Probably the whole of the Government ought to have gone there; for, shut up in the capital, it lost touch with the provinces, save when balloons and carrier-pigeons eluded the German sharpshooters and brought precious news[55].

The mistake was seen in time to enable a man of wondrous energy to leave Paris by balloon on October 7, to descend as a veritable _deus ex machina_ on the faltering Delegation at Tours, and to stir the blood of France by his invective.
There was a touch of the melodramatic not only in his apparition but in his speeches.

Frenchmen, however, follow a leader all the better if he is a good stage-manager and a clever actor.

The new leader was both; but he was something more.
[Footnote 55: M.Gregoire in his _Histoire de France_, vol.iv.p.

647, states that 64 balloons left Paris during the siege, 5 were captured and 2 lost in the sea; 363 carrier-pigeons left the city and 57 came in.