was the only statement which Apponyi could extract from him. Guizot, but in more courteous terms, conveyed the same explanation to Lord Palmerston. No written communication having passed between M. de Pontois and Reshid Pasha, the matter was allowed to drop.[605] It was evident that whatever might have been the precise words used by M. Cor, the message of the French ambassador to the _Reis-Effendi_ was a rather clumsy attempt to frighten the Sultan into withholding his ratification of the treaty. France meanwhile was arming in most ostentatious fashion. On September 13 the fortification of Paris was decreed by a Royal ordinance. This was a measure which had been under consideration for some time past, but which had always been set aside on account of the difficulty of inducing the Chambers to consent to the required expenditure. Thiers, as a student of the campaign of 1814, had constantly advocated it, whilst Louis Philippe was also in favour of it because, as was generally believed, he hoped that a circle of forts round the capital would greatly facilitate the suppression of any revolutionary movement. M. Thiers gave his closest personal attention to the military preparations. With the journalists and stock-jobbers, by whom he was surrounded,[606] his conversation turned on war unceasingly. In the early days of August he had hinted at a campaign upon the Rhine, whilst the papers which he inspired denounced the treaties of 1815 and talked of "natural frontiers." But his thoughts soon assumed a new direction. The _débordement_,[607] when it came, would be in Italy, where Austria was to be assailed at her most vulnerable point. Lying on the floor, with his maps spread out before him, like the great man about whom he had written so much, he planned vast military and diplomatic combinations.[608]