rder that no officer in a garrison corps should dine with a Catholic or
a Dissenter.

This was not a freak. It was a policy. It was in perfect keeping with an
amazing attack made by the Republican press of Paris not long
afterwards upon the then American Minister in France, Mr. Morton, now
Vice-President of the United States, for giving a dinner in honour of
the Comte de Paris. The Comte de Paris and his brother, the Duc de
Chartres, had served with distinction on the staff of the
Commander-in-Chief of the Union armies in America. They were the sons of
a French sovereign, with whose government the government of the United
States had long held close and friendly relations. The Comte de Paris is
the author of the most careful, thorough, and impartial history yet
written of the American Civil War of 1861-65. Yet, for showing his
personal and official respect for a French prince possessing such claims
upon the respect of Frenchmen as well as of Americans, the diplomatic
representative of the United States was assailed with coarse and vulgar
violence in the columns of journals assuming to represent the
civilization of the capital of France!

Some time after the incident to which I have referred at Tours occurred,
I drove from St.-Malo to La Basse Motte, the charming and picturesque
house of General de Charette, in the Ille-et-Vilaine, with the Marquis
de la Roche-Jaquelein. The autumn manoeuvres of the French army were
then going on. On the way he told me among other things that the
officers of a cavalry brigade encamped for two or three days in the
neighbourhood of his chateau had been forbidden by their brigade
commander to accept a dinner to which he had invited, not only them, but
their commander also! The general in command of the cavalry division
fortunately happened to arrive before the day fixed for the dinner, and,
having been informed of this state of affairs, quietly authorized the
officers to attend the dinner, and attended it himself.

Can anything be more absurd than to attempt to naturalize a Republic in
France by identifying Republican institutions with such tyrannical
interference as this in the private and social relations of French
officers and citizens?

The Third Republic has improved upon Cambon's piratical watchword,
_Guerre aux chateaux; paix aux chaumieres_. It makes war socially upon
the _chateaux_, and it makes war religiously and financially upon the
_chaumieres_.

All this must bring out in