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