During the few days that we remained at Versailles, we caught glimpses of King William and Bismarck, both of whom we had previously seen in Paris in 1867, when they were the guests of Napoleon III. I find in my diary a memorandum, dictated perhaps by my father: "Bismarck much fatter and bloated." We saw him one day leaving the Prefecture, where the King had his quarters. He stood for a moment outside, chatting and laughing noisily with some other German personages, then strode away with a companion. He was only fifty-five years old, and was full of vigour at that time, even though he might have put on flesh during recent years, and therefore have renounced dancing--his last partner in the waltz having been Mme. Carette, the Empress Eugenie's reader, whom he led out at one of the '67 balls at the Tuileries. Very hale and hearty, too, looked the King whom Bismarck was about to turn into an Emperor. Yet the victor of Sedan was already seventy-three years old. I only saw him on horseback during my stay at Versailles. My recollections of him, Bismarck, and Moltke, belong more particularly to the year 1872, when I was in Berlin in connexion with the famous meeting of the three Emperors. My father and myself had kept in touch with Mr. Wodehouse, from whom we learnt that we should have to apply to the German General commanding at Versailles with respect to any further safe-conducts. At first we were informed that there could be no departure from the plan of sending us out of France by way of Epernay, Reims, and Sedan, and this by no means coincided with the desires of most of the Englishmen who had come out of Paris, they wishing to proceed westward, and secure a passage across the Channel from Le Havre or Dieppe. My father and myself also wanted to go westward, but in order to make our way into Brittany, my stepmother and her children being at Saint Servan, near Saint Malo. At last the German authorities decided to give us the alternative routes of Mantes and Dreux, the first-named being the preferable one for those people who were bound for England. It was chosen also by my father, as the Dreux route would have led us into a region where hostilities were in progress, and where we might suddenly have found ourselves "held up."