"Please back up Mr. Forster. I think he is quite right. Fancy, to be chosen and proposed by a Committee, adopted by 300 idiots or geniuses, and to have to submit, when you can stand on your own merits." 'A German Conservative Duchess was not likely to be able to understand the Caucus. Forster was her friend, going and sitting with her almost every day, and chuckling over her politics with his extraordinary chuckle, and playing cards with her at night. To his card-playing, indeed, he ultimately owed his life, for the Invincibles in Dublin used to wait for him night after night outside his club to murder him (as afterwards came out in the Phoenix Park trial), and, tired out with waiting, at last fancy that he must have gone home. Forster was at this moment at loggerheads with his Bradford constituents, and hence the letter of the Duchess; but I did not "back up" Forster, being myself an absolute believer in the wisdom of the Caucus system. I had, indeed, invented a Caucus in Chelsea before the first Birmingham Election Association was started.' Sir Charles left for Paris, and-- 'on September 6th I met Émile Ollivier, who said that there had never been in France a personal power equal to that of Gambetta at this moment; even that of Napoleon, when First Consul, was not so great. Then the Bourbons were dimly seen behind. "Now there is nothing behind; nothing except Clericalism, and Clericalism can be bought." 'Ollivier I found still full of burning hatred for the Empress, but he had forgiven Rouher and the Emperor for making him the scapegoat. I discussed with him once more the origin of the war of 1870, and he maintained most stoutly that France had been driven into it by Bismarck, and had only put herself in the wrong by herself declaring war, and had done this because her army system gave her a fortnight's start, the advantage of which was lost through the Emperor's hesitations. He thinks that in that fortnight the German Army could have been destroyed. It is on this point that he is wrong.' CHAPTER XVIII THE ZULU WAR AND THE GREEK COMMITTEE The chronicle of the year 1879 begins with a visit paid by Sir Charles to Paris on his way back from his house near Toulon, to which he had returned after the brief Session of December, On February 2nd 'I breakfasted with Gambetta. His furniture was being packed up for removal to the Palais Bourbon, where he was about to take up residence as President of the Chamber,' and 'saw him again late at night at the office of his paper' (_La République Française_). 'Gambetta was then,' says a note added later, 'at the height of his power, and, in fact, Dictator. He was a patriot, but too big for the Republic.'