The only practical man among them is M.Dorian, the Minister of Public Works, M.Dorian is a hard-headed manufacturer, and utterly ignoring red tape, clerks, and routine; he has set all the private ateliers to work, to make cannon and muskets.

I have not yet heard of his making a single speech, or issuing a single proclamation since the commencement of the siege, and he alone of his colleagues appears to me to be the right man in the right place.

I do not take my views of the working men from the nonsense which is printed about them in official and semi-official organs.

They are the only class here which, to use an Americanism, is not "played out." The Government dreads them as much as the Empire did; but although they are too much carried away by their enthusiasm and their impulsiveness, they are the only persons in Paris who appear to have a grain of common sense.

"As for the Army of the Loire," said one of them to me this morning, "no one, except a fool or a Government employe, can believe that it will ever be able to raise the siege, and as for all these bourgeois, they consider that they are heroes because once or twice a week they pass the night at the ramparts; they think first of their shops, then of their country." "But how can you imagine that you and your friends would be able to defeat the Prussians, who are disciplined soldiers ?" I asked.
"We can at least try," he replied.