At points close by the ramparts there are reserves of Mobiles and National Guards, ready at a moment's notice both by day and night to reinforce them.

In the centre of the town there are reserves under arms.
Outside the gates, between the forts and the ramparts, troops are massed with artillery, and the forts are well garrisoned.

A gentleman who has lately been under a cloud, as he was the inventor of the Orsini bombs, has several thousand men at work on infernal machines.

This magician assures me that within a week he will destroy the German armies as completely as were the Assyrians who besieged Samaria under Sennacherib.
He is an enthusiast, but an excellent chemist, and I really have hopes that he will before long astonish our friends outside.

He promises me that I shall witness his experiments in German corpore vili; and though I have in mind a quotation about being hoisted with one's own petard, I shall certainly keep him to his word.