[Gutenberg 19263] • Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1871 Original Publisher: Hurst and Blackett Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. September 30th. We are still beating our tom-toms like the Chinese, to frighten away the enemy, and our braves still fire off powder at invisible Uhlans. The Prussians, to our intense disgust, will not condescend even to notice us. We jeer at them, we revile them, and yet they will not attack us. What they are doing "we cannot understand. They appear to have withdrawn from the advanced positions which they held. We know that they are in the habit of making war in a thoroughly ungentlemanly manner, and we cannot make up our minds whether our " attitude " is causing them to hesitate, or whether they are not devising some new trick to take us by surprise. That they are starving, that their communications with Germany arc cut off, that their leaders are at loggerheads, that the Army of the Loire will soon be here to help us to demolish them, we have not the slightest doubt. The question is no longer whether Paris will be taken -- that we have solved already -- it is whether the Prussians will be able to get back to the Rhine. We are thankful that Bismarck did not accept Jules Favre's offer of a money indemnity. We would not give a hundred francs now to ensure peace or an armistice. I went this morning into a shop, the proprietor of which, a bootmaker, I have long known, and I listened with interest to the conversation GOSSIP IN A BOOT-SHOP. 63 of this worthy man with some of his neighbours who had dropped in to have a gossip, and to congratulate him on his martial achievements, as he had been on guard in a bastion. We first discussed why the Army of th...