[Footnote 1:  Erckmann-Chatrian, La Plebiscite.]

Every day in the provincial towns the war fever grew fiercer.  The bugle sounded incessantly in the streets of any place where there were troops in garrison.  Regiment followed regiment on its way into Paris, changing quarters or marching to depots to receive equipments.  Orderlies galloped madly about, and heavy ammunition wagons lumbered noisily over the pavements.  Everybody shouted “A Berlin,” and took up the chorus of the “Marseillaise.”  The post-offices and telegraph-offices were crowded with soldiers openly dictating their messages to patient officials who put them into shape, and it was said that nearly every telegram contained the words, “Please send me...”  Alas, poor fellows! it is probable that nothing sent them in reply was ever received.[1]

[Footnote 1:  I am indebted for much in this chapter to a private journal.]

Parisians or residents in Paris all believed at that time in the prestige of the French army; only here and there a German exile muttered in his beard something about Sadowa.

On July 27 all Paris assembled on the Boulevards to see the Garde Imperiale take its departure for the frontier.  This Imperial Guard was a choice corps created by Napoleon III. at the outset of the Crimean War.  It was a force numbering nominally twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry.  It was a very popular corps, and the war with Germany was popular; consequently the march from its barracks to the railroad station was one continued triumph.  At every halt the Parisians pressed into the ranks with gifts of money, wine, and cigars.  “Vive l’armee!” shouted the multitude.  “A Berlin!” responded the troops; and now and then, as the bands struck up the “Marseillaise,” the population and the troops burst out in chorus with the solemn, spirit-stirring words.

At the head of this brilliant host rode Marshal Le Boeuf, who was minister of war and military tutor to the Prince Imperial.  After the departure of the main body of the corps, large detachments of cavalry and artillery which belonged to it were expected to follow; but they remained behind in the provinces, because Lyons, Marseilles, and Algeria, all centres of the revolutionary spirit, could not, it was found, be left without armed protection.  Therefore only a portion of the crack corps of the French army went forward to the frontier,—­a fact never suspected by the public until events, a few weeks later, made it known.

Paris was jubilant.  The theatres especially became centres of patriotic demonstrations.  At the Grand Opera House, Auber’s “Massaniello” (called in France the “Muette de Portici”) was announced.  For many years its performance had been interdicted under the Second Empire, the story being one of heroic revolt.  The time had come, however, when its ardent patriotism entitled it to resuscitation.  Faure, the most remarkable baritone singer of the period, suddenly, at the beginning of the second act, which opens with a chorus of fishermen inciting each other to resist oppression, appeared upon the stage bearing the French flag.  The chorus ranged themselves to right and left as he strode forward and waved the tricolor above the footlights.  The house broke into wild uproar, cheer after cheer rose for the flag, for the singer, for France.