As for the bourgeois and the Government, their most powerful ally is the cry, "No division; let us all be united." They are both, however, in a radically false position.

They have called upon the world to witness how a great capital can die rather than surrender; and yet, if no external agency prevents the surrender, they have no intention to fulfil their boast of dying.

Any loophole for escape from, the alternative in which they have thrust themselves they would welcome.
"Our provisions will last three months," they say; "during this time something must happen to our advantage." "What ?" I inquire.

"The Army of the Loire will advance, or Bazaine will get out of Metz, or the Prussians will despair of success, or we shall be able to introduce convoys of provisions." "But if none of these prophecies are realised .-- what then ?" I have asked a hundred times, without ever getting a clear answer to my question.

By some strange process of reasoning in what, as Lord Westbury would say, they are pleased to call their minds, they appear to have arrived at the conviction that Paris never will be taken, because they are unable to realise the possibility of an event which they seem to consider is contrary to that law of nature, which, has made her the capital and the mistress of the world.