I translate the opening paragraphs of one of them which I have just read:--"In the midst of events which are overwhelming us, there is something still more melancholy than our defeat: it is our isolation.
For a month the world has looked on with an impassibility, mingled with shame and cynicism, at the ruin of a capital which possesses the most exquisite gifts of sociability, the principal jewel of Europe, and the eternal ornament of civilisation." Nothing like having a good opinion of oneself.
_Evening._ I hear of some one going to try to-morrow to get through the lines, so I give him a copy of this letter.

My last letter went off--or rather did not go off--by a private balloon.

The speculator rushed in, just as I expected him to be off, and said, "Celestine has burst." To my horror I discovered that he was speaking of the balloon.

He then added, "Ernestine remains to us," and to Ernestine I confided my letter.

I have not seen the speculator since; it may be that Ernestine has burst too.
The latest _canard_ is that 10,000 Prussians are in a wood near Villejuif, where they have been driven by the French.