Metz is at the confluence of the Seille and the Moselle. The houses are four or five stories high; their old walls are full of beams as at Saverne and Bouxviller, the windows round and square, great and small, on the same line, with shutters and without, some with glass and some without any. It is as old as the mountains and rivers. The roofs project about six feet, spreading their shadows over the black water, in which old shoes, rags, and dead dogs are floating. If you look upward you will be sure to see the face of some old Jew at the windows in the roof, with his gray beard and crooked nose, or a child who is risking his neck. Properly speaking, it is a city of Jews and soldiers. Poor people are not wanting either. It is much worse in this respect than at Mayence, or at Strasbourg, or even at Frankfort. If they have not changed since then, they love their ease now. In spite of my sadness I could not help looking at these lanes and alleys. The town swarmed with national guards; they were arriving from Longwy, from Sarrelouis and other places; the soldiers left and were replaced by these guards. We came upon a square encumbered with beds and mattresses, bedding, etc., which the citizens had furnished for the troops. We stacked arms in front of the barracks, every window of which was open from top to bottom. We waited, thinking we should be lodged there, but at the end of twenty minutes the distribution commenced, and each man received twenty-five sous and a ticket for lodging. We broke rank, each one going his own way. Jean Buche, who had never seen any other town than Pfalzbourg, did not leave me for a moment. Our ticket was for Elias Meyer, butcher, in the rue St. Valery. When we reached the house the butcher was cutting meat in the arched and grated window, and was anything but pleased to see us, and received us very ungraciously. He was a fat, red, round-faced Jew, with silver rings on his fingers and in his ears. His thin, yellow-skinned wife came down exclaiming that they had "had lodgers for two nights before, that the mayor's secretary did it on purpose, that he sent soldiers every day, and that the neighbors did not have them," and so on.