state occasion,--

"I was very anxious about you yesterday, thinking of you in Paris
without me; but I see by your telegram that everything passed off
well. When we observe other nations, we can better perceive the
injustice of our own. I think, however, in spite of all, that you
must not be discouraged, but continue in the course you have
inaugurated. It is right to keep faith touching concessions that
have been granted. I hope that your speech to the Chamber will be
in this spirit. The more strength may be wanted in the future,
the more important it is to prove to the country that we act upon
ideas, and not only on expedients. I speak thus while far away, and
ignorant of what has passed since my departure, but I am thoroughly
convinced that strength lies in the orderly sequence of ideas. I
do not like surprises, and I am persuaded that a _coup d'etat_
cannot be made twice in one reign. I am talking in the dark, and
to one already of my opinion, and who knows more than I can know;
but I must say something, if only to prove, what you know, that my
heart is with you both, and that if in calm days my spirit loves
to roam in space, it is with you both I love to be in times of
care or trouble."

CHAPTER XII.

PARIS IN 1870: JULY, AUGUST, AND SEPTEMBER.

As soon as relations became "strained" between France and Germany,
according to the term used in diplomacy, the king of Prussia ordered
home all his subjects who had found employment in France, especially
those in Alsace and Lorraine.[1] Long before this, those provinces
had been overrun with photographers, pedlers, and travelling workmen,
commissioned to make themselves fully acquainted with the roads,
the by-paths, the resources of the villages, and the character
of the rural officials. In the case of France, however, though
all the reports concerning military stores looked well on paper,
the old guns mounted on the frontier fortresses were worthless,
and the organization of the army was so imperfect that scarcely
more than two hundred thousand troops could be sent to defend the
French frontier from Switzerland to Luxemburg; while Germany, with
an army that could be mobilized in eleven days, was ready by the
1st of August to pour five hundred thousand men across the Rhine.
The emperor placed great reliance on his _mitrailleuses_,--a new
engine of war that would fire a volley of musketry at once, but
which, though horribly murderous, has not proved of great val