182 THE LIFE OF PASTEUR 



the Empress Begent before he left Paris ; it was therefore not 

 the sword of France, but his own, that he was about to sur- 

 render. But he thought he might hope that the King of 

 Prussia would show clemency to the French army and people, 

 having many times declared that he made war on the Emperor 

 and not on France. 



"Can it be credited," said Bismarck, speaking afterwards 

 of that interview , ' ' that he actually believed in our gener- 

 osity ! " The chancellor added, speaking of that somewhat 

 protracted tete-a-tete, " I felt as I used to in my youth, when 

 my partner in a cotillon was a girl to whom I did not quite 

 know what to say, and whom nobody would fetch away for a 

 turn! " 



Napoleon III and the King of Prussia met in the Chateau of 

 Bellevue, in the neighbourhood of Sedan, opposite a peninsula 

 henceforth known by the sad name of "Camp of Misery." 

 The Emperor looked for the last time upon his 83,000 soldiers, 

 disarmed, starving, waiting in the mud for the Prussian escort 

 which was to convey them as prisoners far beyond the Rhine. 

 Wilhelm did not even pronounce the word peace. 



Jules Favre, taking possession on September 6 of the depart- 

 ment of Foreign Affairs, recalled to the diplomatic agents the 

 fall of the Empire and the words of the King of Prussia ; then 

 in an unaccustomed outburst of eloquence exclaimed : ' ' Does 

 the King of Prussia wish to continue an impious struggle which 

 will be as fatal to him as to us? Does he wish to give to the 

 world in the nineteenth century the cruel spectacle of two 

 nations destroying each other and forgetful of human feelings, 

 of reason and of science, heaping up ruin and death? Let him 

 then assume the responsibility before the world and before 

 posterity 1 ' ' And then followed the celebrated phrase with 

 which he has been violently and iniquitously reproached, and 

 which expressed the unanimous sentiment of France : ' ' We 

 will not concede one inch of our territory nor a stone of our 

 fortifications." 



Bismarck refused the interview Jules Favre asked of him 

 (September 10), under the pretext that the new Government 

 was irregular. The enemy was coming nearer and nearer to 

 Paris. The French city was resolved to resist ; thousands upon 

 thousands of oxen were being corralled in the Bois de Boulogne ; 

 poor people from the suburbs were coming to take refuge in the 

 OD the Place de la Concorde, the statue which repre- 



