It is now the middle of November-a Sunday. The day has been mild, and is drawing towards its close. The Parisians have been enjoying the sunshine. Under the leafless trees in the public gardens and the Champs Elysees children have been at play. On the Boulevards the old elegance of gaiety is succeeded by a livelier animation. Itinerant musicians gather round them ragged groups. Fortune-tellers are in great request, especially among the once brilliant Laises and Thaises, now looking more shabby, to whom they predict the speedy restoration of Nabobs and Russians, and golden joys. Yonder Punch is achieving a victory over the Evil One, who wears the Prussian spiked helmet, and whose face has been recently beautified into a resemblance to Bismarck. Punch draws to his show a laughing audience of _Moblots_ and recruits to the new companies of the National Guard. Members of the once formidable police, now threadbare and hunger-pinched, stand side by side with unfortunate beggars and sinister-looking patriots who have served their time in the jails or galleys. Uniforms of all variety are conspicuous--the only evidence visible of an enemy at the walls. But the aspects of the wearers of warlike accoutrements are debonnaire and smiling, as of revellers on a holiday of peace. Among these defenders of their country, at the door of a crowded _cafe_, stands Frederic Lemercier, superb in the costume, bran-new, of a National Guard,--his dog Fox tranquilly reposing on its haunches, with eyes fixed upon its fellow-dog philosophically musing on the edge of Punch's show, whose master is engaged in the conquest of the Bismarck fiend. "Lemercier," cried the Vicomte de Breze, approaching the _cafe_, "I scarcely recognise you in that martial guise. You look _magnifique_-- the _galons_ become you. _Peste_! an officer already?" "The National Guards and Mobiles are permitted to choose their own officers, as you are aware. I have been elected, but to subaltern grade, by the warlike patriots of my department. Enguerrand de Vandemar is elected a captain of the Mobiles in his, and Victor de Mauleon is appointed to the command of a battalion of the National Guards. But I soar above jealousy at such a moment,-- "'Rome a choisi mon bras; je n'examine rien.'" "You have no right to be jealous. De Mauldon has had experience and won distinction in actual service, and from all I hear is doing wonders with his men--has got them not only to keep but to love drill. I heard no less an authority than General V---- say that if all the officers of the National Guard were like De Mauleon, that body would give an example of discipline to the line." "I say nothing as to the promotion of a real soldier like the Vicomte-- but a Parisian dandy like Euguerrand de Vande--" "You forget that Enguerrand received a military education--an advantage denied to you."