At the sight of these spectres of soldiers, these unhappy men broken down with hunger and fatigue, the genteel National Guards, warmly clad and wrapped up for the winter, commenced to utter foolish speeches and big hopes which had been their daily food for several months:  “Break the iron circle;” “not one inch, not a stone;” “war to the knife;” “one grand effort,” etc.  But the very best talkers were speedily discouraged by the shrugging of shoulders and ugly glances of the soldiers, that were like those of a snarling cur.

Meanwhile, a superb sergeant-major of the National Guard, newly equipped, a big, full-blooded fellow, with a red beard, the husband of a fashionable dressmaker, who every evening at the beer-house, after his sixth glass of beer would show, with matches, an infallible plan for blocking Paris and crushing the Prussian army like pepper, and was foolish enough to insist upon it.

“Now then, you, my good fellow,” said he, addressing an insignificant corporal just about to eat his stew, as if he were questioning an old tactician or a man skilled like Turenne or Davoust; “do you see? you hit it in this affair of day before yesterday.  Give us your opinion.  Are the positions occupied by Ducrot as strong as they pretend?  Is it victory for to-day?”

The corporal turned around suddenly; with a face the color of boxwood, and his blue eyes shining with rage and defiance, he cried in a hoarse voice: 

“Go and see for yourselves, you stay-at-homes!”

Saddened and heart-broken at the demoralization of the soldiers, the National Guards withdrew.

“Behold the army which the Empire has left us!” said the dressmaker’s husband, who was a fool.

Upon the road leading from Paris, pressing toward the cannon’s mouth which was commencing to grumble again in the distance, a battalion of militia arrived, a disorderly troop.  They were poor fellows from the departments in the west, all young, wearing in their caps the Brittany coat-of-arms, and whom suffering and privation had not yet entirely deprived of their good country complexions.  They were less worn out than the other unfortunate fellows whose turn came too often, and did not feel the cold under their sheepskins, and still respected their officers, whom they knew personally, and were assured in case of accident of absolution given by one of their priests, who marched in the rear file of the first company, with his cassock tucked up and his Roman hat over his eyes.  These country fellows walked briskly, a little helter-skelter, like their ancestors in the time of Stofflet and M. de la Rochejaquelin, but with a firm step and their muskets well placed upon their shoulders, by Ste. Anne!  They looked like soldiers in earnest.

When they passed by the National Guard, the big blond waved his cap in the air, furiously shouting at the top of his lungs: 

“Long live the Republic!”