That long winter of 1870 was passed in a wretched little boat on the coast of Prussia. How well I remember my watch on the cold decks,--child that I was, almost,--and the silhouette of a certain _King William_ that so often appeared on the horizon in pursuit of us, at the sight of which we always fled, its balls whizzing behind us over the icy waters. Then the despair of feeling that our small part there had been so useless and unavailing! We knew nothing about it until long afterward; news came seldom, and when it did come it was in little sealed papers that we opened tremblingly. Over each fresh disaster, over each new story of German cruelty, what rage filled our hearts,--childlike in the excess of their violence,--what vows we made among ourselves never to forget! All this came to me pell-mell, or rather a rapid synthesis of it all, on the very threshold of this breakfast-room, even before I had crossed the sill, from the mere sight of the pointed helmets that hung along the wall, and I felt like going away. But I did not, and the feeling disappeared in the dark backward and abysm of time. Their welcome, their handshakes, and their smiles of good fellowship made me forget it in a second, for the moment at least. At any rate, it seems that there is not between them and us that racial antipathy which is less easily overcome than the sharp rancor of war. During breakfast this Chinese palace of theirs, accustomed to the sound of gongs and flutes, echoes to the strains of "Lohengrin" or the "Rheingold," played in the distance by their military band. The white-haired marshal was good enough to give me a seat near him, and, like all of our people who have had the honor to come under his influence, I felt the charm of his exquisite distinction of manner, of his kindness and goodness. FRIDAY, May 3.