The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-02 00:00:00

LONDON, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1870.

THE accounts received of late as to the provision-
ing of Paris are so conflicting that according to one
authority the beleaguered capital has a supply of meat
only for the next five or six days altogether, while

according to another there are still left as Many as
40,000 horses fit_ for consumption, and therefore
yielding an amount of -animal food capable:of support-
ing the existence of the inhabitants for the next three
months at least. As for breadstuffs, flour, and other
farinacious nourishment, the stores ia Paris
are described as almost,. so to speak, inex-
haustible. Chocolate and condiments of that
kind, likewise, they sem to have in abundance.
Poverty therefore can alone account for the con-
sumption already of the flesh of such household
vermin as rats and mice, and of domesticated ani-
mals like cats .and dogs. Judging from the pre-
posterous confidences of escaped Parisians, such as
M. DE FONVIELLE, the range of the
.French
cuisine already ample enough to embrace frogs
and other fantastic comestibles, is likely to be
very considerably extended and widened during the
siege of the so-called capital of modern civilisation,
seeing especially that the hungry defenders of that
metropolis have already made a raid on the out-
landish creatures collected together in the Jardin
des Plantes. The chef, whose uniform is a raiment
of white linen, and whose armoury is a glittering
array of pots and pans of burnished copper, has an
opportunity now of experimentalising to his heart's
content—whether to the content of his stomach also,
remains yet Ito be seen—on the adaptibility
to the human digestive organs, an l to the human
palate, of the flesh of the animal creation throughout
the whole range of zoology. Gipseys, before now, in
the rage of hunger, have roasted and devoured with a
relish the inner meat (crusted over with bristles) of
a• hedgehog. Parisians may now try the flavour of
a cooked porcupine. It was SYDNEY SMITH who
once whimsically suggested, among other bizarre
entrées, a dish of "worms removing themselves."
Snakes, with poison bag extracted, may be as
delicate eating (who knows ?) as eels—even the
adder, the cobra capella, and the boa constrictor.
Misfortunes are said to bring a man strange bed-
fellows. A siege often introduces him to, or rather
introduces into him viands of the most•unlikely and
undreamt of character. In the great siege of Jeru-
salem there is on record the terrible incident of a
famine-stricken mother devouring her own child.
Nothing at these times is regarded as waste—nothing
is discarded as offal, and as such thrown out
upon the dunghill. Every slaughtered animal
is dealt with habitually as, under ordinary circum-
stances, men are accustomed to deal with the carcase
of a pig—every morsel of which is turned to
account, the very entrails being parcelled out into
sacks for sausages, the very blood being made into
black puddings, the very viscera into what are termed
fry and faggots. So now during this period of
privation every morsel of every slaughtered animal
is cared for, and treasured up and cooked, and
devoured by the provident Parisians. The parings
of potatoes, the stalks and outer leaves of cabages,
are just now never discarded by them as
valueless. Remembering this systematic thrift of
theirs, and the ready acceptance of everything that
comes to hand as grist to the mill of their jaws, we
might be disposed to regard the time as indefi-
nately postponed, when it may prove a matter
of dire necessity for them to succumb to
the investing army of Germany' under the irresis-
tible and overwhelming influence of sheer starva-
tion! Only that, upon the next instant, we cannot
but recall to mind the fact that the mouths that have
to be fed there daily are the mouths of 2,000,000 1
Added to which there is this other all-important con-
sideration, that the continuance of the defence of Paris
by no means rests exclusively, or, for that matter,
i.rincipally, on the continued supply of food to the
inhabitants. It rests chiefly, in point of fact, upon
a heartening belief that outside, far to the south
and the east and the west, the provinces, the people
of France, arel,prepared, sooner or later, to co-
operate with them in turning the terrible tide of
the war against the German invaders, in raising the
siege of Paris eventually, and in rolling back the hosts
of Prussia, and 13 avaria, andW urtemberg, and Saxony,
and the rest of the armed hordes of ;he German
Fatherland, back across Alsace and Lorraine, back
across the Aube, and the Marne, and the Aisne, and
Meuse, and the Moselle, and the Rhine, repaying
invasion by invasion, turning defeat into victory, and
themselves routing ;the hosts that have been all-con-
quering heretofore. That is what keeps a brave heart
among the Parisians, not the sense of their having
such and such a supply of provisions in the hands of
the Republican Government. Destroy that hope of
provincial co-operation, and there will remain no
future triumph to be counted upon by the Parisians.
Already, disaster befalling the Army of the Loire, dis-
comfiture dogging the footsteps of even General
AUBELLES DE PALADIN; confusion being more con-
founded by reason of the military proceedings of the
dictatorial GA3IBETTA towards such a captain of men
as even General BOURBAKI—the fall of Paris is coming,
appreciably, as it were, within the range of calcula-
tion. Let but those disasters, these -discomfiture's,
these confusions, continue for a little while longer,
and no matter what the supply of provisions within
the walls, the fate of Paris may be sealed even before
the arrival of Christmas,

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

ITIE SUN, LONDON, PRIDA/, DECEMBER 2, 1870.