But once more the fanatical patriot’s enthusiasm fell flat.  The Bretons were marching into danger partly from desire, but more from duty and discipline.  At the very first shot these simple-minded creatures reach the supreme wisdom of loving one’s country and losing one’s life for it, if necessary, without interesting themselves in the varied mystifications one calls government.  Four or five of the men, more or less astonished at the cry which greeted them, turned their placid, countrified faces toward the National Guard, and the battalion passed by.

The dressmaker’s husband—­he did nothing at his trade, for his wife adored him, and he spent at cafes all the money which she gave him—­was extremely scandalized.  During this time Amedee Violette was dreamily walking up and down before the stacks of guns.  His warlike ardor of the first few days had dampened.  He had seen and heard too many foolish things said and done since the beginning of this horrible siege; had taken part too many times in one of the most wretched spectacles in which a people can show vanity in adversity.  He was heart broken to see his dear compatriots, his dear Parisians, redouble their boasting after each defeat and take their levity for heroism.  If he admired the resignation of the poor women standing in line before the door of a butcher’s shop, he was every day more sadly tormented by the bragging of his comrades, who thought themselves heroes when playing a game of corks.  The official placards, the trash in the journals, inspired him with immense disgust, for they had never lied so boldly or flattered the people with so much low meanness.  It was with a despairing heart and the certitude of final disaster that Amedee, needing a little sleep after the fatigue, wandered through Paris’s obscure streets, barely lighted here and there by petroleum lamps, under the dark, opaque winter sky, where the echoes of the distant cannonading unceasingly growled like the barking of monstrous dogs.

What solitude!  The poet had not one friend, not one comrade to whom he could confide his patriotic sorrows.  Paul Sillery was serving in the army of the Loire.  Arthur Papillon, who had shown such boisterous enthusiasm on the fourth of September, had been nominated prefet in a Pyrenean department, and having looked over his previous studies, the former laureate of the university examinations spent much of his time therein, far from the firing, in making great speeches and haranguing from the top of the balconies, in which speeches the three hundred heroes of antiquity in a certain mountain-pass were a great deal too often mentioned.  Amedee sometimes went to see Jocquelet in the theatres, where they gave benefit performances for the field hospitals or to contribute to the molding of a new cannon.  The actor, wearing a short uniform and booted to the thighs, would recite with enormous success poems of the times in which enthusiasm and fine sentiments took the place of art and common sense.  What can one say to a triumphant actor who takes himself for a second Tyrtee, and who after a second recall is convinced that he is going to save the country, and that Bismarck and old William had better look after their laurels.