strait-laced or a hypocrite, who was a great
favourite with the Emperor and Empress, professed himself shocked, in
the hearing of the latter, at so much licence in the presence of the
sovereigns. In reality, it was an honest but indirect comment upon the
Empress's blamable latitude in that respect. The Empress took up the
cudgels for the offenders. "Vous n'etes pas content, colonel; he bien!
je m'en _fiche_, _refiche_ et _contrefiche_." ("You don't like it,
colonel; well, I don't care a snap, nor two snaps, nor a thousand
snaps."[72]) The Emperor laughed, and applauded his Consort; the colonel
took the hint, and was seen at court no more. Shortly afterward he went
to Mexico, where all who saw him at work concurred in saying that he was
not only a most valuable soldier, but probably the only one in the
French army, of those days, capable of handling large masses.
Nevertheless, when the war of '70 broke out, he was still a colonel, and
no attempt at offering him a command was made. The republicans, for once
in a way, were wiser in their generation: at this hour he holds a high
position in the army, and is destined to occupy a still higher. It was
he who counselled Bazaine, in the beginning of the investment of Metz,
to leave twenty or thirty thousand men behind to defend the fortress,
and to break through with the rest. According to the best authorities of
the German general staff, the advice, had it been followed, would have
materially altered the state of affairs. It is not my intention to
enlarge upon that soldier's career or capabilities; I have merely
mentioned them to show that, when her resentment was roused, Eugenie
threw all considerations for the welfare of France to the winds, and
systematically ostracized men, whatever their merits; for I may add that
the young colonel, at the time of the scene described above, was known
to be one of the ablest of strategists.

[Footnote 72: My translation by no means renders the vulgarity
of the sentence. The French have three words to express their
contempt for a speaker's opinion, _se moquer_, _se ficher_, and
_se_ ... I omit the latter, but even the second is rarely used
in decent society.--EDITOR.]

We have heard a great deal of the Empress's charity. Truth to tell, that
charity was often as indiscriminate as her anger; it was sporadic,
largely admixed with the histrionic element, not unfrequently prompted
by sentimentalism ra