ncaise," had the effect of ostracizing him from the Tuileries. The
smart and swaggering colonels who surrounded the Empress did not scruple
to spread the most ridiculous slanders with regard to its author; but
the Emperor, though aware that Trochu was systematically opposed to his
dynasty, also knew that he was an able, perhaps the ablest soldier in
the country. The subsequent failure of Trochu does not invalidate that
judgment. "I know what Trochu could and would do if he were unhampered;
but I need not concern myself with that, seeing that he will be
hampered," said Von Moltke at the beginning of the siege. Colonel
Stoffel, the French military attache at Berlin, was severely reprimanded
by Marshal Niel and by Leboeuf afterwards for his constant endeavours to
acquaint the Emperor with the magnificent state of efficiency of the
Prussian army and its auxiliaries. Ostensibly, it was because he had
been guilty of a breach of diplomatic and military etiquette; in
reality, because the minister for war and his "festive" coadjutors
objected to being constantly harassed in their pleasures by the
sovereign's suspicions of their mental nakedness. "Nous l'avons eu,
votre Rhin allemand.... Ou le pere a passe, passera bien l'enfant," was
their credo; and they continued to dance, and to flirt, and to intrigue
for places, which, in their hands, became fat sinecures. They would have
laughed to scorn the dictum of the first Napoleon, that "there are no
bad regiments, only bad colonels;" in their opinion, there were no bad
colonels, except those perhaps who did not constantly jingle their spurs
on the carpeted floors of the Empress's boudoir, and the parqueted arena
of the Empress's ball-room. The Emperor was too much of a dreamer and a
philosopher for them; he could not emancipate himself from his German
education. The best thing to do was to let him write and print whatever
he liked, and then prevail upon him at the last moment not to publish,
lest it might offend national vanity. Contemptuous as they were of the
German spirit of plodding, they had, nevertheless, taken a leaf from an
eminent German's book. "Let them say and write what they like, as long
as they let me do what I like," exclaimed Frederick the Great, on one
occasion. They slightly reversed the sentence. "Let the Emperor say and
write what he likes, as long as he lets us do what we like; and one
thing we will take care to do, namely, not to let him publish his
writings." Th