e army on Paris had been fully
decided on, and that General Trochu's appointment to the command of the
city had no other object than to facilitate the Emperor's return; but
those resolutions, the journal went on to say, were rendered unavailing
by the attitude of the Empress-regent and the new ministry. It was the
Empress's opinion that the Emperor's return would certainly produce
a revolution; she was reported to have said: "He will never reach the
Tuileries alive." Starting with these premises she insisted with the
utmost urgency that the army should advance, at every risk, whatever
might be the cost of human life, and effect a junction with the army of
Metz, in which course she was supported moreover by General de Palikao,
the Minister of War, who had a plan of his own for reaching Bazaine by a
rapid and victorious march. And Maurice, letting his paper fall from his
hand, his eyes bent on space, believed that he now had the key to the
entire mystery; the two conflicting plans, MacMahon's hesitation to
undertake that dangerous flank movement with the unreliable army at his
command, the impatient orders that came to him from Paris, each more
tart and imperative than its predecessor, urging him on to that mad,
desperate enterprise. Then, as the central figure in that tragic
conflict, the vision of the Emperor suddenly rose distinctly before his
inner eyes, deprived of his imperial authority, which he had committed
to the hands of the Empress-regent, stripped of his military command,
which he had conferred on Marshal Bazaine; a nullity, the vague and
unsubstantial shadow of an emperor, a nameless, cumbersome nonentity
whom no one knew what to do with, whom Paris rejected and who had ceased
to have a position in the army, for he had pledged himself to issue no
further orders.

The next morning, however, after a rainy night through which he slept
outside his tent on the bare ground, wrapped in his rubber blanket,
Maurice was cheered by the tidings that the retreat on Paris had finally
carried the day. Another council had been held during the night, it was
said, at which M. Rouher, the former vice-Emperor, had been present; he
had been sent by the Empress to accelerate the movement toward Verdun,
and it would seem that the marshal had succeeded in convincing him of
the rashness of such an undertaking. Were there unfavorable tidings
from Bazaine? no one could say for certain. But the absence of news was
itself a circumstance