It was on the 23rd of September when the Royal headquarters was at Ferrières, Baron Rothschild's château on the east of Paris, that there either presented himself to Bismarck an intriguant, or that the Chancellor evoked for himself an instrument for whom the way was made open to penetrate the beleaguerment of Metz and submit to Bazaine certain considerations. In connection with this mission we heard a good deal at the time of a mysterious "Mons. M." and an equally mysterious "Mons. N." Both were myths: "M." and "N." were alike pseudonyms of the real go-between, a certain Edmond Regnier who died in Paris on the 23rd of January 1894, after a strange and varied career of which the episode to be detailed in this article is the most remarkable. In a now very rare pamphlet published by Regnier in November 1870, he describes himself as a French landed proprietor with financial interests in England yielding him an income of £800 per annum, and as having come to England with his family in the end of August of that year in consequence of the proximity of German troops to his French residence. The painstaking compilers of the indictment against Bazaine give rather a different account of the character and antecedents of M. Regnier. Their information is that he received an imperfect education, sufficiently proven by his extraordinary style and vicious orthography. He studied, with little progress, law and medicine; later he took up magnetism. He was curiously mixed up in the events of the revolution of 1848. He had some employment in Algeria as an assistant surgeon. Returning to France he developed a quarry of paving-stone, and afterwards married in England a wife who brought him a certain competence. "Regnier," continues the Report, "is a sharp, audacious fellow; his manners are vulgar--vain to excess he considers himself a profound politician. Was he induced to throw himself into the midst of events by one of the monomanias which are engendered by periods of storm and revolution? Was he simply an intriguer, plying his trade? It is difficult to tell. But however that may be, the established fact is that we find him in England in September 1870 besieging with his projects the _entourage_ of the Empress." Regnier's siege of the forlorn colony at Hastings took the form of a bombardment of letters, his principal victim being Madame Le Breton, the lady-in-waiting of the Empress and the sister of the unfortunate General Bourbaki, then in command of the Imperial Guard at Metz. He was about to have his passport viséd by the German Ambassador in London, rather an equivocal proceeding for a French subject; and on the 12th of September he wrote thus to Madame Le Breton, desiring that the letter should be communicated to Her Majesty:--