Ve- The oasthouse smoke, the hop-bine burn,
Knowing that all good things return
To Love that lasts!

At the Arch of Triumph were two |glish represented the rest of the world, men in blouses, the first we met. They as we generally do on such occasions. were staring through the mist at the Porte Maillot, and we proceeded to stare too, for it was from that gate that the entry was to be made. So far as we could see, the whole place was absolutely empty; but our eyes were not quite reliable, for the fog on the low ground was so thick that it was impossible to make out anything. That fog might be full of troops, for all we knew.

It was then about half past seven, and as we had been told the night before that the advanced-guard would come in at eight, we thought, after standing for some minutes on the heaps of gravel which had been thrown up during the siege to form a trench and barricade under and around the Arch, that we had better move on to our balcony. Meanwhile, however, some twenty or thirty other blouses, evil-faced and wretched, had come up, and eyed us with undisguised suspicion, and consulted each other apparently, as to what we could be, and what they should do to us. We left them hesitating, and walked ou.

We gazed hard at the Porte Maillot, from which we were distant about a quarter of a mile; but though the mist had begun to lift a little, it was still too thick to allow anything to be distinguished clearly on the Neuilly road. We looked and looked again in vain. It was not till we had waited, somewhat impatiently, for half an hour, that, at a quarter past eight, some one exclaimed, "I do believe I see moving specks out there beyond the gate." Up went all our glasses, and there they were! We recognized more and more distinctly six horsemen coming, and evidently coming fast, for they grew bigger and sharper as each second passed. One seemed to be in front, the other five behind.

As we watched eagerly they reached the open gate, dashed through it, and the instant they were inside the five behind spread out right and left across the broad avenue, as if to occupy it. The one in front, who, so far as we could see, had been riding until then at a canter, broke into a hand-gallop, and then into a full gallop, and came tearA group of Englishmen gathered on ing up the hill. As he neared us we • that balcony a dozen curious sight- saw he was a hussar officer -a boyseers. The owner of the house was he did not look eighteen! He charged Mr. Corbett, who was afterwards min- past us, his sword uplifted, his head ister at Stockholm; amongst the others, thrown back, his eyes fixed straight so far as I remember, were Mr. Elliot, before him, and one of us cried out, the Duke of Manchester, Captain Trot- "By Jove, if that fellow's mother ter, and Lord Ronald Gower. Except- could see him she'd have something to ing the men in blouses about the Arch, be proud of for the rest of her time ! " who by this time had multiplied to at The youngster raced on far ahead of least a hundred, there was nobody his men, but at the Arch of Triumph within sight. The void was painful. the blouses faced him. So, as he Not a window was open (excepting in the rooms to which we had come); our balcony alone was peopled; one of the greatest historic spectacles of our time was about to be enacted in front of us; yet, save ourselves and the blouses, there was no public to contemplate it. The French who lived up there refused to look, or, if they did look, it was from behind their shutters. Such part of the educated population as were in Paris that day (most of them were absent) hid themselves in grief. We En

would not ride them down in order to go through (and if he had tried it he would only have broken his own neck and his horse's too in the trench), he waved his sword at them, and at slackened speed passed round. We caught sight of him on the other side through the archway, his sword high up, as if he were saluting the vanquished city at his feet. But he did not stop for sentiment. He cantered on, came back, and as his five men had got up by that time (he had outpaced them by a couple

of minutes), he gave them orders, and More and more troops marched up, off they went, one to each diverging infantry and cavalry, but always ́in avenue and rode down it a short dis-small numbers; the mass of the Gertance to see that all was right.

The boy trotted slowly round and round the Arch, the blouses glaring at him.

mau ariny was at Longchamps, for the great review to be held that morning by the emperor, and the thirty thousand men who, under the convention of occupation, were to enter Paris (in reality, about forty thousand came), were not to appear till the review was over.

The entry was over that is to say, the Germans were inside Paris. That boy had done it all alone. The moral effect was produced. Nothing more of that sort could be seen from the bal- At nine o'clock the commander of cony. We took it for granted that the the occupation (General von Kameke) rest, when it came, would only be a rode in with an escort. At his side march past, and that thenceforth the was Count Waldersee, who during the interest of the drama would be in the war had been chief of the staff to the street. So to the street Oliphant and I Duke of Mecklenburg, to whose army returned, two others accompanying us. | Oliphant had been attached. Seeing The remainder of the party, if I re- Waldersee, Oliphant jumped out to member right, stopped where they greet him, shook hands with him were for some time longer.

Just as we got to the Arch the boy came round once more. I went to him and asked his name.

"What for?" he inquired. "To publish it in London to-morrow morning."

"Oh that's it, is it?" he remarked, with a tinge of the contempt for newspapers which all German officers display. "Well, I'm von Bernhardi, 14th Hussars. Only, if you're going to print it, please give my captain's name also he's von Colomb." ;

(I heard, the last time I was in Germauy, that the brave boy Bernhardi is dead, and that Colomb was then colonel of the King's Hussars, at Bonn.)

A

warmly, chatted gaily, and, after showing various signs of intimacy, came back towards us laughing, as the other rode on. This was, not unnaturally, too much for those of the blouses who saw it; and, before Oliphant could reach us, they rushed at him. Some hit him, some tried to trip him up; a good dozen of them were on him. couple of us made a plunge after him, roared to the blouses that he was au Englishman, and that they had no right. to touch him; and somehow (I have never understood how) we pulled him out undamaged, but a good deal out of breath and with his jacket torn. The blouses howled at us, and bestowed ungentle epithets on us, and followed us, and menaced; but we got away into another part of the constantly thickening crowd, and promised each other that we would speak no more that day to Germans. I need scarcely say that the mob was unchecked masWe stood amongst the blouses, and ter, that the Germans would not have wondered whether they would wring interfered in any fight that did not diour necks. We were clean, presum-rectly concern them, and that neither ably we had money in our pockets, and a French policeman nor a French solI had spoken to a German—three un-dier was present to keep order within pardonable offences. No attack, how-the limits of the district fixed for the ever, was made on any of us for the occupation. Those limits were moment. Now that I look back on the particular circumstances, I fail to comprehend why they were good enough to abstain.

Five minutes later a squadron of the regiment came up, and Lieutenant von Bernhardi's command-in-chief expired. But the youngster had made a history for his name; he was the first German into Paris in 1871.

the Place de la Concorde on the east, the Faubourg St. Honoré and the Avenue des Ternes on the north, the Seine on the south.

By ten the sun had worked through | creditable to them. So long as they the fog, and also, by ten, a consider- were not provoked by some particular able number of the inhabitants of Paris cause, they remained quiet and showed had become unable to resist the temp- no rage. They wanted to behold a retation of seeing a new sight, and had markable sight that was offered for come out to the show. At that hour their inspection, and though beyond there must have been thirty or forty doubt it vexed them, their vexation thousand people in the upper part of was not strong enough to check their the Champs Elysées; the gloom of the curiosity. At least that was our imearly morning was as if it had not pression from what we saw. been; all was movement and bright- At half past one I had wandered ness. The crowd, which in the after-back alone to the Avenue de la Grande noon we estimated at from a hundred to | Armée, where the crowd had become a hundred and fifty thousand, was com- very dense, filling up, indeed, the enposed, for the greater part, of blouses; tire roadway. On the other side I saw but mixed with them were a quantity a horseman trying to work his way of decent people, from all parts of the through. It was Mr. W. H. Russell. town, women and children as well I could not get to him to speak, but I as men, belonging, apparently, to knew by his presence there that the the classes of small shopkeepers, em- review (to which he had ridden from ployees, and workmen. From morning Versailles) was over, and that, before to night I did not perceive one single very long, the real march in would gentleman; nor was a shutter opened commence. It did not occur to me at in the Champs Elysées. The upper the moment that Mr. Russell was doing strata kept out of sight; it was the other couches, especially the very lowest, that had come out.

a risky thing in cutting across the mob on a prosperous horse, which manifestly had not gone through the siegetime in Paris. It was not till some hours later that I learnt how nearly the mob had killed him.

At last, at two o'clock, thick dust arose outside the Porte Maillot, and I made out with my glass that the people were being pressed back at the gate, and that troops were advancing slowly

Directly troops enough were in to supply pickets, sentries were posted at the street-corners; patrols were set going; a guard was mounted at the house of Queen Christina, in the Champs Elysées, which had been selected for the German headquarters. We looked on at all this, at first with close attention, but by degrees the state of things grew rather dull. In times of great excitement, events seem to become stupid so soon as they cease, temporarily, to be dangerous. Besides, for the moment, the interest of the day had changed its place and nature; it was no longer in the German army, but in the French crowd; not in the entry, but in the reception. As we had rightly judged, the drama was in the street. So we stood about and watched the people, and talked to some of them, and thought that, on the whole, they staff; and even then, for nearly anbehaved very well. Of course they would have done better still if they had stopped at home, and had left the Germans severely alone; but, as they had thought fit to come, they also thought fit to keep their tempers, which was

for the mob would not make way, and the Germans were patient and gentle with them. The head of the column got up creepingly as far as the Arch of Triumph; but then came a dead block. The gathering of people filled up the Place de l'Etoile and the upper part of the Avenue des Champs Elysées, and packed it all so solidly that often, for minutes at a time, the cavalry could not move ahead. A good half-hour passed before space was cleared for the emperor's headquarters

other half-hour after the staff had reached the Neuilly side of the Arch, they had to sit still upon their horses, unable to progress one yard.

And what a staff it was! With the exception of the Crown Prince Fred

to make out the expression of his face, which was then fully exposed to me; but there was no marked expression on it. At that moment of intense victory, when all was won, inside surrendered Paris, with the whole world thinking of him, he seemed indifferent, fatigued, almost sad.

erick, every prince in the army and horses from me-
that meant almost every prince in Ger-
many - and heaps of officers of high
rank, had come up from the review to
take part in the ride in. At their head,
alone, sat the late Duke Ernest of
Saxe-Coburg, taking precedence as the
senior reigning sovereign present. Be-
hind him were rows on rows of mem-
bers of the royal and historic families
of Germany, some twenty in a row,
and, including aides-de-camp and order-
lies, some thirty rows! In every sort
and color of uniform, they stretched
across the full width of the great ave-
nue from curbstone to curbstone, and
would have filled up the pathways too
if they had not been already choked
with French spectators. I had the
good fortune to work my way to the
corner of the pavement where the
Place de l'Etoile opens out, and there
I stood and gazed.

The sun shone splendidly; the mob
stared silently; the princes waited
tranquilly.

I recognized many faces that I had got to know at Versailles during the siege. I saw Meiningens, and Hohenzollern, and Altenburgs, and Lippes, and Reuss, and Pless, and Schoenburgs, Waldecks, Wieds, Hohenlohes, and Mecklenburgs, and other names that are written large in the chronicles of the Fatherland.

And as I went on looking, my eyes fell on the front rank, and the fourth man in that rank was - Bismarck.

Suddenly I saw that his horse's head was moving from the line; he was coming out. He turned to the right, in my direction; he raised his hand to the salute as he passed before his neighbors to the end of the rank, came straight towards me, and guided his horse in between the column of officers and the tightly jammed crowd on the pavement. It seemed impossible he could find room to pass, so little space was there; but pass he did. The top of his jackboot brushed hard against my waistcoat; but with all my desire to get out of his way I could not struggle backwards, because of the denseness of the throng behind me. No Frenchman recognized him. I have wondered since what would have happened if I had told the people who he was. Would they have gaped at him in hating silence? Would they have cursed him aloud? Would they have flung stones at him? Or would they, as a safer solution, have battered me for the crime of knowing him by sight? He rode on slowly down the hill, making his way with difficulty. I heard next day that, once outside the gate, he trotted straight back to Versailles.

His right hand was twisted into his horse's mane ; his helmeted head hung So, on that marvellous occasion -an down upon his chest, so low that I occasion which he, of all men, had could perceive nothing of his face ex-most contributed to create — he did not cept the tip of his nose and the ends of enter Paris after all (beyond the Arch his moustache. There he sat, motion- of Triumph, I mean). A friend to less, evidently in deep thought. After whom I told this story some years later, I had watched him for a couple of min- took an opportunity to ask him what utes (I need scarcely say that, having was his reason for riding away and for discovered him, I ceased to look at taking no further part in the day's anybody else), he raised his head work. He answered, "Why, I saw slowly and fixed his eyes on the top of the Arch, which was just in front of him, some eighty yards off. In that position he remained, once more motionless, for a while. I did my besthe was only the thickness of three

that all was going on well, and that there would be no row; I had a lot to do at Versailles, so I went and did it.” If that was in reality his sole motive, he proved that he possessed, at that period of his life, a power of self

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