At the breakfast talk turned naturally on Quinet, the professor and critic who was exiled after the _coup d'état_, and whom the Third Republic welcomed back to his place on the Extreme Left. This led to mention of the recent occasion when Gambetta had "assisted" at the funeral of another famous Republican exile, Ledru-Rollin, who had died on the last day of 1874. Hereupon-- 'Randolph turned to Gambetta, and in his most apologetic style, which is extremely taking, said: "_Would_ you mind telling me who Ledru- Rollin was?" Gambetta looked him all up and down, as though to say, "What sort of a politician are you, never to have heard of Ledru- Rollin?" and then broke into a laugh, and replied: "Ledru-Rollin was a republican in the days when there were none, so we were bound to give him a first-class funeral."' Sir Charles adds: 'When I was a boy, Hepworth Dixon used to tell a story of how an omnibus driver had nudged him one day when he was sitting on the box- seat, and pointing out Ledru-Rollin in Oxford Street, had said, "See that gentleman? I have heard say how he once was King of France"-- which had been pretty true at the beginning of 1848.' After the Easter recess 'was the moment of the German war scare' of 1875 in France-- 'Bourke' (the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs) 'kept me quiet in the Commons by keeping me informed. He told me of the Queen's letter to the Emperor William the day it went. Gavard, the French Charge d'Affaires, told me that England and Russia received official thanks from France for preventing war by pressure at Berlin. Peace was not in danger.' There is a note referring to conversations held earlier in 1875 with Gambetta, and to other conversations with Bismarck in 1889: 'I had heard a rumour that Thiers had signed secret articles of peace in addition to the public treaty, and further that in these articles there was something about the number of men to be kept under arms by France. In the Arnim trial it came out that one of the despatches concerned Prussian spies in France in 1872, while two of the despatches were "so secret that they could not be even named or catalogued." It was thought that these despatches concerned the secret articles, and it was sought in this way to explain the efforts made by Germany to prevent the fall of Thiers on the ground that he must be kept on his legs for fear a different Government would disregard his secret articles. Bismarck himself, it should be remembered, spoke of the two uncatalogued despatches as "perhaps decisive of the question of peace or war." [Footnote: Secret articles of the Versailles and Frankfort.]