PARISIAN SANG-FROID.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 809, 4 May 1871, Page 3

PARISIAN SANG-FROID.

The special correspondent of the " Times," writing from inside Paris on January 17, says : —" Yesterday, for instance, I drove out with a friend in the direction of the Porte Grenelle, and as we were passing through a round open space—a sort of Regent circus on a small unfashionable scale—a shell fell and burst within a few yards of a group of people assembled in front of a cafe. There was a momentary panic, and a woman darted out of the group, exclaiming, 'Ou est mon mari r But in another instant the people had rushed to the spot where the shell alighted, and were scrambling for the fragments. Hearing that the shells had been falling pretty thickly in that quarter, we sent the coachman off with the carriage to find shelter, and turned into a restaurant opening on the circus to make enquiries. There was a large room about 50 feet square, on the ground floor, and it was crowded with men and women drinking, chatting, smoking, or playing billiards, with an air of the most utter abandon and unconcern. I noticed that most of the billiard tables were exactly under a huge skylight, so that the playerß had nothing whatever but a pane of glass between them and the shells which every now and then were passing over their heads, and, one of which had two minutes before dropped within twenty yards of the resturant. Had it dropped a little short, and, passing through the skylight, burst in the centre of the room, it might have made twenty victims. Nobody could tell that the next shell might not alight there, and yet I assure you the guests did not even take the trouble to turn their heads or to pause for a moment in their play or their conversation at any one of the numerous explosions we heard all around, most of them probably at a safe distance enough, but still making such a terrible noise—at which the windows seemed to shake and rattle—that it was easy to imagine them close at hand. Not that any one for a moment really forgot the bombardment. The noise alone would have made this impossible, audit was the all-absorbing theme of conversation."