I don’t know what I might have done in my distress; but kind fortune favored me, for the landlady, anticipating the probability of my being disturbed by the commotion, knocked at the door to say that it was a false alarm, and that the Germans, though victorious, had halted ten or twelve miles from the city.  Promptly, therefore, I dashed into the midst of another review of the French situation, predicated upon the late French defeat.  It was what I might call a perfect “stinger.”  It used France up completely.  The grande nation wasn’t left a peg to stand on; and as for King WILLIAM, I proved him to be a butcher of the most surpassing kind.  In the short space of two hours I had covered forty-three pages more of foolscap, and was about entering on my forty-fourth, when there came a banging at my door for the third time, and a despatch was handed me announcing that there had been no battle at all!

From early childhood I had been taught that “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,” and, although the present circumstances clearly left me no escape from the conviction that I must be an especial favorite of Heaven, they could not prevent me from compensating my pent-up agony of soul by literally eating seven and a half pages of my last “review.”  I never knew before what “living on literary diet” meant, but I am wiser now, and do not regret the “dread ordeal” by which I came to know all I do know.  Revenge occurred to me as the natural impulse of a man in such a situation; but upon whom was I to be revenged?  The government had given currency to all these wild rumors; but it had too many heads for me to punch.  The job was bigger than I cared to undertake.  The thought occurred to me that I might present a bill of damages.  Their sense of justice would allow its fairness.  I had been the dupe of false intelligence, the victim of a series of frauds perpetrated to “regulate” the popular feeling.  I did not debate the thought, but took my resolution immediately, and drew up the following.

LA NOTE.

   Provisional Government of France. 
   To DICK TINTO, Correspondent, &c., Dr.
   Francs.

   To thirty-seven pages foolscap paper, consumed in writing
   Review of French situation, &c., upon basis of reported
   French victory near Orleans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.17

   To Forty-three pages foolscap paper, consumed in writing
   Review of French situation, &c., upon basis of reported
   German victory near Orleans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.95

To astonishment and grief occasioned by report that there had
been no battle at all . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   150.00

To landlady’s boy with red head, by name PIERRE, for carrying
messages  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .     1.10

To general wear and tear of nervous system, consequent upon
agitation resulting from uncertainty as to what to believe . 500.00
______