been paid.[1]

[Footnote 1: When looking over letters and papers concerning this
period, I found among them many original notes from M. and Madame
Thiers. They all had broad black borders. I learned afterwards
that Thiers and his family used mourning paper so long as a single
German soldier remained on French soil. Thiers' writing was thick
and splashy. He always wrote with a quill pen. Early in life he
had, like Sir Walter Raleigh, projected a History of the World;
and as he never wrote of anything whose locality he had not seen,
he had made his preparations to circumnavigate the globe, when
he was arrested by the state of public affairs while on his way
to Havre.]

I borrow the words of another writer speaking of this supreme effort
on the part of France:--

"After the most frightful defeat of modern times, with one third of
her territory in the enemy's hands, with her capital in insurrection,
and her available army all required to restore order, France in
eighteen months paid a fine equal to one fourth of the English
National Debt; elected a _bourgeois_ of genius to her head; obeyed
him on points on which she disagreed with him; and endured a foreign
occupation without giving one single pretext for real severity....
The people of France had no visible chiefs; the only two men who
rose to the occasion were M. Thiers and Gambetta. If M. Thiers
showed tact, wisdom, and above all courage and firmness, in probably
the most difficult position in which man was ever placed, surely we
may pause to admire Gambetta.... Daring in all things, under the
Empire he denounced Napoleonism, and by his eloquence and courage he
guided timid millions and rival factions from the day when Napoleon
III. was deposed. Under the Empire he had yearned to restore the
true life of the nation; when the Empire was overturned he could
not believe that that life was impaired. He thought it would be
easy for France to rise as one man and drive out the invader. As
each terrible defeat was experienced, he regarded it as only a
momentary reverse. He had such abounding faith in his cause,--the
cause of France, the cause of French Republicanism,--that he could
not believe in failure. Of course, to have been a more clear-sighted
statesman, like M. Thiers, would have been best; but there is something
very noble in the blind zeal of this disappointed man."

It moves one to pity to think of Gambetta weeping in the streets
of Bordeaux, as we are told he d