I should say nothing more in reply to this allegation but for the vindictive personal assault made upon a valued friend, the Marquis de Chambrun. The Senator from Missouri [Mr. SCHURZ] has already spoken for him; but I claim this privilege also. Besides his own merits, this gentleman is commended to Americans by his association with the two French names most cherished in our country, Lafayette and De Tocqueville. I have known him from the very day of his arrival in Washington early in the spring of 1865, and have seen him since, in unbroken friendship, almost daily. Shortly after his arrival I took him with me on a visit to Mr. Lincoln at the front, close upon the capture of Richmond. This stranger began his remarkable intimacy with American life by several days in the society of the President only one week before his death. He was by the side of the President in his last visit to a military hospital, and when he last shook hands with the soldiers; also when he made his last speech from the window of the Executive Mansion, the stranger was his guest, standing by his side. From that time down to this day of accusation his intimacies have extended beyond those of any other foreigner. His studies of our institutions have been minute and critical, being second only to those of his late friend De Tocqueville. Whether conversing on his own country or on ours, he is always at home. If at any time the Marquis de Chambrun sustained official relations with the French Government, or was its agent, he never spoke of it to me; nor did I ever know it until the papers produced by the Senator from Iowa [Mr. HARLAN]. Our conversation was always that of friends, and on topics of general interest, not of business. Though ignorant of any official relations with his own Government, I could not fail to know his close relations with members of our Government, ending in his recent employment to present our case in French for the Geneva tribunal,--an honorable and confidential service, faithfully performed. The Senator from Indiana knew of the arms question some five months before the meeting of Congress. I did not. It was after the session began, and just before the holidays, that I first knew of it. And here my informant was not a foreigner, but, as I have already said, a distinguished citizen. The French “spy,” as he is so happily called, though with me daily, never spoke of it; nor did I speak of it to him. By-and-by the Senator from Missouri mentioned it, and then, in my desire to know the evidence affecting persons here, if any such existed, I spoke to my French friend. This was only a few days before the resolution.