“Charmed to do so,” answered the cleverest
and best bred of all Parisian beaux garcons,
“but forgive me if I quit you soon. This
poor France! Entre nous, I am very uneasy about
the Parisian fever. I must run away after dinner
to clubs and cafes to learn the last bulletins.”
“We have nothing like that French Legitimist
in the States,” said the fair American to herself,
“unless we should ever be so silly as to make
Legitimists of the ruined gentlemen of the South.”
Meanwhile Graham Vane went slowly back to his apartment.
No false excuse had he made to Enguerrand; this evening
was devoted to M. Renard, who told him little he had
not known before; but his private life overruled his
public, and all that night he, professed politician,
thought sleeplessly, not over the crisis to France,
which might alter the conditions of Europe, but the
talk on his private life of that intermeddling American
woman.
The next day, Wednesday, July 6th, commenced one of
those eras in the world’s history in which private
life would vainly boast that it overrules Life Public.
How many private lives does such a terrible time
influence, absorb, darken with sorrow, crush into graves?
It was the day when the Duc de Gramont uttered the
fatal speech which determined the die between peace
and war. No one not at Paris on that day can
conceive the popular enthusiasm with which that speech
was hailed—the greater because the warlike
tone of it was not anticipated; because there had
been a rumour amidst circles the best informed that
a speech of pacific moderation was to be the result
of the Imperial Council. Rapturous indeed were
the applauses with which the sentences that breathed
haughty defiance were hailed by the Assembly.
The ladies in the tribune rose with one accord, waving
their handkerchiefs. Tall, stalwart, dark, with
Roman features and lofty presence, the Minister of
France seemed to say with Catiline in the fine tragedy:
“Lo! where I stand, I am war!”
Paris had been hungering for some hero of the hour—the
Duc de Gramont became at once raised to that eminence.
All the journals, save the very few which were friendly
to peace, because hostile to the Emperor, resounded
with praise, not only of the speech, but of the speaker.
It is with a melancholy sense of amusement that one
recalls now to mind those organs of public opinion—with
what romantic fondness they dwelt on the personal
graces of the man who had at last given voice to the
chivalry of France: “The charming gravity
of his countenance—the mysterious expression
of his eye!”
As the crowd poured from the Chambers, Victor de Mauleon
and Savarin, who had been among the listeners, encountered.
“No chance for my friends the Orleanists now,”
said Savarin. “You who mock at all parties
are, I suppose, at heart for the Republican—small
chance, too, for that.”
