The National Guard now did duty as police, and was also placed on guard on the ramparts.  Each man received thirty sous a day.  The Guard was divided into the Old Battalions and the New.  The Old Battalions were composed almost entirely of gentlemen and bourgeois, who returned their pay to the Government; the New Battalions, which were fresh levies of working-men, preferred in general a franc and a half a day for doing nothing, to higher wages for making shoes, guns, and uniforms.  In vain the Government put forth proclamations assuring the people that the man who made a chassepot rifle was more of a patriot than he who carried one.

All through September the weather was delightful, and mounting guard upon the ramparts was like taking a pleasant stroll.  The Mobiles occupied the forts outside of Paris, and were forbidden to come into the city in uniform.  Of course there was much hunting for Prussian spies, and many people were arrested and maltreated, though only one genuine spy seems to have been found.  The French in any popular excitement seem to have treachery upon the brain.  One phase of their mania was the belief that any light seen moving in the upper stories of a house was a signal to the Prussians; and sometimes a whole district was disturbed because some quiet student had sat reading late at night with a green shade over his lamp, or a mother had been nursing a sick child.

As October went on, it became a sore trial to the Parisians to be cut off from all outside news.  Not a letter nor a newspaper crossed the lines.  Even the agents of Foreign Governments, and Mr. Washburne, the only foreign ambassador in Paris, were prohibited from hearing from their Governments, unless all communications were read by Bismarck before being forwarded to them.  One great source of suffering to the men in Paris who had sent away their families was the knowledge that they must be in want of money.  No one had anticipated a prolonged blockade.

Before the gates had been closed, two elderly members of the Committee of Defence—­Cremieux and Garnier-Pages—­had been sent out to govern the Provinces.  M. Thiers was visiting all the capitals of Europe, as a sort of ambassador-at-large, to enlist foreign diplomatic sympathy, and in October it was resolved to send out M. Gambetta, in the hope that he might organize a National Assembly, or perhaps induce the Southern Provinces (where he had great influence) to make a demonstration for the relief of the capital.  Provincial France had long chafed under the idea that its government was made and unmade by the Parisians, and there was no great sympathy in the Provinces for Paris in her struggle with the Prussians, until it was shown how nobly the city and its inhabitants bore the hardships of the siege.

Small sorties continued to be made during October, chiefly with a view of accustoming raw troops to stand fire.  On October 28, came news of the surrender of Bazaine at Metz to the Prussians with his army (including officers) of nearly one hundred and ninety thousand men.  The universal cry was “Treachery!” The same day that the Prussians forwarded this news into Paris, a small body of German troops was worsted in a sortie beyond St. Denis.  These two events roused the turbulent part of the population of Paris almost to frenzy, and resulted in a rising called the emeute of October 31.