OUR PARIS LETTER.

Evening Star, Issue 3953, 26 October 1875, Page 2

OUR PARIS LETTER.

Paris, September 4. The army ef reserve—lso,ooo strong—consists of all physically qualified Frenchmen, aged twenty-eight. The service being obligatory, Jack and his master march as simple soldiers, side by side. The men answered to the muster roll most punctually; and after being allowed a few additional hours to bid uniting families and friends good-bye for a month, the contingent furnished by Paris was Bent over France to join certain regiments, 1 his mixing up of classes and change of scene will do good, to say nothing of impressing men with something more than idea of the hardships of war. For a mouth, clerks and shopmen and princeo, journalists and marquises, laboring men and viscounts, artizans and banns will hate to take part in the autumn manosuvres. They will camp where they best can ; are provided with the fourth part of a tent, an indiarubber sheet, a tin drinking vessel, a gun, and a knapsack. Provisions must be hunted up, just as if in time of real war; not a bed of roses is reserved for private or general. The new Cyras rifle, said to be a very remarkable weapon, will be tried on a large scale for th > first time, and also the qualities of several colonels, promoted to be fenerals, on account of exceptional ability, lenceforward, every autumn the class of conscripts as it arrives at twenty-eight years of age will be called out to drill. It is the first great step in the effective armament of the nation. Those rfarviiUs, who leave families dependant on them, and who have no great means of subsistence, will be provided for by the Government. In a temple at Home, every September, a fresh nail was driven in the building with great solemnity, to mark the lapse of another year. France may commence the fSie of the nail, as her real soldierly qualities are now being tested—the patience and obed ence of her men. Some noblemen drove up to the depdb iu their carriages, attended by their valets, and, after passing a medical examina • tion, quietly donned the uniform of the Mobiles—not a pretty but a very useful costume. And all this quite naturally, no ostentation, but with a grauty worthy of Prussians. A shuffling kind of “inspired” explanation has been sent to the journals relating to the Gladstone incident. It sets forth that no authorised demand had been made for permission to sell the ‘ Vatican Decrees ’ at the rail way stalls An application was made, and the Home office never informed the writer either that it was irregular or how he should proceed. This is but an evasion. M. Buffet declared, though of course knowing nothing about the book, that the permission would not have been granted if solicited, and the first Englishman in Paris, in an unofficial capacity, received the same answer to his request. The fact is the clerical party seem to have the Ministry prisoner—till November next. Another formally regular demand having been made to the Homo office, M. Buffet has now the occasion to come out plain. A terrible suicide has been committed in the suburb of Paris at Colombes. A French nobleman, the possessor of four titles, has been since some years living alone in his castle ; he has no children, no relatives, no friends. Believing that it was decreed the titles should expire with him and his race become extinct, he resolved to kill himself, and as the note written by him stated, he gave himself a stab, each fatal, for everyone of his four titles. H« has left his property to the Commune, that is the parish. Four more usurers have been pulled up; their victims were this time policemen, soldiers, and the municipal guard. The loans varied from twenty to eighty francs, for which monthly promissory notes were given. The interest was so arranged, that with the discount of over 100 per cent., the loan could never be liquidated. The bookmakers have been fined and imprisoned for various periods—the highest being 4,000fr. and twelve months respectively. There is not the slightest pity felt for the ring, and the authorities are urged to sweep away every form of public betting at once, striking most severely those sporting newspapers, homo or foreign, (hat encourage the demoralising practice. A company near Nantes is prepared to purchase “barrelled grasshoppers,” to make into bait for the sardines. Thus out of evil good. Perhaps dead flies could be utilised also. M. Mngne was the crack Finance Minister of Napoleon 111,, but tie did not sustain his reputation when he took office under the Duo de Broglie, and he was pushed aside in the kaleidoscopic changes of Ministers that jduce then has ensued To the credit of his position as an eminent public man, he ha* voluntarily re paired a little of the wrong that the coalition of the 24th May inflicted ou Thiers. He avowed that the ex President was more Conservative than his enemies would believe, and more than '1 hiers himself liked to avow ; and that to his personal talents and financial knowledge the great pave of the oi-g misation of France is due. This is the first specimen observed of the “ honest men ” among the coalition.

It is also an opportuue rejoinder to the mctquine attack of the Due de Broglie recently on M. Thiers, wherein ho st-ited France alone iiad found her feet without the aid of any statesman. '1 he duke has sunk so low in public estimation that he can contribute nothing new to hj s immense unpopularity. There are some ihings the French keep green in their souls— Sedan and the unpatriotic politics of the Due de Bioglie, for example. The Comte de Charobord’g “ last ” is more important than might at first be supposed ; he endorses all that the have professed—undying opposition to tlie new Constitution. The more moderate monarchists have thus nothing to hope from the extreme Right, and M. Buffet must give up the attempt to govern the Republic by a Koyalist Assembly, The letter of i i enry V. is almost the copingstone for the Republic, and will lead to a prompt decision to dissolve the Assembly.^ Much eossip is takiner place respecting a star of the demi-monde, who last year acoompmied a Russian prince home. The prince loaded her with diamonds, and as he was about being married sent her back to Paris. Want overtook her, and she was forced to raise money on the diamonds; but waa astounded on learning they were only paste. The Prince intends taking an Redon against the merchant who supplied him with the waxes. une of the worst evils of France is her system of political detectives ; no form of government appears to be able to get along without an army of spies, and Ministers seem to experience no feelings of shame in employing and working such, at best, but disreputable machinery. This is the moral to be drawn from the examination of the Chief of the Cabinet Buffett, before the Permanence Commission, in reference to the Bouvier scandal at Lyons, where a detective (Bouvier) forged papers to minister to the governmental hate against the Republicans, and was rewarded by the independent judges with three years’ imprisonment. There was sufficient high-handed > justice in connection with Bouvir’a denunciations that would f-e L any other country but France on fire. And M. Buffet, not in the name of his party, but of France, found nothing censurable in the conduct of his subordinate the Prefect. Ouf t It would seem that Captain Boyton has fallen from his high estate since Captain Webb has swum the Straits, as the Prefect of Police declines to allow him to do the Seine ; yet in May last it was tac tly regulated that he would perform on the river in August, and in presence of the Lord Mayor of London too. Man proposes but events dispose. If Captain Boyton or anyone else could invent a life-preserv-ing apparatus to prevent peaceful citizens from being run over by trains, oars, and cabs, “he would deserve well of the country.” There is certainly a preconcerted aciion on the part of cab and cart men to pufa spoke in the wheel of the American Tram Company here, that has for by cars done so much for public convenience. Next to the actresses, the ’bus men are reported to be ready for a strike ; with neither is there the slightest sympathy ; they are, if anything, too well paid. Some actresses, earning but thirty francs a week, can manage to keep a brougham and pair, with coachman and tiger, and save money into the bargain. The French, however, are a n toriously economies I people. A’bus conductor’s c dcvilatiou, after visiting the Geog aphical Exhibition, is that the space t'avelled over daily by the united ’buses of Paris equals the circumference of the earth.