So RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



This was the purport of what General Oudinot said 

 yesterday in my presence to the Eoman deputation 

 which came to offer, in your name, a present of fifty 

 thousand cigars and two hundred pounds of tobacco for 

 our soldiers, and his remarks must have removed any 

 doubts which may have lingered in some minds. But so 

 long as we begin to understand each other, there is no 

 good in going back upon the past. Let us rather con- 

 cern ourselves with the present and the future. You 

 will, I repeat, find us entirely disposed, by our words 

 and written statements, to give you the explanations 

 and guarantees which your natural susceptibility from 

 a national point of view may demand. It would ill 

 become Frenchmen, noted for their unlimited devo- 

 tion to their country, to blame other nations for de- 

 fending their territory against their real enemies, or to 

 compel you to do the very contrary of what they would 

 always do in their own case. 



u Accept, &c., 



" F. DE LESSEPS." 



CONFERENCE HELD AT THE HE AD -QUARTERS, VILLA 

 SANTUCCI, BETWEEN M. DE LESSEPS AND M. DE 

 EAYNEVAL. 



Note from M. de Rayneval to M. Note from M. de Lesseps in reply 

 de Lesseps. to M. de Rayneval. 



May 27. 



1. You have had the kind- 1. M. de Eayneval, starting 



ness to take me into full con- from a different standpoint 



fidence as to your ideas, your from mine as to the attitude to 



