or the land
of so many princes, who all waived their claims in favor of the
greatest among them,--he who now stood conqueror in a foreign land.

The chief room of the prefecture was filled with men in bright
uniforms, with helmets, ribbons, and decorations of all kinds. The
king stood near the fireplace, surrounded by princes and generals.
The president of the North German Confederation appointed to address
him had once before, in 1849, offered the imperial crown to a Prussian
king, who had declined it. Since then events had ripened. This time
the king accepted what his countrymen desired he should receive
from them. But he declined to assume the title of emperor until
the South German people should express their acquiescence, as the
South German princes had already done.

We may contrast the conduct of the Prussian king with the unwisdom
of the French emperor. Both Napoleon III. and the Emperor William
governed as autocrats; but with what different men they surrounded
themselves, and how differently they were served in their hour of
need! Yet Napoleon III. was lavish of rewards to his adherents,
while the Emperor William was, to an excessive degree, chary of
recompense. He seemed to feel that each man owed his all to his
kaiser and his country, and that when he had given all, he could
only say, in the words of Scripture: "I have but done that it was
my duty to do."

When Jules Favre went to Versailles to negotiate with the German
emperor and his chancellor for the surrender of Paris, he was
accompanied, on his second and subsequent visits, by a young officer
of ordnance, Count d'Herisson, who attended him as a sort of
aide-de-camp. Nothing could be less alike than the two men: Jules
Favre, of the upper middle class in life, deeply sorrowful, oppressed
by his responsibility, and profoundly conscious of his situation; and
the young man whose birth placed him in the ranks of the _jeunesse
doree_, pleased to find himself in plenty and in good society, and
allowing his spirits to rise with even more than national buoyancy,
when, for a moment, the pressure of trouble was removed. D'Herisson
published an account of his experience while at the Prussian
headquarters, which gives so vivid a picture of Count Bismarck,
the great chancellor of the German Empire, that I here venture
to repeat some parts of his narrative. He says,--

"On January 23 I received a summons from Jules Favre. He seized
me by both hands, and asked me