"In falling," says M.Gambetta, "they cast a glance towards Paris to affirm once more the unity and indivisibility of the Republic; and they leave us as a legacy the duty to deliver them, the honour to revenge them." The Boulevards were crowded, and everyone seemed as much astonished as if they had never believed this double disaster to be possible.

Many refused to credit the news.

_L'Electeur Libre_ proposes to meet the emergency by sending "virile missionaries into the provinces to organise a _levee en masse_, to drive from our territory the impious hordes which are overrunning it." These missionaries would, I presume, go to their posts in balloons.

It never seems to occur to anyone here that the authority of a Parisian dropping down from the clouds in a parachute in any province would be contested.

The right of Paris to rule France is a dictum so unquestioned in the minds of the Parisians, that their newspapers are now urging the Government to send new men to Tours to oust those who were sent there before the commencement of the siege.