mock at all parties are, I suppose, at heart for the Republican--small
chance, too, for that."

"I do not agree with you. Violent impulses have quick reactions."

"But what reaction could shake the Emperor after he returns a conqueror,
bringing in his pocket the left bank of the Rhine?"

"None--when he does that. Will he do it? Does he himself think he will
do it? I doubt--"

"Doubt the French army against the Prussian?"

"Against the German people united--yes, very much."

"But war will disunite the German people. Bavaria will surely assist us
--Hanover will rise against the spoliator--Austria at our first successes
must shake off her present enforced neutrality?"

"You have not been in Germany, and I have. What yesterday was a Prussian
army, to-morrow will be a German population; far exceeding our own in
numbers, in hardihood of body, in cultivated intellect, in military
discipline. But talk of something else. How is my ex-editor--poor
Gustave Rameau?"

"Still very weak, but on the mend. You may have him back in his office
soon."

"Impossible! even in his sick-bed his vanity was more vigorous than ever.
He issued a war-song, which has gone the round of the war journals signed