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THE PARIS ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS 
IN THE TWO SIEGES. 
Here is an odd scene in the Jardin des Plantes at 
the end of April 1871. The communards were de- 
fending the ramparts, and a steady rain of shells had 
been pouring in from the Versaillist batteries for a 
week. Every one in Paris was “ stale” from con- 
tinued siege and bombardment. War had lost all 
its excitement, and nothing relieved its squalid dis- 
comfort. An order to impress all citizens for the 
National Guard had just been issued, and one of these, 
M. Henri de Goncourt, an author, a man of taste, 
and a man of peace, had wandered into the Jardin des 
Plantes, partly from sheer ennui, partly, as he would 
have us believe, in the hope that he might find an 
empty loose box of a deer or antelope, in which he 
could sleep, and escape the requisition militaire of the 
omnipotent M. Pipe-en-Bois. He found a party of 
National Guards sauntering round the Gardens, con- 
ducted by a philosophical Republican, who halted 
his squad in front of the kangaroos’ cages, and gravely 
took for his text the maternal virtues of “ Citoyenne ” 
