which vast majorities in a Parliament just elected, and a Council of
Ministers whom she could not practically replace, enforced upon her
will."

"Your observations, M. Duplessis, impress me strongly, and add to the
deep anxieties with which, in common with all my countrymen, I regard the
menacing aspect of the present hour. Let us hope the best. Our
Government, I know, is exerting itself to the utmost verge of its power,
to remove every just ground of offence that the unfortunate nomination of
a German Prince to the Spanish throne could not fail to have given to
French statesmen."

"I am glad you concede that such a nomination was a just ground of
offence," said Lemercier, rather bitterly; "for I have met Englishmen who
asserted that France had no right to resent any choice of a sovereign
that Spain might make."

"Englishmen in general are not very reflective politicians in foreign
affairs," said Graham; "but those who are must see that France could not,
without alarm the most justifiable, contemplate a cordon of hostile
states being drawn around her on all sides,--Germany, is, itself so
formidable since the field of Sadowa, on the east; a German prince in the
southwest; the not improbable alliance between Prussia and the Italian
kingdom, already so alienated from the France to which it owed so much.
If England would be uneasy were a great maritime power possessed of
Antwerp, how much more uneasy might France justly be if Prussia could add
the armies of Spain to those of Germany, and launch them both upon
France. But that cause of alarm is over--the Hohenzollern is withdrawn.
Let us hope for the best."