'Bazaine at the Court-Martial looked only stupid, like a fat old seal, utterly unmilitary, and, as the French would say, "become cow-like." It was difficult to see in him the man who, however great his crimes in Mexico, had at least been a man of the most daring courage and of the most overweening ambition. In the suppressed volume of the papers of the Imperial family seized at the Tuileries there is a letter from General Félix Douay to his brother in which he describes Bazaine's attempt to become the Bernadotte of Mexico, and shows how, in order to obtain the Mexican throne, he kept up treasonable relations with the chiefs of the republican bands which it was his duty to combat. It is curious to find the French second-in-command writing to his brother, also a General, a letter which, somehow or other, came into the possession of the Emperor himself, in which he says: "It is terrible to see a great dignity prostrated in such fashion.... We have to go back to Cardinal Dubois to find such an accomplished scoundrel having made use of a situation of the highest confidence to sell his country and his master.... He will not long escape the infamy to which he is consigned by the wishes of all honest men in the army, who are daily more and more shocked by the scandal of his personal fortune." Colonel Boyer was chief of the staff to Bazaine in Mexico, and is mentioned in the correspondence between the two Generals Douay as being mixed up in these discreditable transactions; and he was afterwards, as General Boyer, concerned, it may be remembered, in the Régnier affair at Metz, when General Bourbaki was sent out under a pass from the Prussians on a fool's errand to the Empress Eugénie, there being some treasonable plot behind. This is now (1908) confirmed by the letter of the King of Prussia to the Empress Eugénie in the Bernstorff Memoirs.' From 1872 onwards Sir Charles, in his many passages through Paris, invariably met Gambetta, 'and spent as much time with him as possible.' He was in this way kept fully informed on French politics by the most powerful politician in France. As Gambetta's power grew, Dilke's influence grew also, until there came a time when the friendship between the two was of international interest. II. On returning to London after the Easter recess of 1872, Sir Charles resumed his political duties in and out of Parliament. The Radical Club, of which he remained Secretary till he took office in 1880, exercised some little influence in the House of Commons, and was of some value in bringing men together for the exchange of ideas, but began to present difficulties in its working, and soon 'dropped very much into the hands of Fawcett. Fitzmaurice, and myself.'