We are not so badly off as that.

How many oxen and cows there still are I do not know; a few days ago, however, I counted myself 1,500 in a large pen.

The newspapers calculate that at the commencement of the siege there were 100,000 horses in Paris, and that there are now 70,000; 30,000 will be enough for the army, consequently 40,000 can be eaten.

The amount of meat on each horse averages 500 lb., consequently we have twenty million pounds of fresh horse-flesh, a quantity which will last us for more than three months at the present rate of the meat consumption.

These figures are, I think, very much exaggerated.