It was the day when the Duc de Gramont uttered the fatal speech which determined the die between peace and war. No one not at Paris on that day can conceive the popular enthusiasm with which that speech was hailed--the greater because the warlike tone of it was not anticipated; because there had been a rumour amidst circles the best informed that a speech of pacific moderation was to be the result of the Imperial Council. Rapturous indeed were the applauses with which the sentences that breathed haughty defiance were hailed by the Assembly. The ladies in the tribune rose with one accord, waving their handkerchiefs. Tall, stalwart, dark, with Roman features and lofty presence, the Minister of France seemed to say with Catiline in the fine tragedy: "Lo! where I stand, I am war!" Paris had been hungering for some hero of the hour--the Duc de Gramont became at once raised to that eminence. All the journals, save the very few which were friendly to peace, because hostile to the Emperor, resounded with praise, not only of the speech, but of the speaker. It is with a melancholy sense of amusement that one recalls now to mind those organs of public opinion--with what romantic fondness they dwelt on the personal graces of the man who had at last given voice to the chivalry of France: "The charming gravity of his countenance--the mysterious expression of his eye!" As the crowd poured from the Chambers, Victor de Mauleon and Savarin, who had been among the listeners, encountered. "No chance for my friends the Orleanists now," said Savarin. "You who mock at all parties are, I suppose, at heart for the Republican--small chance, too, for that." "I do not agree with you. Violent impulses have quick reactions." "But what reaction could shake the Emperor after he returns a conqueror, bringing in his pocket the left bank of the Rhine?" "None--when he does that. Will he do it? Does he himself think he will do it? I doubt--" "Doubt the French army against the Prussian?" "Against the German people united--yes, very much." "But war will disunite the German people. Bavaria will surely assist us --Hanover will rise against the spoliator--Austria at our first successes must shake off her present enforced neutrality?" "You have not been in Germany, and I have. What yesterday was a Prussian army, to-morrow will be a German population; far exceeding our own in numbers, in hardihood of body, in cultivated intellect, in military discipline. But talk of something else. How is my ex-editor--poor Gustave Rameau?" "Still very weak, but on the mend. You may have him back in his office soon."