The news from the provinces is not considered encouraging.

Great stress is laid upon a proclamation addressed by King William to his troops on December 6, in which it is considered that there is evidence that the Prussians are getting tired of the war.

We hear now, for the first time, that Prussia has "denounced" the Luxemburg Treaty of '67, and forgetting that the guarantee of neutrality with respect to these lotus-eaters was collective, and not joint and several, we anxiously ask whether England will not regard this as a _casus belli_.

"As soon as Parliament assembles," says _La Verite_, "that great statesman Disraeli will turn out Mr.Gladstone, and then our old ally will be restored to us." The _Gaulois_ observes that "the English journalists residing at Paris keep up the illusion that Paris must fall by sending to their journals false news, which is reproduced in the organs of Prussia." "These journalists," adds the _Gaulois_, "who are our guests, fail in those duties which circumstances impose upon them." Every correspondent residing abroad must be the guest, in a certain sense, of the country from which he is writing; but that this position should oblige him to square his facts to suit the wishes of his hosts appears to me a strange theory.

Had I been M.Jules Favre, I confess that I should have turned out all foreign journalists at the commencement of the siege.