uffed their handkerchiefs into the
worst leaks, and crossed the Seine in safety.

In a miserable old carriage, attended by a Prussian escort, Jules
Favre was borne away to his terrible interview with Bismarck, leaving
d'Herisson behind. Favre did not come back for many hours. His
first words to his aide-de-camp were: "Oh, my dear fellow, I was
wrong to go without you. What have I not suffered?"

He had been taken at once to a very modest house in Versailles,
where Bismarck had his quarters. After the first salutations Jules
Favre said that he came to renew the negotiations broken off at
Ferrieres. Here Bismarck interrupted him, saying: "The situation
is changed. If you are still going to say, 'Not an inch, not a
stone,' as you did at Ferrieres, we may break off at once. My time
is valuable, and yours too." Then suddenly he added: "Your hair has
grown much grayer than it was at Ferrieres." Jules Favre replied that
that was due to anxiety and the cares of government. The chancellor
answered that the Government of Paris had put off a long time asking
for peace, and that he had been on the eve of making an arrangement
with an envoy from Napoleon III. He then explained that it would
be easy for him to bring back the emperor and to force France to
receive him; that Napoleon could collect an army of a hundred thousand
men among the French prisoners of war in Germany, etc.; and he
added: "After all, why should I treat with you? Why should I give
your irregular Republic an appearance of legality by signing an
armistice with its representative? What are you but rebels? Your
emperor if he came back would have the right to shoot every one
of you."

"But if he came back," cried Jules Favre, "all would be civil war
and anarchy."

"Are you so sure of that?" said the chancellor. "Anyhow, a civil
war in France could not affect Germany."

"But, M. le Comte, are you not afraid of reducing us to despair,
of exasperating our resistance?"

"Your resistance!" cried Bismarck. "Are you proud of your resistance?
If General Trochu were a German, I would have him shot this evening.
You have no right, for the sake of mere military vainglory, to
risk the lives of two millions of people. The railroad tracks have
been torn up, and if we cannot lay them down again in two days, we
know that a hundred thousand people in Paris will die of famine.
Don't talk of resistance, it is criminal."

Jules Favre, put entirely out of countenance by Bismarck