in its claims from the exaggeration of the emeute.  Let them therefore have all praise for this truly patriotic attempt.  Let them hasten to obtain from the Assembly a recognition of our rights.  In acceding to the demands of the deputies and the maires, the Government will not be treating with insurrection; on the contrary, it will effect a radical triumph over it, for it will take away from it every pretext of existence, and will separate from it, in a definite way, all those men who have been blinded to the illegal and violent manner in which this programme is drawn up, by the justice of certain parts of it.

If the Assembly consent to this, all that will remain of the 18th of March will be the recollection—­painful enough, without doubt—­of one sanguinary day, while out of a great evil will come a great benefit.

Whatever may happen, we are resolute; we—­that is to say, all those who, without having followed the Government of Versailles, and without having taken an active part in the insurrection, equally desire the re-establishment of legitimate power and the development of municipal liberties—­we are resolved to follow where our deputies and the maires may lead us.  They represent at this, moment the only legal authority which seems to us to have fairly understood the difficulties of the situation, and if, in the case of all hope of conciliation being lost, they should tell us to take up arms, we will do so.

VIII.

Paris has this evening, the 21st of March, an air of extraordinary contentment; it has belief in the deputies and the maires, it has trust even, in the National Assembly.  People talk of the manifestation of the Friends of Order and approve of it.  A foreigner, a Russian, Monsieur A——­ J——­, who has inhabited Paris for ten years, and is consequently Parisian, has given me the following information, of which I took hasty note:—­

“At half-past one o’clock to-day a group, of which I made one, was formed in the place of the New Opera-house.  We numbered scarcely twenty persons, and we had a flag on which was inscribed, ’Meeting of the Friends of Order.’  This flag was carried by a soldier of the line, an employe, it is said, of the house of Siraudin, the great confectioners.  We marched along the boulevards as far as the Rue de Richelieu; windows were opened as we passed, and the people cried, ‘Vive l’Ordre!  Vive l’Assemblee Nationale!  A bas la Commune!’ Few as we were at starting our numbers soon grew to three hundred, to five hundred, to a thousand.  Our troop followed the Rue de Richelieu, increasing as it went.  At the Place de la Bourse a captain at the head of his National Guards tried to stop us.  We continued our course, the company saluted our flag as, we passed, and the drums beat to arms.  After having traversed, still increasing in numbers, the streets which surround the Bourse, we returned