked by lack of arms. If they could not shoot each other, they would strangle each other. [Illustration: The Barricade: Evening Meal—soup and cigars, and a “petit verre”] This, indeed, was unlooked for. An insurrection was feared; men thought of the June days; that evening when the battalions devoted to the National Assembly camped in the neighbourhood of the Bank, we imagined, as a horrible possibility, muskets pointed from between the stones of barricades, blood flowing in the streets, men killed, women in tears. But who could have foretold that a new species of civil war was preparing? That Paris, separated from France, would be blockaded by Frenchmen? That it would once more be deprived of communication with the provinces; once more starved perhaps? That there would be, not a few men struggling to the death in one of the quarters of the town, but two armies in presence, each with chiefs, fortifications and cannon? That Paris, in a word, would be besieged anew? How abominable a surprise of fate!