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I will make a bet that if a pretty woman had taken command of the army on the eve of Sedan, when Marshal MacMahon was wounded, we should have broken through the Prussian lines, by Jove! and had a drink out of their guns.
The President, Marshal MacMahon, was living at the Prefecture at Versailles and received every Thursday evening. We went there several times it was my first introduction to the official world. One didn't care to drive through the Park of St. Cloud at night it was very lonely and dark.
While the Eleventh Prussians were penetrating the Niederwald, preparatory to attacking Elsasshausen on the further side of it, the Fifth Prussian Corps with the Second Bavarians were moving against Froschweiler. It was clear then to MacMahon that further resistance was impossible. Still holding Froschweiler, he evacuated Elsasshausen, and drew back his right to Reichshofen.
I was talking with a general officer a little while ago; he shrugged his shoulders and told me that Marshal MacMahon was absolutely certain that he had not over seventy thousand men in his front. God grant he may be right! But look and see for yourselves; the ground is hid by them! they keep coming, ever coming, the black swarm!"
If one had committed theft, or misbehaved himself in any other way, and Macmahon. whom they called only "Our Marshal," rode down the front of their lines and scolded them, they began to cry, rushed up and kissed his feet, and hung to his horse, like children asking for forgiveness. And now someone had made the great mistake of giving them to another general.
He was a great friend of Marshal MacMahon, and had been prefet at Pau, where he had a great position. He was very dictatorial, very outspoken, but was a great favourite, particularly with the English colony, which is large there in the hunting-season. He had accepted to dine one night with an English family, who lived in a villa a little out of town.
Meantime the Third Army, under the Crown Prince of Prussia which, after having fought and won the battle of Worth, had been observing the army of Marshal MacMahon during and after the battle of Gravelotte was moving toward Paris by way of Nancy, in conjunction with an army called the Fourth, which had been organized from the troops previously engaged around Metz, and on the 22d was directed toward Bar-le-Duc under the command of the Crown Prince of Saxony.
You have all read the record day by day, sorrowing for Humanity, how, after briefest interval of preparation or hesitation, the two combatants first crossed swords at Saarbruecken, within the German frontier, and the young Prince Imperial performed his part in picking up a bullet from the field, which the Emperor promptly reported by telegraph to the Empress, how this little military success is all that was vouchsafed to the man who began the war, how soon thereafter victory followed, first on the hill-sides of Wissembourg and then of Woerth, shattering the army of MacMahon, to which the Empire was looking so confidently, how another large army under Bazaine was driven within the strong fortress of Metz, how all the fortresses, bristling with guns and frowning upon Germany, were invested, how battle followed battle on various fields, where Death was the great conqueror, how, with help of modern art, war showed itself to be murder by machinery, how MacMahon, gathering together his scattered men and strengthening them with reinforcements, attempted to relieve Bazaine, how at last, after long marches, his large army found itself shut up at Sedan with a tempest of fire beating upon its huddled ranks, so that its only safety was capitulation, how with the capitulation of the army was the submission of the Emperor himself, who gave his sword to the King of Prussia and became prisoner of war, and how, on the reception of this news at Paris, Louis Napoleon and his dynasty were divested of their powers and the Empire was lost in the Republic.
Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris, and many others, were murdered. MacMahon, acting for the Assembly, besieged Paris anew; the Germans being neutral in the forts that were still left, according to the treaty, in their hands. In the fierce struggle for the possession of the city, the principal buildings of Paris were set on fire by the savage communistic mob.
Odette de Crecy, then?" "Odette de Crecy! Why, I thought as much. Those great, sad eyes... But I say, you know, she can't be as young as she was once, eh? I remember, I had her on the day that MacMahon went." "I shouldn't remind her of it, if I were you. She is now Mme. Swann, the wife of a gentleman in the Jockey Club, a friend of the Prince of Wales.
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