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Updated: June 4, 2025
They were very much elated, it seemed, by the armistice, thinking that it might lead ultimately to a peace, for which they openly expressed their desire, ordering champagne, clinking their glasses together, and politely offering one to Madame Gindriez with the words: "You won't refuse to drink with us a la paix, Madame?"
After the coup d'etat M. Gindriez fled to Belgium, but returned to Paris for family reasons, and was permitted to remain on condition that he did not actively set himself in opposition to the Empire. M. Gindriez looked upon his own political career as ended, though he could have made it prosperous enough, and even brilliant, by serving the power of the day.
A more flexible instrument had been put into his prefecture, a new legislative body had been elected to give a false appearance of parliamentary government, and an autocratic system had been established which M. Gindriez believed destined to a prolonged duration, though he felt sure that it could not last forever. Subsequent events have proved the correctness of his judgment.
The families of the two parties will never know each other or understand each other properly; there will be either estrangement or misunderstanding. And unless there is great largeness of mind in the parties themselves, the difference of national customs is sure to produce quarrels. Eugenie Gindriez would be an affectionate and faithful wife to you.
In the night, Madame Gindriez was awakened by loud rappings at her bedroom door, and ordered to give up her room to some Prussian sergeants who had come back from an expedition. She dressed quickly and went to the kitchen the only place in the hotel free from soldiers to await the morning as she best could.
Afterwards I discovered that Eugenie Gindriez had read more and thought more than other girls of her age. This might have been almost an evil in a quiet life, but hers had not been a quiet life. We soon became friends in spite of the French conventional idea that a girl should not open her lips, but it did not occur to me that we were likely ever to be anything more than friends.
There was also for me a personal magnetism in M. Gindriez, which it was not easy to account for then, but which is now quite intelligible to me. He had in the utmost strength and purity the genuine heroic nature. I came to understand this in after years, and believe that it impressed me from the first.
M. Gindriez had several children. The eldest was a girl of sixteen, extremely modest and retiring, as a well-bred jeune fille generally is in France, and there was another daughter, very pretty and engaging, but scarcely more than a child; there were also two boys, the eldest a very taciturn, studious lad, who was at that time at the well-known college of Sainte Barbe.
I called on M. Gindriez, but his daughter was not at home. I asked permission to call in the evening, and she was out again. This was repeated two or three times, and my wife told me afterwards that the absences had not been accidental. At last we met, and there was nothing in her manner but a certain gravity, as if serious resolutions were impending.
It is unnecessary to say more about this remarkable character in this place, because the reader will hear much of him afterwards. It is enough to say that I was attracted by his powers of conversation and his evident tenderness of heart. When we had become better acquainted, M. Gindriez invited me to spend an evening at his house after dinner, and I went.
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