Ollivier quotes and entirely adopts the 'proud and manly' utterances of the Duc de Gramont who stood up and addressed the assembly towards the close of the debate. 'After what you have just heard,' he said, 'one fact is enough. The Prussian Government has informed all the Cabinets of Europe of the refusal to receive our ambassador or to continue the discussion with him. That is an affront to the emperor and to France, and if (_par impossible_) a Chamber could be found in my country to bear or suffer it, I would not remain Minister of Foreign Affairs for five minutes.' These haughty words (we are told) electrified the Chamber, and a committee to examine the papers on which the ministers relied to prove their case was immediately appointed. These were brought by Gramont, who, however, said that he would not lay before the committee the precise words of Bismarck's insulting telegram, because his knowledge of it came only from a very confidential communication made to him by the French representatives at certain foreign courts who had been permitted to see the original, so that the authentic text was not in his possession. This excuse was accepted, somewhat imprudently, by the committee; and their chairman proceeded to question Gramont closely on one point--whether, after Leopold's retirement had become known, the King of Prussia had been required at one and the same time to approve it formally and to promise that the candidature should never be revived. During the debate it had been objected by those who opposed the war-party that after obtaining the king's approval, and not till then, the Foreign Secretary demanded this promise, and that on this new demand the king took offence and briefly declined any further interview with Benedetti. Gramont answered the chairman with a direct affirmative; he stated that the two concessions had been required simultaneously, and M. Ollivier undertakes to prove that this statement was correct. He argues, if we understand him rightly, that before Leopold had withdrawn his candidature, the king had been pressed to advise or order him to do so, and that this requisition included by implication the demand for a guarantee against its renewal. When Leopold had retired without the king's intervention, the royal order became unnecessary; but the implied demand still remained in force, and was merely repeated in subsequent telegrams.[51] On this we must remark that both Benedetti and the Prussian king entirely missed the alleged implication; that the question of guarantees was never raised by the telegrams interchanged between Gramont and Benedetti before Leopold's retirement had become public, when both the king and the ambassador treated it as entirely new; and that at any rate such an important and highly contentious demand should obviously have been stated with unequivocal distinctness, since any other course was quite certain to produce misunderstandings and recriminations. And