there a more docile patient.  He had no army, he made war; he had only Rouher, he provoked Bismarck; he had only Leboeuf, he attacked Moltke.  He confided Strasburg to Uhrich; he gave Metz to Bazaine to guard.  He had 120,000 men at Chalons; he had it in his power to cover Paris.  He felt that his crime rose up there, threatening and erect; he fled, not daring to face Paris.  He himself led—­purposely, and yet despite himself; willing and yet unwilling, knowingly and yet unknowingly, a miserable mind, a prey to the abyss—­he led his army into a place of annihilation; he made that terrible choice, a battle-field without an outlet; he was no longer conscious of anything, no more of his blunder of to-day than of his crime of former days; he must finish, but he could only finish as a fugitive; this condemned one was not worthy to look his end in the face; he lowered his head, he turned his back.  God executed him in degrading him.  Napoleon III. as an Emperor had a right to thunder, but for this man the thunder was ignominious—­he was thunderstruck in the back.

[40] “L’Annee Terrible.”

CHAPTER X.

Let us forget this man, and let us look at Humanity.

The invasion of France by Germany, in 1870, was a night effect.  The world was astonished that so much gloom could come forth from a people.  Five black months—­such was the siege of Paris.  To create night may prove Power, but Glory consists in the creation of daylight.  France creates daylight.  Thence her immense human popularity.  To her Civilization owes the dawn.  The human mind in order to see clearly turns in the direction of France.  Five months of darkness, that is what, in 1870, Germany succeeded in giving to the Nations; France has given to them four centuries of light.

To-day the civilized world more than ever feels the need which it has of France.  France has proved this by her danger.  The ungrateful apathy of Governments only increased the anxiety of nations.  At the sight of Paris threatened, there arose among the peoples dread that their own heads were in danger.  Would they allow Germany to go on?  But France saved herself quite alone.  She had only to rise. Patuit dea.

To-day she is greater than ever.  What would have killed another nation has hardly wounded her.  The darkening of her horizon has rendered her light more visible.  What she has lost in territory she has gained in radiancy.  Moreover, she is fraternal without an effort.  Above her misfortune there is her smile.  It is not on her that the Gothic Empire weighs.  She is a nation of citizens and not a flock of subjects.  Frontiers?  Will there be any frontiers in twenty years?  Victories?  France counts in her past victories of war, and in her future victories of peace.  The future belongs to Voltaire, and not to Krupp; the future belongs to the book, and not to the sword.  The future belongs to life, and not to death.  There is in the policy opposed to France a certain amount of the tomb; to seek life in the old institutions is a vain task, and to feed upon the past is to bite the dust.  France has the faculty of giving light; no catastrophe, political or military, will deprive her of this mysterious supremacy.  The cloud passes away, the star is seen once more.