Mr. Gladstone was as much astounded as Adams; the
Emperor Napoleon was nearly as stupefied as either, and Bismarck:
himself hardly knew how he did it. As education, the out-break of
the war was wholly lost on a man dealing with death hand-to-hand,
who could not throw it aside to look at it across the Rhine. Only
when he got up to Paris, he began to feel the approach of
catastrophe. Providence set up no affiches to announce the
tragedy. Under one's eyes France cut herself adrift, and floated
off, on an unknown stream, towards a less known ocean. Standing
on the curb of the Boulevard, one could see as much as though one
stood by the side of the Emperor or in command of an army corps.
The effect was lurid. The public seemed to look on the war, as it
had looked on the wars of Louis XIV and Francis I, as a branch of
decorative art. The French, like true artists, always regarded
war as one of the fine arts. Louis XIV practiced it; Napoleon I
perfected it; and Napoleon III had till then pursued it in the
same spirit with singular success. In Paris, in July, 1870, the
war was brought out like an opera of Meyerbeer. One felt one's
self a supernumerary hired to fill the scene. Every evening at
the theatre the comedy was interrupted by order, and one stood up
by order, to join in singing the Marseillaise to order. For
nearly twenty years one had been forbidden to sing the
Marseillaise under any circumstances, but at last regiment after
regiment marched through the streets shouting "Marchons!" while
the bystanders cared not enough to join.
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