I think that the most startling inspiration during my life was one morning when, on walking through the Garden of the Tuileries, I saw, within twenty feet of me, at a window, in the old palace, which afterward disappeared under the Commune, the emperor and his minister of finance, Achille Fould, seated together, evidently in earnest discussion. There was not at that time any human being whom I so hated and abhorred as Napoleon III. He had broken his oath and trodden the French republic under his feet, he was aiding to keep down the aspirations of Italy, and he was doing his best to bring on an intervention of Europe, in behalf of the Confederate States, to dissolve our Union. He was then the arbiter of Europe. The world had not then discovered him to be what Bismarck had already found him--``a great unrecognized incapacity,'' and, as I looked up and distinctly saw him so near me, there flashed through my mind an understanding of some of the great crimes of political history, such as I have never had before or since.[1] [1] Since writing this I find in the Autobiography of W. J. Stillman that a similar feeling once beset him on seeing this imperial malefactor, In France there was very little to be done for our cause. The great mass of Frenchmen were either indifferent or opposed to us. The only exception of importance was Laboulaye, professor at the Coll<e!>ge de France, and his lecture-room was a center of good influences in favor of the American cause; in the midst of that frivolous Napoleonic France he seemed by far ``the noblest Roman of them all.'' The main effort in our behalf was made by Mr. John Bigelow, at that time consul-general, but afterward minister of the United States,--to supply with arguments the very small number of Frenchmen who were inclined to favor the Union cause, and this he did thoroughly well.