French officers are, of course, incapable of this contemptible conduct, and it must be owned that the majority of the Parisians have not, under the trying circumstances in which they find themselves, lost that courtesy which is one of the peculiar attributes of the nation.

But there is a scum, who lived from hand to mouth during the Empire, and which infests the restaurants and the public places.

Some of them wear the uniform of the National Guard; others have attached themselves to the ambulances; and all take very good care not to risk their precious lives.

I was peaceably dining last night in a restaurant; a friend with whom I had been talking English had left me, and I found myself alone with four of these worthies, who were dining at a table near me.

For my especial benefit they informed each other that all strangers here were outlaws from their own country, and that the Americans and Italians who have established ambulances were in all probability Prussian spies.