No wonder that Gambetta and Thiers, both devoted Frenchmen, both leaders of parties with opposing views,—­the one resolved on No surrender, the other urging Peace on the best terms now procurable,—­passed a terrible night after Jules Favre’s arrival at Bordeaux, Gambetta debating what was his duty as the idol of his followers and as provisional dictator, Thiers dreading lest civil war might be kindled by the decision of his rival.

Hardly less anxious were the days while a general election was going on.  Bordeaux remained feverish and excited till February 13, when deputies from all parts of France met to decide their country’s fate in the Bordeaux theatre.  Notabilities from foreign countries were also there, to see what would be done at that supreme moment.

Seven hundred and fifty deputies had been sent to the Assembly, and it was clear from the beginning that that body was not Republican.  But the Anti-Republicans were divided into three parties,—­Imperialists, Legitimists, and Orleanists, each of which preferred an orderly and moderate republic to the triumph of either of the other two.  Moreover, that was not the time for deliberations concerning a permanent form of government.  The deputies were met to make a temporary or provisional government, qualified to accept or to refuse the hard terms of peace offered by the Prussians.  The two leaders of the Assembly were Thiers and Gambetta,—­the one in favor of peace, the other of prolonging the war.  We can see now how much wiser were the views of the elder statesman than those of the younger; but we see also what a bitter pang Gambetta’s patriotic spirit must have suffered by the downfall of his dictatorship.

The Assembly had been three days in session, clamorous, riotous, and full of words, when in the middle of the afternoon of Feb. 16, 1871, two delegates from Alsace and Lorraine appeared, supported by Gambetta.  The Speaker—­that is, the president of the Assembly—­was M. Jules Grevy, who had held the same office in 1848; he found it hard to restrain the excitement of the deputies.  The delegates came to implore France not to deliver them over to the Germans; to remember that of all Frenchmen the Alsatians had been the most French in the days of the Revolution, and that in all the wars of France for more than a century they had suffered most of all her children.  No wonder the hearts of all in the Assembly were stirred.

“At this moment there appeared in the midde aisle of the theatre a small man, with wrinkled face and stubbly white hair.  He seemed to have got there by magic, for no one had seen him spring into that place.  He looked around him for an instant, much as a sailor glances over the sky in a storm, then, stretching out his short right arm, he made a curious downstroke which conveyed an impression of intense vitality and will.  Profound silence was established in a moment.  The elderly man then made another gesture, throwing his arm up, as