What shadows we are,
    And what shadows we pursue.

We pursued them no longer—­in the Siege sense.  “All the pleasing illusions, which make power gentle and obedience liberal,” were gone.  The eating and the drinking were gone.  Even the surreptitious read in bed was but a relic of joy; the penalty of burning the candle at both ends was being paid.  To have a bath was a crime; a little water was allowed for tea and soup only.  Soda-water was the sole product of the lemonade factories; but the quality of Adam’s ale tasted worse and was more suggestive of typhoid in that form than in any other.  Made into tea it was better, until the Military, with fears for the nerves of the “Military Situation,” indirectly curbed our excesses in the cup that does not inebriate.  A proclamation was issued which actually went so far as to establish by “Law” the number of ounces of fuel to be used by householders!  Expert landladies declared the number (six ounces) insufficient; the cynical boarders said it was too much!  The medical men had been entreating us—­vainly, for the most part—­to boil the water before drinking it in any form, and had proclaimed it inimical to health in its raw state.  But the “Military Situation,” bless you! could not be compromised by microbes, and if extravagance in fuel involved a possibility so awful it had to be crushed with an uncompromising hand.

Such were the anomalies prevailing; taken in conjunction with the ever-increasing seriousness of our position they were hard to bear with patience.  Our hopes of relief were at zero.  “Three months more” would sum up a fair consensus of opinion in regard to the further continuance of the Siege.  Oh, it was said, the food would not last so long.  But it had been undergoing such a process of stretching; who knew how much farther it would not be carried.  The authorities were capable of anything.  A death or two (or twenty-two!) from starvation would not soften hearts obsessed by an elusive “Situation.”  Surrender, however, was out of the question; having gone so far we could not turn back.  The Flag, too, whatever the Standard-bearers might be, was worth keeping aloft.  Exacting too much it was; but there was no alternative, save surrender, to the lowering of it.

Our mental machinery being thus rusted for want of the oil of contentment it is not incomprehensible that the bulk of the people should have come to regard the Siege as a thing interminable; and faith in miracles was not the average citizen’s predominant characteristic.  The mere mention of the Column provoked a jeer.  Numerous philosophers came into being.  Shakespeare was never so highly appreciated, nor so famous; never reckoned so “clever,” nor quoted so generally; scarcely heard of before, indeed, by some of the new philosophers.  His Hamlet’s soliloquy (which accorded with our mood) was considered very good.