In a question of military strategy between the grocers of Paris and the Prussian generals I should have thought that the odds were considerably in favour of the latter, but I am told that this is not so, and that in laying siege to Paris they are committing a mistake for which a schoolboy would be deservedly whipped.

If you eliminate the working-class element, which has not been corrupted by the Imperial system, the population of this town is much what I imagine that of Constantinople to have been when it was taken by the Turks.

They are Greeks of the lower empire.

Monsieur sticks his kepi on one side of his head, and struts and swaggers along the Boulevard as though he were a bantam cock.

We have lost the _petits creves_ who formed so agreeable an element in society, but they have been replaced by the military dandy, a being, if possible, still more offensive.