The Mineral argus., 1884-04-10
THE FRANco-GERMAN WAR
Interesting "reminiscences of the Great
one-5ided Conflict.

episode so barren OF touches OF HuJuI'
as was the Second Empire. From frs
to last it was a mere ~scaffolding ofmere
t%ricious artiiciality. There was TIN
sham Caesar, faced person with a knacl
of uttering obscurities conveying
vague flavor of ominousness at whicl
the nations pricked their sensitive ears
The inner line of the empire was
strange mixture of rottenness and GIN.
crackery. What q COURT The atmos
phere of Compiegne had a confused
aroma of bastardy, the demi-monde.
the bourse, bogus nobility, journalism
in the degradation of prostitution, mill
taryism, half bravo, half gallant; of in.
trigue, of dissoluteness of insin-
cerity, of CHASTITY hollowness. II
is among the most humiliating
problems of modern times how long
this nasty gaudy caricature of empire
was able to impose on the world. 1t is
a poor consolation for the worlds long
self-delusion that when the windbag
was once resolutely pricked, it should
have collapsed with such headlong
swiftness. The humiliating memory
cannot out of that eighteen-year-long
imposition.
l have seen Napoleon III at the pin
nacle of his hollow splendor. From the
German picket line on the I'd of August,
1870, l heard the distant cheering on
the Snicherenberg that greeted him and
the lad whom he had brought from Metz
te receive his baptism of fire." Again
l saw him on the morning after Sedan,
as the broken man-broken in power,
in prestige, in health, in spirits-sat
with Bismarck ON the grass plot in
front of the weaver's cottage on the
Donchery road. Next morning he wit
messed his departure into his Wilhelms-
hone captivity. have seer lin dod-
about Brighton and stro'ling un
der the Beech trees hat encircle Chisle-
hurst Common. And for the last time
all l saw that stolid careworn face, as
it lay on the raised pillow of the beir in
the broad corridor of Camden Place;
and when the face was no more visible
| witnessed the coffin laid down in the
little chapel among the Chislehurst elm
l knew the boy of the empire
when the shackles of the empire had
from his limbs, and he was no
longer a buckram creature, but a lively,
lad. My acquaintance endured
INTO his manhood. When the twilight
was falling on the rolling veldt of Zulu
and his days work in the staff tent
vas done, he liked, as it seemed to me,
10 gossip with one who knew the other
lde of the picture, about the early days
II the Franco German war-a wal that
wrought at once his ruin and his
Emancipation. And finally, poor gal
ant lad! I saw dimly through tears the
7ery last of him, as he lay there dead
N the blood-stained sward by the
tyotyosi river, with calm proud smile
N his face, and his body pierced by
Countless assegai stabs. Men have
allied his death ignoble. Petty as was
he quarrel, wretched as was the de-
ertion that wrought his fate 1 call him,
ather, happy in the opportunity of his
leath. Had he lived, what of artificial
ty, what of hollow unreality might
here not have been in store for him!
1t was, he had moved in the world a
i've ghost. Better than this, surely,
o be a dead hero to end the Ma
'oleonic S~ero-comedy with his young face
,allantly to his a~ssailants, and his life
Hood drawn by the cold STEEL
L do not know how the palace of st.
loud looks now, but when l saw it last
! was a CHASTITY re-blackened wreck.
German picket of infantry men were
.uartered In the roofess salon. where
hey had built themselves a shelter of a
ind of scyrched tapestrie, and singed
arpet scraps. A troop of Uhlan re-
ru1ts were practicing the manege on
he little bend bordered by the stream !
spot that had been the empress
-ower garden. Six months earlier who,
4 the widest speculation of fancy,
ould have imagined the possibility of
uch a fate IS this for the beautiful
hateau? There was the gaunt frame
FORK of a bow window whose outlook
yas up the Seine in the direc-
of Paris; this was the
window, I was told.
I the room that had been the private
'ureau-the Study" as we should per-
APPS call it-of the Emperor Napoleon.
that window he sat late on the after
Don of 10th July, 1870. 1t was a fair
Gene that lay before him. Out on the
avn close under his eye wac the TOW
abroad track hat had been one of the
are playthings of his boy. But it was
ardly a time for admiring n or
linking about toys. The dreamy eyed
with his head on his chest had more
erlous food for reflection. War had
cen declared. The Germans were
lobililing like clock-work; the French
'ere trying to mobilize, and finding
hat the attempt produced chaos. Oh
vier had proclaimed his lightness of
cart in taking the arbitrement of war