events, he was prepared for it, as were the silent soldier, von Roon, and
the gentle tactician, von Moltke. These gentlemen were away for a
holiday, but they returned, and, as history tells, had merely to fill in
a few dates on already prepared documents.

If France was not ready she thought herself so, and was at all events
willing. Nay, she was so eager that she shouted when she should have held
her tongue. And who shall say what the schemer of the Tuileries thought
of it all behind that pleasant smile, those dull and sphinx-like eyes? He
had always believed in his star, had always known that he was destined to
be great; and now perhaps he knew that his star was waning--that the
greatness was past. He made his preparations quietly. He was never a
flustered man, this nephew of the greatest genius the world has seen. Did
he not sit three months later in front of a cottage at Donchery and
impassively smoke cigarette after cigarette while waiting for Otto von
Bismarck? He was a fatalist.

"The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on."

And it must be remembered to his credit that he asked no man's pity--a
request as foolish to make for a fallen emperor as for the ordinary man
who has, for instance, married in haste, and is given the leisure of a
whole lifetime in which to repent. For the human heart is incapable of
bestowing unadulterated pity: there must be some contempt in it. If the
fall of Napoleon III was great, let it be remembered that few place
themselves by their own exertions in a position to fall at all.

The declaration of war was, on the whole, acclaimed in France; for
Frenchmen are, above all men, soldiers. Does not the whole world use
French terms in the technicalities of warfare? The majority received the