"The display was gorgeous, and as the number of guests was limited (only one thousand!) there was more space for locomotion than at the former gatherings at the Palace, where we were wedged in with some four thousand. There was dancing and my daughter was solicited by one of the gentlemen for a set in which Prince Alfred and the Turkish Ambassador danced, the latter with an American belle, one of the Miss Beckwiths. I allowed her to dance in this set once. The Empress is truly a beautiful woman and of unaffected manners." In a long letter to his brother Sidney, of June 8, he describes some of their doings. At the Grand Review of sixty thousand troops he and his wife and eldest son were given seats in the Imperial Tribune, a little way behind the emperor and the King of Prussia, who were so soon to wage a deadly war with each other. On the way back from the review the following incident occurred:-- "After the review was over we took our carriage to return home. The carriages and cortège of the imperial personages took the right of the Cascade (which you know is in full view from the hippodrome of Longchamps). We took the left side and were attracted by the report of firearms on our left, which proceeded from persons shooting at pigeons from a trap. Soon after we heard a loud report on our right from a pistol, which attracted no further attention from us than the remark which I made that I did not know that persons were allowed to use firearms in the Bois. We passed on to our home, and in the evening were informed of the atrocious attempt upon the Emperor of Russia's life. The pistol report which I heard was that of the pistol of the assassin." Farther on in this letter he describes the grand fête given by the City of Paris to the visiting sovereigns at the Hotel de Ville. There were thirty-five thousand applications for tickets, but only eight thousand could be granted. Of these Morse was gratified to receive three:-- "Well, the great fête of Saturday the 8th is over. I despair of any attempt properly to describe its magnificence. I send you the papers.... Such a blaze of splendor cannot be conceived or described but in the descriptions of the Arabian Nights. We did not see half the display, for the immense series of gorgeous halls, lighted by seventy thousand candles, with fountains and flowers at every turn, made one giddy to see even for a moment. We had a good opportunity to scan the features of the emperors, the King of Prussia and the renowned Bismarck, with those of the beautiful empress and the princesses and princes and other distinguished persons of their suite.