Day by day I am becoming more convinced that a lasting peace can only be signed in Paris, and that the Parisians must be brought to understand by hard experience that, if victory means an accession of military glory, defeat means humiliation, and that the one is just as possible as the other.

If the siege were raised to-morrow, the occupation of Alsace and Lorraine by an enemy would be disbelieved within six months by this vain, frivolous populace; and even if the German army does ever defile along the Boulevards, I shall not be surprised if we are told, as soon as they have withdrawn, that they never were there.

Shut up in this town with its inhabitants, my sympathies are entirely on their side, but my reason tells me that Bismarck is right in insisting upon treating in Paris.

Let him, if he can, come in here; let him impose upon France such a war indemnity, that every man, woman, and child in the country will curse the folly of this war for the next fifty years; and let him give up his scheme of annexation, and he will then have acted in the interests of Europe, and ultimately in those of France herself.

Prussia, after the battle of Jena, was as low as France is now.