The principal question seemed to be that of arms.

Frenchmen are so accustomed to expect their Governments to do everything for them, that they cannot understand why, although there were but few Chassepots in the city, every citizen should not be given one.

It is indeed necessary to live here and to mix with all classes to realise the fact that the Parisians have until now lived in an ideal world of their own creation.

Their orators, their statesmen, and their journalists, have traded upon the traditions of the First Empire, and persuaded them that they are a superior race, and that their superiority is universally recognised.

Utterly ignorant of foreign languages and of foreign countries, they believe that their literature is the only one in the world, and that a Frenchman abroad is adored as something little less than a divinity.