The lesson, however, has not profited the Parisians.

The following letter appears in the _Combat_, signed by the "adjoint" of the 13th arrondissement.

The defence on the part of this municipal functionary of a marching battalion, which, at the outposts, broke into a church, and there parodied the celebration of the mass, is a gem in its way:-- "The marching companies of this battalion left Paris on the morning of the 16th to go to the outposts at Issy.

The departure was what all departures of marching battalions must fatally be--copious and multiplied libations between parting friends, paternal handshakings in cabarets, patriotic and bacchic songs, loose and indecent choruses--in a word, the picturesque exhibition of all that arsenal of gaiety and courage which is the appanage of an ancient Gallic race.

The old troopers, who pretend to govern us by the sword, do not approve of this joyous mode of regarding death; and all the writers whose pens are dipped in the ink of reaction and Jesuitism are eager to discover any eccentricity in which soldiers who are going under fire for the first time permit themselves to indulge.