June 3.
No; your letter won’t go to-day: for the French are attacking us—there! there! ‘But do Thou unto them as unto the Midianites. O my God, make them like unto a wheel.’
10 P.M.
Seventeen blessed hours have they battled—3.30 A.M. to 8.30 P.M., and the French, I am told, have been unable to plant their cannon against the wall. The Villa Pamfili has been taken and retaken two or three times. But to us only smoke and occasional flashes are visible.
June 4, Tuesday.
They can’t get in; they banged away by moonlight most of last night; but, as I see a French officer at Toulon says, Oudinot is not the man.
June 5.
This is the third day, and they are still outside. The Pancrazio untaken, and the Villa Pamfili in our hands still.
June 18, Monday.
Going, going, and to-morrow I shall be gone. We have had a fortnight of gunnery, and what now, heaven knows: perhaps more gunnery; but to-day I hear hardly anything. Yes—there is one. But we have been bombarded, think of that! It is funny to see how like any other city a besieged city looks. Unto this has come our grand Liberty-Equality-and-Fraternity Revolution!