We hear now that Government is undertaking an inquiry to discover precisely how long our stock of provisions will last. Matters are managed so carelessly, that I doubt whether the Minister of Commerce himself knows to within ten days the precise date when we shall be starved out. The rations of meat now amount to 1-27th of a pound per diem for each adult. At the fashionable restaurants the supply is unlimited, and the price as unlimited. Two cutlets of donkey cost 18 francs, and everything else in the way of animal food is in proportion. The real vital question, however, is how long the bread will last. In some arrondissements the supply fails after 8 o'clock in the morning; at others, each resident receives 1 lb. upon production of a carte de subsistance. The distribution has been thrown into disorder by the people from the bombarded quarters flocking into the central ones, and wanting to be fed. The bread itself is poor stuff. Only one kind is allowed to be manufactured; it is dark in colour, heavy, pasty, and gritty. There is as little corn in it as there is malt in London beer when barley is dear. The misery among the poorer classes is every day on the increase. Most of the men manage to get on with their 1fr. 50c. a day. In the morning they go to exercise, and afterwards loll about until night in cafés and pothouses, making up with liquids for the absence of solids. As for doing regular work, they scoff at the idea. Master tailors and others tell me that it is almost impossible to get hands to do the few orders which are now given. They are warmly clad in uniforms by the State, and except those belonging to the marching battalions really doing duty outside, I do not pity them. With the women and children the case is different. The latter, owing to bad nourishment and exposure, are dying off like rotten sheep; the former have but just enough food to keep body and soul together, and to obtain even this they have to stand for hours before the doors of the butchers and bakers, waiting for their turn to be served. And yet they make no complaints, but patiently suffer, buoyed up, poor people, by the conviction that by so doing they will prevent the Prussians from entering the town. If one of them ventures to hint at a capitulation, she is set on by her neighbours. Self-assertion, however, carries the day. Jules and Jaques will hereafter quaff many a petit verre to their own heroism; and many a story will they inflict upon their long-suffering friends redounding to their own special glory. Their wives will be told that they ought to be proud to have such men for husbands. But Jules and Jacques are in reality but arrant humbugs. Whilst they boozed, their wives starved; whilst they were warmly clad, their wives were in rags; whilst they were drinking confusion to their enemies in some snug room, their wives were freezing at the baker's door for their ration of bread. In Paris the women—I speak of those of the poorer classes—are of more sterling stuff than the men. They suffer far more, and they repine much less. I admire the crowd of silent, patient women, huddling together for warmth every morning, as they wait until their pittance is doled out to them, far more than the martial heroes who foot it behind a drum and a trumpet to crown a statue, to visit a tomb, and to take their turn on the ramparts; or the heroes of the pen, who day after day, from some cosy office, issue a manifesto announcing that victory is certain, because they have made a pact with death.
January 16th.
If I am to believe the Paris papers, the Fort of Issy is gradually extinguishing the guns of the Prussian batteries which bear on it. If I am to believe my eyes, the Fort of Issy is not replying at all to these said guns; and if I am to believe competent military authorities, in about eighteen days from now at the latest the Fort of Issy will cease to be a fort. The batteries at Meudon appeared to-day to be of opinion that its guns were effectually silenced; shells fell thick and fast on the bastions at Point-du-Jour; and so well aimed were they, that between the bastions a looker-on was in comparative safety. The noise, however, of the duel between the bastions and the batteries was so deafening, that it was literally impossible for two persons to hear each other speak at a few feet distance; the shells, too, which were passing to the right and left, seemed to give the whole air a tremulous motion. At the bastions the artillerymen were working their guns, but the National Guards on duty were under cover. The houses, on both sides of the Seine, within the city, for about half a mile from the viaduct are deserted; not above a dozen of them, I should imagine, are still inhabited. Outside, in the villages of Vanvres and Issy, several fires have broken out, but they have been promptly extinguished, and there has been no general conflagration. The most dangerous spot in this direction is a road which runs behind the Forts of Vanvres and Montrouge; as troops are frequently marching along it the Prussians direct their guns from Clamart and Chatillon on it. In the trenches the danger is not great, and there are but few casualties; the shells pass over them. If anyone, however, exposes himself, a ball about the size of an egg, from a canon de rampart, whizzes by him, as a gentle reminder to keep under cover. The area of the bombardment is slightly extending, and will, I presume, very soon reach the right bank. More people are killed in the daytime than at night, because they will stand in groups, notwithstanding every warning, and stare at any house which has been damaged.
The bill of mortality for the week ending January 13th, gives an increase on the previous week of 302; the number of deaths registered is 3982. This is at the rate of above twenty per cent. per annum, and it must be remembered that in this return those who die in the public hospitals, or of the direct effect of the war, are not included. Small-pox is about stationary, bronchitis and pneumonia largely on the increase.
Bourbaki, we are told to-day, is at Freiburg, in the Grand Duchy of Baden. The latest German papers announce that Mézières has fallen, and it seems to occur to no one that Gambetta's last pigeon despatch informed us that the siege of this place had been raised. La Liberté thus sums up the situation:—"Nancy menaced; Belfort freed; Baden invaded; Hamburg about to be bombarded. This is the reply of France to the bombardment of Paris. The hour has arrived; the Prussians brought to bay, hope to find refuge in Paris. This is their last hope; their last resource."
In order to encourage us to put up with our short commons, we are now perpetually being told that the Government has in reserve vast stores of potted meats, cheese, butter, and other luxuries, of which we have almost forgotten the very taste; and that when things come to the worst we shall turn the corner, and enter into a period of universal abundance. These stores seem to me much like the mirage which lures on the traveller of the desert, and which perpetually recedes as he advances. But the great difficulty of the moment is to procure fuel. I am ready, as some one said, to eat the soles of my boots for the sake of my country; but then they must be cooked. All the mills are on the Marne, and cannot be approached. Steam mills have been put up, but they work slowly; and whatever may be the amount of corn yet in store, it is almost impossible to grind enough of it to meet the daily requirements.
A good deal of discussion is going on as to the time which it will take to revictual Paris; it is thought that it can be done in seven days, but I do not myself see how it is to be done in anything like this time. One of the principal English bankers here has, I understand, sent an agent by balloon to buy boats of small draught in England, in order to bring provisions up the Seine. As a speculation, I should imagine that the best plan would be to amass them on the Belgian or Luxemburg frontier. About two-thirds of the population will be without means to buy food, even if the food were at their doors. Trade and industry will not revive for some time; they will consequently be entirely dependent upon the State for their means of subsistence. Even if work is offered to them, many of them not be able at once to reassume their habits of daily industry; the Bohemian life which they have led for the last four months, and which they are still leading, is against it. A siege is so abnormal a condition of things, that the State has been obliged to pay them for doing practically nothing, as otherwise they would have fallen into the hands of the anarchists; but this pottering about from day to day with a gun, doing nothing except play at billiards and drink, has been very demoralising, and it will be long before its effect ceases to be felt.
The newspapers are somewhat irreverent over the diplomatic protest against the bombardment. They say that while Paris is deserted by the Great European Powers, it is a source of pleasure to think that the Principality of Monaco and the Republics of San Marino and Honduras still stand by her. They suggest that M. Jules Favre should go to Andorre to endeavour to induce that republic also to reason with the Prussians upon the bombardment. I am told that the "proud young porter," who now the sheep is dead, represents alone the Majesty of England at the British Embassy is indignant at not having been invited to add his signature to the protest. He considers—and justly I think—that he is a far more important personage than the Plenipotentiary of his Highness of Monaco; a despot who exercises sway over about 20 acres of orange trees, 60 houses, and two roulette tables. The diplomatists are not, however, alone in their protest. Everybody has protested, and is still protesting. If it is a necessity of war to throw shells into a densely populated town like this; it is—to say the least—a barbarous necessity; but it seems to me that it is but waste of time and paper to register protests against it; and if it be thought desirable to do so, it would be far more reasonable to protest against human beings—women and children—being exposed to its effects, than to indite plaintive elegies about the possibility of the Venus de Milo being damaged, or the orchids in the hot-houses being killed. I know that, for my part, I would rather that every statue and every plant in the world were smashed to atoms by shells, than that I were. This, in an æsthetical point of view, is selfish; but it is none the less true. Chacun pour soi. The Panthéon was struck yesterday. What desecration! everyone cries; and I am very sorry for the Panthéon, but very glad that it was the Panthéon, and not me. The world at large very likely would lose more by the destruction of the Panthéon than of any particular individual; but each particular individual prefers his own humble self to all the edifices that architects have raised on the face of the globe.
I have been endeavouring to discover, whether in the councils of our rulers, the question as to what is to be done in the possible contingency of a capitulation becoming necessary, has been raised. As far as I can hear, the contingency is not yet officially recognised as within the realms of possibility, and it has never been alluded to. General Trochu has officially announced "that the Governor of Paris will never capitulate." His colleagues have periodically said much the same thing. The most practical of them, M. Ernest Picard, has, I believe, once or twice endeavoured to lead up to the subject, but he has failed in the attempt. Newspaper articles and Government proclamations tell the population every day that they only have to persevere in order ultimately to triumph. If the end must come, it is difficult to see how it will come. I have asked many intelligent persons what they think will happen, but no one seems to have a very distinct notion respecting it. Some think the Government will issue some day a notice to say that there are only provisions for a week longer; and that at the end of this time the gates of the city will be opened, and the Prussians told that, if they insist upon entering, there will be nothing to prevent them. Others think that the Government will resign their power into the hands of the mayors, as the direct representatives of Paris. Trochu rides about a good deal outside, and says to the soldiers, "Courage, my children, the moment is coming." But to what moment he alludes no one is aware. No word is more abused in the French language than "sublime." To call a folly a sublime folly is considered a justification of any species of absurdity. We call this refusal to anticipate a contingency which certainly is possible, if not probable, sublime. We are proud of it, and sleep on in our fool's paradise as though it were to last for ever.