NEWS BY THE MAIL

Press, Volume XVIII, Issue 2492, 26 April 1871, Page 3

NEWS BY THE MAIL

THE CONDITION OF PAEIS. The Daily News claims that one of its correspondents was " the first outsider to enter Paris after the capitulation." Thiß gentleman has the following striking letter describing his visit: — " Pabis, February 1. " Leaving St. Denis yesterday forenoon, I rode through the Prussian

foreposts to the neutral ground without interruption, and so o-< Io the Porte la Chapelle. Here the-* _..'... wr: ■ : losed, but a great crowd h:. i eoilrcl-'u iii expectation of their presently c;.-enin_j. Everybody on the German side laughed at the Quixotry of my attempt to enter. The crowd was orderly, civil, and very patient too. Many people had loaves find cabbages. After waiting half-an-hour. an officer appeared on the wall. :v-1 exclaimed, Xi laportede SantoisA Wo nil therefore made to the right, I, being mounted, beating the others. This gate was I open, and an officer examining passes. ! I rode on slowly, looking straight between my horses ears, and somehow nobody stopped mc. Once inside, I came in upon sundry mobs of semidrunk National Guards, and the cry was, 'Down with the Prussian.' Mutters got serious. The clamor spread, and men tried to clutch at my bridle I thought it wiser to be bold, and turned on the first man who had shouted and proclaimed that I was an Englishman come, if pos-ihle, to do good, not harm, and thus succeeded in diverting attention to my assailant. Then I rode on unmolested through the Boulevard Arnaud (?), where were massed several battalions of the National Guard, apparently to receive their pay ; then through the Boulevard Mageuta ; and so straight on to the American Legation in the Champs Ely sees. "' Paris is utterly cowed ; fairly beaten ' —so said the first Englishman I met; and his opinion is mine. Yet Paris is orderly and decent, and with a certain solemn-morose self-restraint, mastering the tendency to demonstrate. The streets were crowded almost wholly with men iv uniform. Civilians are few and far between.Many shops were open, but many also were closed. There is no want of hardware in Paris. You may buy enough and to spare of everything but edibles. Drink is plentiful enough, but except near the gate I saw not a soul drunk. The food shops had nothing to show. There were confitures and preserves; jellies, &c.; but solid comestibles were conspicuous by their absence. In one shop I saw several large shapes of stuff that looked like lard. When I asked what it was I found it was horse fat. The bakers' shops were closed; the grating down before the butchers'. And oh, the number of funerals ! One, two, three; I met six altogether in the course of my ride. Sad with an exceeding great sadness; such wa* what I found as regards Paris long before I reached the American Legation ; self-respecting, too, in her misery ; not blatant; not disposed to collect in jabbering crowds Each man went his way with chastened face and listless gait. " I spoke with a soldier of the Line. Yep, he had had enough of it. Sam. / They had nearly killed him, those terrible Prussians, and be was very hungry. "When would the gates open for food ? Food began to be with mo a persona] question. I had nearly filled my wallet with newspapers, and only stowed away, for an exigency, a few siices of ham. Did ever the rarest geological or mineralogical specimen make such a sensation as these slices of ham ? When I at length reached my quarters the servant-woman asked permission to take the meagre plateful out, and show it as a curiosity to their companions; and after the ham was eaten, stray visitors came in, attracted by the tidings, and begged for a look at the unwonted viands. "The whole cily is haunted with the chaste odours which horseflesh gives out in cooking ; odours which I learned to appreciate nt Metz. They permeate the British Embassy, where, asserting my privileges as a Briton, I stabled my horse ; they linger in the corridors of the Grand Hotel, and fight with the taint from wounds in every case. The Grand Hotel is one huge hospital. Half Paris seems converted into hospitals, if one may judge from the flags. Very touching is the ignorance as to the outside world. ' I have seen three English papers since September,' said Dr. Gordon, our Medical Commissioner. 'Is Ireland quiet ? Is Mr Gladstone still Prime Minister? Is the Princess Louise married ?' Such are examples of the questions I have had to answer. The ignorance as to the condition of the Prussians outside is equally dense. The day after negotiations began, Paris was assured that the investing army had not eaten for three days; and that it was Paris which was granting terms rather than the other way. I am continually asked if the Prussians have not been half-starved all through ? What they have done for quarters ? Whether there are not 400,000 at the very least surrounding Paris? Whether they do not tremble in their boots at the name of the Francs-tireurs ? Whether they are not half-devoured by vermin ? Whether the King still resides in Versailles ? and so on. " The pinch for food is worse than ever, pending the result of the negotiations for ita supply. The day before yesterday the hungry broke into the reserved store of potted provisions in the Halle, smashed all obstacles, and looted the place. From one who has paid the prices himself, and has tbe figures down in black and white without exaggeration, I have the following list: —2 fracs for a small shrivelled cabbage ; 1 irank for a leek ; 45 francs for a fowl: 45 franks for a rabbit (which may be taken for granted as cat) ; 25 francs for a pigeon ; 22 francs for a 21b. chub; 14 franks per pound for stickleback; 2 francs per pound for potatoes; 40 francs per pound for butter ; cheese, 25 francs a pound, when procurable. Meat other than horseflesh is absolutely not to be procured. I was assured that if I offered £50 down in bright shining gold for a veritable beefsteak, I should have no claimant for the money! The last cow that change- hands ' for an ambulance' fetched £80. Those left cannot now be bought for money. The bread ia not bad, the

difficulty is to get it. Only people say | there is nothing else to do but wait outside the bakers' nnd the butchers.' j I saw huge thronga at both ... I rode, J jilinugh Paris, nnd chiefly women ; waiting sihntly i;t the cold. "What it must have conn* to when the Parisians are so utterly crushed down ! " Last evening there looked in a p_;*ty that had been experimenting in j dining. They bad eaten ostrich, eat. j dog, rat, mice. This seems to mc a j liard-iiearted mode of extracting a new \ sensation out of tho pinch of the times, j Far better to dine on horse, and <nve the price of dainly \ iunds to put bread ; ioio ti.e in>'i;!'ii- or ioe poor swift ring women and children. Yesterday neither bread nor meat was distributed in this arrondissement. Those who had no money havo simply bad to hunger. Tlie sins for which Paris used to be famous all belong to the past. She has been half-starved, halfbeaten into morality, or ii may be that other physical influences have led her to wash and be clean. You see some drunkenness, but far less than I had looked for, among men whose clock, so to speas. has run down. A decent gloom is every whero apparent. Some assert that the gloom is ns much theatrical and assumed a. had been the previous valorous seeming. I don't think so. I think you can see the iron eating and burning into the hearts of these men, silent with unwonted silence ; moody as they never knew how to be before; ond, as the downcast faces pass. I draw a jrood augury from them for France and Paris. " The great aud beautiful feature of the siege lias been tho absence of crime. IVo murders, no robberies, but a virtue in wliich, to mc, thero is something pathetic. The half lit streets are empty at half past nine. The midnight air i.s not tortured by the sound of revellers, although there are no police to keep order. I woke up between twelve and one in the night, and the silence made mc fur the moment think myself back at Murgency. The trees on the Boulevards have suffered less than I expected. In the Champs Elysees they are utterly ruined, and the others elsewhere have, I am told, shared tho same fate. The scarcity of wood was terrible in these latter days. People cannot get their washing done for lack of wood to boat the copper. So far as I can learn, the moral effect of tiie bombardment on the population was terrible. After-the first day of defiance tho Government felt the pressure. M. Jules Simon told a friend of miue that the bombardment of St. Denis had shorlened the siege by a week. Competent authorities estimate that Paris, had she been obstinate, might have gone on for another month, had the pickles and preserves, and all the odds and ends now sold at exorbitant prices, been taken and rationed. But to what purpose ? Mr Herbert, who came in with special permission, got into Paris, aa I learn, simultaneously with myself, who had no permission of any kind. To-day I am to try to get out, which they say i 8 more difficult still ; but I put my trust in the aspect of preternatural stolidity with which nature has gifted mc. There is nobody else in from the outa : de as yet. "Laony, February 2. " As I expected, I got outside by the business gate without interruption. "Wholesale exodus of population iv search of firewood. Shops open and omnibuses running, so that at times it was difficult to realise the circumstances in which Par's is placed. Whatever may be asserted as to the arrangements, or intentions, it is certain that up till now provisions, otherwise than surreptitiously, have not been introduced into Paris. The state of things, therefore, is worse than ever. In more than- one arrondissement no rations have been issued for the last two days. The people in despair are too miserable to riot. " The Government of National Defence has almost disappeared from notice. It has become a committee to preside over public order. Tbe world may calumniate us, they said, in a proclamation the other day. It would be impossible, replied the newspapers. Trochu and Gambetta, once the idols of the Parisians, are now the bestabused men in France. Trochu (a friend of hie- told mc to-dayj, deserted by all, makes speeches in the bosom of his family. No more speeches; no more lawyers!—is the cry of the journals. And then they spin out phrases of exaggerated Spartanism by the yard, and suggest some lawyer as the rising hope of the country. " The cannon have been taken from the ramparts. The soldiers —Line and Mobile—wander about unarmed, with their hands in their pockets, staring at the shop windows. They are very undemonstrative, and more like peaceful villagers than rough troopers. (They pass most of their time losing their way and trying to find it again; the Mobiles all longing to get back to their homes. The officers of the army are very angry at the terms of the capitulation. They say that it would have been more honorable to have surrendered at once, then to remain here in prison only to be taken out of the country if the country consents to Bismark's terras of peace. Jules Ferry was tbe other day at Vinoy's headquarters when he was cut by the whole staff. Ducrot has retired into private life. Vinoy hinted to him that he did not consider his position en regie, and he took the hint. Corn is the all-absorbing question. Bisraark indicated to the railroad kings who saw him at Versailles that if it were a matter of life and death he might perhaps be able | to furnish some; but his language was vague. The opinion of these gentlemen was tbat he is throwing impediments in tbe way of food coming in from England, in order to give his countrymen the start in the market. It appears now that there was an error in the statistics published by the Government respecting the stock of grain in hand. Two accounts which were one and the same were added together. The bread is getting less

like bread every day. Besides peas, rice, and hay, starch is now ground up with it. In tho eighth arondissement yesterday there were no rations. Tho Northern company do not expect a provision train from Dieppe before Friday, and do not think they will be ablo to carry passengers before Saturday. We are in want of fuel as much as of food. A very good thing is to be made by any speculator who can manage to send us coal or charcoal.