6 MAY 1871, Page 2

Negotiations at Brussels do not appear to progress very rapidly._

There has been a hitch about the commercial treaty, which M. Thiers refuses to grant, and there are difficulties about the indem- nity. The French offered 214,000,000 a year in cash for three years, and the remainder in rentes, but Prince Bismarck demands gold, or its equivalent in such paper as he thinks valid. Gold, of course, is out of the question, as the German Chancellor ought to

know, the sum exceeding anything obtainable out of any currency; and it is difficult to see what paper could be better than rentes. M. Jules Favre has gone to Frankfort, to confer with Bismarck, who seems disturbed at the non-ratification of the treaty, and at the army which M. Thiers is slowly getting together. A formal -complaint was made this week that there were too many soldiers in Vincennes.