'On our way back (from India) we stayed at Cairo, and saw much of Sir Evelyn Baring, Riaz, Mustapha Fehmy, the Khedive, Tigrane, Yakoub Artin, and the other leading men. At Rome, as we passed through Italy, I made the acquaintance of many of my wife's friends, the most interesting of whom was, perhaps, Madame Minghetti, known to her friends as Donna Laura, and previously Princess Camporeale; and I obtained through Bonghi, whom we saw both at Naples and at Rome, an order to see Spezia--an order which was refused by the War Office, and granted by the Admiralty. The Admiral commanding the Fleet and the Préfet Maritime were both very kind, and I thoroughly saw the arsenal, fleet, and forts, with the two Admirals.' In 1905 Sir Charles writes: 'On September 7th in the year 1891 I started for the French manoeuvres, to which I had been invited by Galliffet. By sending over my horses I was able to see the manoeuvres extremely well.... 'The Marquis de Galliffet was an interesting figure, a soldier of the time of Louis XV., who, however, had thoroughly learned his modern work. There were 125,000 men in the field, but, looking back to my adventures, I am now more struck by the strange future of the friends I made than by the interest, great as it was, of the tactics. We had on the staff almost all those who afterwards became leading men in the Dreyfus case, on both sides of that affair. Saussier, the Generalissimo, had with him, to look after the foreign officers, Colonel (afterwards Sir) Reginald Talbot, Huehne' (German Military Attaché), 'and others--Maurice Weil (the Jew friend of Esterhazy), who was in the Rennes trial named by the defence as the real spy, though, I am convinced, innocent. We now know, of course, that Esterhazy should have been the villain of the play.... General Billot, afterwards Minister of War, was present, living with Saussier, as a spectator. Galliffet had under him nearly 120,000 men, but the skeleton enemy was commanded by General Boisdeffre, afterwards Chief of the Staff, and the leader of the clerical party in the Ministry of War, and friend, throughout the "affair," of Billot. General Brault, also afterwards Chief of the Staff, was in the manoeuvres Chief of the Staff to Galliffet. He, it will be remembered, also played his part in the "affair," as did Huehne, named above. On Galliffet's staff, besides General Brault, were Colonel Bailloud, also concerned in the Dreyfus case; Captain Picquart, afterwards the youngest Lieutenant-Colonel in the French army, a brilliant and most thoughtful military scholar, the hero of the Dreyfus case in its later aspects; the Comte d'Alsace, afterwards a deputy, and, although a clerical Conservative, a witness for Dreyfus; and Joseph Reinach, the real author of the virtual rehabilitation of Dreyfus.