Decidedly horse is not good for me. Yet I ate some. It gives me the gripes. I avenged myself at dessert with the following distich: _Mon diner m’inquiete et même me harcêle, J’ai mange du cheval et je songe a la selle_. The Prussians are bombarding Saint Denis. January 2.--Daumier and Louis Blanc lunched with us. Louis Koch gave to his aunt as a New Year gift a couple of cabbages and a brace of living partridges! This morning we lunched on wine soup. The elephant at the Jardin des Plantes has been slaughtered. He wept. He will be eaten.. The Prussians continue to send us 6,000 bombs a day. January 3.--The heating of two rooms at the Pavillon de Rohan now costs 10 francs a day. The Mountaineers’ club again demands that Louis Blanc and I be added to the Government in order to direct it. I continue to refuse. There are at present twelve members of the French Academy in Paris, among them Ségur, Mignet, Dufaure, d’Haussonville, Legouvé, Cuvillier-Fleury, Barbier and Vitet. Moon. Intense cold. The Prussians bombarded Saint Denis all night. From Tuesday to Sunday the Prussians hurled 25,000 projectiles at us. It required 220 railway trucks to transport them. Each shot costs 60 francs; total, 1,500,000 francs. The damage to the forts is estimated at 1,400 francs. About ten men have been killed. Each of our dead cost the Prussians 150,000 francs. January 5.--The bombardment is becoming heavier. Issy and Vanves are being shelled. There is no coal. Clothes cannot be washed because they cannot be dried. My washerwoman sent this message to me through Mariette: “If M. Victor Hugo, who is so powerful, would ask the Government to give me a little coal-dust, I could wash his shirts.” Besides my usual Thursday guests I had Louis Blanc, Rochefort and Paul de Saint Victor to dinner. Mme. Jules Simon sent me a Gruyère cheese. An extraordinary luxury, this. We were thirteen at table. January 6.--At dessert yesterday I offered some bonbons to the ladies, saying as I did so: _Grace a Boissier, chêre colombes, Heureux, a vos pieds nous tombons. Car on prend les forts par les bombes Et les faibles par les bonbons_. The Parisians out of curiosity visit the bombarded districts. They go to see the shells fall as they would go to a fireworks display. National Guards have to keep the people back. The Prussians are firing on the hospitals. They are bombarding Val-de-Grâce. Their shells set fire to the wooden booths in the Luxembourg, which were full of sick and wounded men, who had to be transported, undressed and wrapped up as well as they could be, to the Charité Hospital. Barbieux saw them arrive there about 1 o’clock in the morning. Sixteen streets have already been hit by shells. January 7.--The Rue des Feuillantines, which runs through the place where the garden of my boyhood used to be, is heavily bombarded. I was nearly struck by a shell there.