In making that calculation he erred profoundly. M. Benedetti, the French Ambassador to the Court of Berlin, was instructed as early as the first week in August, 1866, to claim the left bank of the Rhine as far as, and including the important fortress of Mainz. “Knowing the temper of the Minister-President,” and knowing also, as he had repeatedly told his Government, that all Germany would resist any proposal to cede the least portion of territory, he first sent in a copy of M. Drouyn de Lhuys’ despatch, and afterwards called on the Minister. Prince von Bismarck, in 1871, published in the official newspapers his account of the famous interview, which shows that Benedetti, as he had pledged himself to do, resolutely pressed the large demand. He was told that it meant war, and that he had “better go to Paris to prevent a rupture.” Unmoved, he replied that he would return home, “but only to maintain a proposition the abandonment of which would imperil the dynasty.” “The parting words” of the Prussian statesman to Count Benedetti, as nearly as they could be remembered by the man who spoke them, were calculated to suggest grave reflections. “Please to call His Majesty’s attention to this,” said Herr von Bismarck. “Should a war arise out of this complication, it might be a war attended by a revolutionary crisis. In such a case the German dynasties are likely to prove more solid than that of the Emperor Napoleon.” It was a menace and a prophetic warning, which touched a sensitive fibre in the heart of the French ruler, who, after a conversation with Count Benedetti, wrote, on the 12th of August, a remarkable letter to M. de Lavalette, who became the _ad interim_ successor of M. Drouyn de Lhuys. Expressing his fears lest “the journals” should taunt him with the refusal of his demand for the Rhine provinces, he directed that the report should be contradicted, flatly; and he added, “the true interest of France is not to obtain an insignificant increase of territory, but to aid Germany in constituting herself after a fashion which will be most favourable to our interests and those of Europe.” Neither Dodona nor Delphos could have been more oracular. Alarmed as he was, he did not altogether recede from his position, but occupied it in a different way. On the 16th of August a fresh set of proposals was forwarded to Count Benedetti, comprising a regular scale of concessions—the frontiers of 1814 and the annexation of Belgium, or Luxemburg and Belgium, or the Duchy with Belgium, without Antwerp, which was to be “declared a free city.” The last-named device was designed “to obviate the intervention of England” when the projected act of violence was committed. “The _minimum_ we require,” wrote the French Government to M. Benedetti, “is an ostensible treaty which gives us Luxemburg, and a secret treaty which, stipulating for an offensive and defensive alliance, leaves us the chance of annexing Belgium at the right moment, Prussia engaging to assist us, by force