These missiles were intended probably for the redoubts, as they fell mainly on the outskirts of the town. They exploded on the hard roads, and suggested plenty of melancholy speculation as to the precise number of them that would be needed to double up for ever the entire population. Fever continued to play havoc with both natives and Europeans. The Siege was growing warm, insufferably warm, and the weather that nature gave us was in all conscience hot enough. In our fourteenth week of hunger and thirst matters were as bad as they could be--until the meat Directorate proceeded scientifically to confound the fallacy in their own peculiar way. The half and half regulation had been in operation some days--a few eating all they got--others only half of it--more again touching no meat at all lest they should (horrible thought!) mistake one half for the other. This state of things did not satisfy the Authorities, and they proceeded to push the horse--practically down our throats. The feelings of the civilised citizens of the Diamond City can be better imagined than described when they read in the daily _bulletin_ at the Washington Market that they would get--not _all_ horse indeed, but, in the words of the song, "it was near it." It was decreed that our ration should henceforth consist of four-fifths horse-flesh and one-fifth meat proper. This reduced our allowance of solid (familiar) food to less than one ounce, or in other words to the dimensions of a small cake of tobacco _minus_ several pipefuls! It may well be doubted whether Gilbert has ever conceived anything so quaint. I will not dwell on its whimsical side, nor on the feelings its realism stirred in the breasts of the suffering multitude. In effect it caused a serious secession from the ranks of the party who had abstained altogether from horseflesh. For when it came to a choice between no meat at all on the one side, and Boer bread and porridge _exclusively_ on the other, it occurred to the seceders that even horse blood is thicker than water; so they passed under the yoke of hippophagy with perfect composure. Still the party that suffered this defection lost neither _prestige_ nor numerical strength, for the four-fifths' standard made vegetarians of many who had tolerated--while it lasted--the principle of equal rights, or two ounces of each animal. A transposition of parties occurred. But none abstained from opening the floodgates of their wrath on the authors of the latest _menu_. The authors' apologists, for--tell it not in Gath!--they had apologists still, argued that there were restaurants in Paris where cooked horse was a speciality. But special pleading so palpable only aggravated the prevailing resentment to the dish. There were a great many customs in Paris equally foreign to our, shall I say, Imperial ways; together with a plethora of scientific _chefs_ who could metamorphose anything--rats as well as horses. There were