Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris

REPRINTED FROM THE DAILY NEWS, WITH SEVERAL NEW LETTERS AND PREFACE.
IN ONE VOLUME.
Second Edition, Revised.
LONDON: HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 1871.
The Right of Translation is Reserved .
LONDON: BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
Transcriber's note: In this book there are inconsistencies in accentation and Capitalisation; these have been left as in the original. This book contains two chapters labeled XVII.
The publishers of these letters have requested me to write a preface. In vain I have told them, that if prefaces have not gone out of date, the sooner they do, the better it will be for the public; in vain I have despairingly suggested that there must be something which would serve their purpose, kept in type at their printers, commencing, At the request of—perhaps too partial—friends, I have been induced, against my own judgment, to publish, &c., &c., &c.; they say that they have advertised the book with a preface, and a preface from me they must and will have. Unfortunately I have, from my earliest childhood, religiously skipped all introductions, prefaces, and other such obstructions, so that I really do not precisely know how one ought to be written; I can only, therefore, say that—
These letters are published for the very excellent reason that a confiding publisher has offered me a sum of money for them, which I was not such a fool as to refuse. They were written in Paris to the Daily News during the siege. I was residing there when the war broke out; after a short absence, I returned just before the capitulation of Sedan—intending only to remain one night. The situation, however, was so interesting that I stayed on from day to day, until I found the German armies drawing their lines of investment round the city. Had I supposed that I should have been their prisoner for nearly five months, I confess I should have made an effort to escape, but I shared the general illusion that—one way or the other—the siege would not last a month.