My Paris Diary of 1870 403 



in I heard the news of the surrender of the remains of the French army by 

 General Wimpfen, MacMahon's second in command, and of the Emperor. 

 Great numbers of French and many German soldiers, driven on to Belgian 

 soil, have laid down their arms. Count Flahault, one of the last men of 

 the First Empire, died yesterday. Many years ago he eloped to Gretna 

 Green with the heiress of the Keith Barony, and always after Madame de 

 Flahault came to England for her couches, so that her children should be 

 British subjects, and her son have a right to his seat in the House of 

 Lords. 



" 5th Sept. — To London for the day, and saw Philip Currie at the 

 Foreign Office, who gave me an alarming account of the disturbed state of 

 France. He showed me a letter just come from a girl who was governess 

 at a French chateau in the south. She wrote that the peasantry were 

 surrounding the house. 



" 6th Sept. — Back to Dieppe. 



" 8th Sept. — Crossed back again with Anne to Newhaven in a gale of 

 wind. We were thirteen hours at sea, and ran some risk of being driven 

 on to Beachy Head. At Newhaven we found our Swiss horses, and drove 

 on to Worth Forest. Before leaving Dieppe I sent Julie a box containing 

 100 lb. of ship's biscuits, with a letter of instructions as to her conduct 

 during the siege. I also offered my apartment to the maire as an ambu- 

 lance, but my proprietor refused his consent. [The biscuits fortunately 

 reached Julie just before communication with Paris ceased, and proved a 

 Godsend to her during the four months the siege lasted. My cousin, 

 Francis Currie, whom, though I have said nothing about him in my diary, 

 I had seen constantly during my last weeks at Paris, making our specula- 

 tions on the course of events together, remained on quietly in his rooms 

 in the Palais Royal right through both siege and Commune, continuing 

 his philosophic occupation, the pursuit of pleasure, without disturbance 

 or much hardship. I should have stayed on with him, but for my wife's 

 expected confinement, and seen the drama out. It was an opportunity 

 missed I still regret.] 



" 25th Sept. — Since my return to England I have not read a newspaper, 

 nor shall till peace is made." 



A few extracts from letters, written me just then by my friend Robert 

 Lytton, dealing with public events, may here be added. He was at the 

 time first Secretary of Embassy at Vienna, but on leave in England, and 

 in close touch with all our chief diplomatists. 



"nth Sept., 1870. — Knebworth. I am very doubtful as to the Germans 

 claiming Alsace and Lorraine, but if they do claim it, it will be baseless, 

 abominable, unprecedented, and irredeemable should England stand by 

 quiescent while her boasted ally of yesterday is being dismembered. Yet 

 a colleague whom I met yesterday, fresh from the Foreign Office, told me 

 the Government is firmly resolved to do nothing, and does not seem to 

 think the situation worth a Cabinet Council. We shall pay dearly and 

 perhaps more than we can afford by and by for the excessive prudence of 



