Christmas Day of that sad year arrived at last, and New Year’s Day, the great and joyful fete-day in all French families.  A few confectioners kept their stores open, and a few boxes of bonbons were sold; but presents of potatoes, or small packages of coffee, were by this time more acceptable gifts.  Nothing was plenty in Paris but champagne and Colman’s mustard.  The rows upon rows of the last-named article in the otherwise empty windows of the grocers reminded Englishmen and Americans of Grumio’s cruel offer to poor Katherine of the mustard without the beef, since she could not have the beef with the mustard.

Here is the bill-of-fare of a dinner given at a French restaurant upon that Christmas Day:—­

  Soup from horse meat. 
  Mince of cat. 
  Shoulder of dog with tomato sauce. 
  Jugged cat with mushrooms. 
  Roast donkey and potatoes. 
  Rat, peas, and celery. 
  Mice on toast. 
  Plum pudding.

One remarkable feature of the siege was that everybody’s appetite increased enormously.  Thinking about food stimulated the craving for it, and by New Year’s Day there were serious apprehensions of famine.  The reckless waste of bread and breadstuffs in the earlier days of the siege was now repented of.  Flour had to be eked out with all sorts of things, and the bread eaten during the last weeks of the siege was a black and sticky mixture made up of almost anything but flour.  All Paris was rationed.  Poor mothers, leaving sick children at home, stood for hours in the streets, in the bitter cold, to obtain a ration of horseflesh, or a few ounces of this unnutritious bread.

After news came of the retreat of the Army of the Loire, great discouragement crept over the garrison.  The Mobiles from the country, who had never expected to be shut up in Paris for months, began to pine for their families and villages.  What might not be happening to them? and they far away!

Every day there was a panic of some kind in the beleaguered city,—­some rumor, true or false, to stir men’s souls.  Besides this, the garrison had for months been idle, and was consumed with ennui.  Among the prevailing complaints was one that General Trochu was too pious!  They might have said of him with truth, that, though brave and determined when once in action, he was wanting in decision.  The garrison in Paris had no general who could stir their hearts,—­no leader of men.  General Trochu, and the rulers under him, waited to be moved by public opinion.  They were ready to do what the masses would dictate, but seemed not to be able to lead them.  In a besieged city the population generally bends to the will of one man; in this case it was one man, or a small body of men, who bent to the will of the people.