'On January 26th I reached Paris on my return from Toulon, and breakfasted with Gambetta, stupid Spuller remaining with us all the time. Barrère came to see me, and told me that the late ministerial crisis in France had had for cause Waddington's refusal to accept Gambetta's orders to turn out all the reactionaries from the Foreign Office. "That lock has now been forced." [Footnote: The Waddington Ministry had fallen in the last days of December, and M. de Freycinet came into power. M. Camille Barrère was at this time Gambetta's chief private secretary. Sir Charles had first met him in London during the Commune. He has had a distinguished career, and is, in 1917, Ambassador at Rome.] Tissot, French Minister at Athens, and known to me as having been formerly the representative of the Government of National Defence in London, when he occupied the Embassy and acted as an unauthorized Minister, is to be Ambassador at Constantinople, and Waddington will take the Embassy in London. Barrère has been made French Commissioner on the European Commission of the Danube, which enables him for nine months in the year to continue his newspaper work in Paris. It is true, as stated in the French newspapers, that Waddington's last circular proposing mediation between Turkey and Greece was accepted by all the Continental Powers, but not answered by England. 'On the 27th I breakfasted with Gambetta to meet General Billot, commanding the Marseille _corps d'armée_, who, in the event of war occurring between 1887 and 1890, would have been second in command of the French armies.