I
scarcely expected such results to appear so soon. Perhaps this same
impertinent French action may prove a second French _faux pas_, to
follow in the wake of the first and very egregious _faux pas_ in
Mexico. The best that we can say for the _Decembriseur_ is, that he
is getting old. England refuses to join in his at once wild and
atrocious schemes, and makes a very Tomfool of the bloody Fox of the
Tuileries. My, Russia--ah! I am very confident of that--will refuse
to join in the dirty and treacherous conspiracy for the
preservation of slavery. Well for mediation. But Mr. _Decembriseur_,
what think you and your diplomatic lackeys; what judgment and what
determination do you and they form as to the terms and the
termination, too, of your diabolical scheme? Descend, sir, from your
shilly-shally generalities and verbal fallacies. Is it to be a
commercial union, this hobby of your minister here? What is it; let
us in all plainness of speech know what it is that you really and
positively intend. Propound to us the plain meaning and scope of
your imperial proposition.

[Footnote 1: The men who, in the great French revolution,
and under the leadership of Danton and of the municipality
of Paris, massacred the political prisoners in September,
1792, are recorded in history under the name of
_Septembriseurs_. Louis Napoleon may no less justly be
called the _Decembriseur_, from that frightful massacre on
the 2nd of December, from which he dates his despotism.]

_Nov. 27._--Lee, with his army, marches or marched on the south side
of the river, in a parallel to the line of Burnside on the north
side of the river, and Jackson quietly, but quickly follows. They
are at Fredericksburg, and our army looms up, calm, but stern;
still, but defiant and menacing. I heartily wish that Burnside may
be successful, and that I may prove to have been a false prophet.
But the great _Fatum_, FATE, seems to declare against Burnside, and
Fate generally takes sides with bold conceptions and their energetic
execution.

_Nov. 28._--The French despatch-scheme reads very like a Washington
concoction, and does not at all bear the marks of Parisian origin. I
find in it whole phrases which, for months past, I have repeatedly
heard from the French minister here. Perhaps Mr. Mercier, in his
turn, may have caught many of Mr. Seward's much-cherished
generalities, unintelligible, very probably, e