"De tous côtés, les lanceurs de prédictions, depuis le fameux archange Gabriel jusqu'à la non moins fameuse Mme. de Thèbes, s'accordaient pour entourer son avènement des plus sinistres prévisions, pour annoncer sa fin prochaine et l'imminence d'une nouvelle vacance du trône d'Angleterre. "Symptôme plus grave! Les oracles de la science n'étaient pas moins menaçants que les prophéties des devins. Deux fois, les pompes de son couronnement durent être décommandées, deux fois les fêtes ajournées et les lampions éteints. Les hôtes princiers, convoqués a grands frais de tous les points du globe, pour participer à ces réjouissances, attendirent, dans l'angoisse, l'annonce d'une cérémonie plus lugubre. "La volonté d'Edouard VII triumpha de toutes ces résistances. Il déclara avec une indomptable énergie que, coûte que coûte, il était décidé a ne pas descendre dans la tombe avant d'avoir posé sur sa tête, avec tout l'éclat, avec toute la solennité traditionnels, aux yeux des représentants émerveillés de tout son vaste empire, aux yeux de l'Univers jaloux, la couronne de ses Pères, sa double couronne de Roi et d'Empereur, que les mains avides de la mort semblaient vouloir lui disputer." His account of Edward VII reads curiously to-day, the more so when we recall the fact that M. Emile Flourens was at one time French Minister of Foreign Affairs, and that, at the moment when the book first appeared, the King was frequently in Paris, and on good terms with Republicans of all sections. After pointing out how scrupulously he had as Prince of Wales suppressed his political opinions, during his mother's lifetime, even when his power, had he exerted it, might have been advantageous to his country, the French critic gives him full credit for having made the best of his life in many ways. He had travelled all over the world, had studied humanity and society in all shapes, had "warmed both hands before the fire of life" in every quarter of the globe. But, though his features as a private personage were familiar to everybody, he remained a sphinx, mysterious and unfathomable, even to his friends, in public affairs. He was well known to Parisians everywhere, and was as popular in working-class centres as in the most aristocratic _salons_. Paris was, in fact, the only city where he was at his ease and at home, where, in fact, he was himself. By far the most sympathetic Briton to Parisians who ever was in Paris, he exercised a real influence over all classes. They were kept carefully informed as to his tastes, his manners, his intimates, his vices and his debts, and were the more friendly to him on account of them. The warmest partisans of his accession, however, were his creditors, who were mortally afraid that his habits would not give him the opportunity for discharging his liabilities out of his mother's accumulations.