What I was about to ask was so just and reasonable, so in harmony with the interests of England herself, that in spite of all that I had been told I still preserved a spark of hope at the bottom of my heart. I was at any rate decided not to leave the Foreign Office before completely exhausting the question which was the object of my mission, and I was determined not to leave without having clearly understood and defined the attitude towards ourselves that England proposed to maintain. I had to know, in a word, what we might hope from her. I must say, and I say it with pleasure, that the eminent statesman was at pains to facilitate this task. His welcome was perfect, his language was frank, direct and courteous, and his answers precise and complete. At the beginning of our conversation only, he appeared to me a little cold and reserved in his answers. But, the ice once broken, he no longer hesitated to express all his thoughts. He even seemed to find pleasure in sounding the situation with me, so as to leave nothing in doubt or obscurity. CHAPTER XIII AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE I began by telling him of the situation in France, comparing its actual condition with that of the days before the 4th of September. I tried to show him what had been done since the disaster of Sedan, from the fall of the Empire and the coming of the Republic till the present moment. I pointed out--and he agreed--that after Sedan France was face to face with despair. She was in chaos, in the void; nothing remained; everything had to be recreated. Paris was without arms and soldiers. The provinces were discouraged and denuded of everything that might allow of a single day’s resistance. The enemy’s armies were advancing without obstacle, invading France town by town, province by province, devastating the country and trampling it underfoot.... After this distressing but truthful picture, this miasma of exhaustion and desolation, I drew for him a picture of the awakening of the great nation on the day after the 4th of September. I described its hope when there was no more hope, its courage when courage was madness, its resistance when all means of resistance were at an end. I described the whole nation erect, from Paris down to the smallest hamlet lost in the mountains, unconquered and unconquerable, strong and proud and with arms in its hands. A force had been created out of nothing, and arms out of the Void. Lord Granville listened. He listened long, without making the slightest movement. My words became more and more animated. He followed them, if I may describe it so, with his eyes.... “You see, M. le Comte,” I said at last, “you see what we have done, and from that you can judge what we are still capable of doing and what we will certainly do. Paris is determined to undergo the greatest rigours of war rather than surrender.