were by this time more acceptable gifts. Nothing was plenty in
Paris but champagne and Colman's mustard. The rows upon rows of the
last-named article in the otherwise empty windows of the grocers
reminded Englishmen and Americans of Grumio's cruel offer to poor
Katherine of the mustard without the beef, since she could not
have the beef with the mustard.

Here is the bill-of-fare of a dinner given at a French restaurant
upon that Christmas Day:--

Soup from horse meat.
Mince of cat.
Shoulder of dog with tomato sauce.
Jugged cat with mushrooms.
Roast donkey and potatoes.
Rat, peas, and celery.
Mice on toast.
Plum pudding.

One remarkable feature of the siege was that everybody's appetite
increased enormously. Thinking about food stimulated the craving
for it, and by New Year's Day there were serious apprehensions of
famine. The reckless waste of bread and breadstuffs in the earlier
days of the siege was now repented of. Flour had to be eked out with
all sorts of things, and the bread eaten during the last weeks of the
siege was a black and sticky mixture made up of almost anything but
flour. All Paris was rationed. Poor mothers, leaving sick children
at home, stood for hours in the streets, in the bitter cold, to
obtain a ration of horseflesh, or a few ounces of this unnutritious
bread.