of the 2nd of January, 1870.

M. Emile Ollivier, to his credit be it said, refused to be guided by his
predecessors. He studiously avoided informing the Empress of the affairs
of State, let alone discussing them with her. Apart from the small fry
of the Imperial party, he made two powerful enemies--the Empress
herself, and Rouher, who saw in this refusal to follow precedent an
implied censure upon himself. Rouher, I repeat once more, was honest to
the backbone, but fond of personal power. The Empire to him meant
nothing but the Emperor, the Empress, and the heir to the throne; just
as Germany meant nothing to Bismarck but the Hohenzollern dynasty. He
was one of the first to proclaim, loudly and openly, that the plebiscite
of the 8th of May meant an overwhelming manifestation, not in favour of
the liberal Empire, but in favour of the Emperor; and when the latter,
to do him justice, declined to look at it in that light, he deserted him
for the side of his wife. It is an open secret that the first use the
Empress meant to make of her power as regent, after the first signal
victory of French arms, was to sweep away the cabinet of the 2nd of
January. The Imperial decree conferring the regency upon her, "during
the absence of the Emperor at the head of his army," and dated the 22nd
of July, invested her with very limited power.

Meanwhile, pending the departure of the Emperor, Paris was in a
ferment, but, to the careful observer, it was no longer the unalloyed
enthusiasm of the first few days. There were just as many people in the
streets; the shouts of "A Berlin!" though, perhaps, not so sustained,
were just as loud every now and then; the troops leaving for the front
received tremendous ovations, and more substantial proofs of the
people's goodwill; the man who dared to pronounce the word "peace" ran a
great risk of being rent to pieces by the crowds--a thing which almost
happened one night in front of the Cafe de Madrid, on the Boulevard
Montmartre: still, the enthusiasm was not the same. "There seems to be a
great deal of prologue to 'The Taming of that German Shrew,'" said a
French friend, who was pretty familiar with Shakespeare; and he was not
far wrong, for the Christopher Sly abounded. The bivouacs of the troops
about to take their departure reminded one somewhat more forcibly of
operatic scenes and equestrian dramas of the circus type than of the
preparations for the stern necessities of war--with this difference,