When I got back to my father and the Princesses, I found them much distressed at this fresh attempt at regicide, but calm and self-possessed to an extent which was far from being my own case.  So true is it that our sharpest anxieties are caused by the suffering, and dangers of those we love!

About this period I was restored to active duty, being called to command our evolutionary squadron in the Mediterranean.  During the two years’ duration of this command, I only had to follow in the footsteps of my predecessors, so far as the organisation and instruction of the ships’ crews were concerned, and the maintenance of that spirit of discipline, devotion, and obedience to superiors which still constitutes their chief excellence.

But a new duty was cast upon me by the addition, now made for the first time, of a certain number of steamships to the squadron.  I had sailed already with several squadrons.  Whatever the number of ships composing them, the manoeuvring of the vessels and their tactics, both in sailing and in action, all depended on one and the same element for all alike—­ viz., the strength and direction of the wind And these tactics, which were the result of centuries of experience, we all of us had put into practice, and we had them at the tips of our fingers.  We knew them as well as our catechism, in fact.  But this new art of simultaneously navigating ships for whom the laws of wind did not exist, and which could move in any direction, and with great swiftness, according to the will and fancy of their captains, without allowing them to collide, was in its earliest infancy.

My duty then was to make experiments, so as to begin to regulate this new form of navigation.  At once I set about making numerous test manoeuvres, drawing on the tactics of the ancient galleys, and also on cavalry movements, at the slow march and at the gallop, for my inspiration.  Then we tried towing in every form.  First of all we harnessed a steamboat to every two warships.  In the second year of my command each floating citadel had her own “spare horse.”  From that time out calms and light breezes were vanquished, and the celerity of naval operations correspondingly increased.  Yet, the more we tried it, the more obviously did the dangers and difficulties caused, especially at night, by fastening two ships together, one of whom is necessarily a passive agent, stare us in the face.  The union of the tug and the “towed” was not far distant.  The advent of the war steamer, the swift battleship, independent alike of wind and sea, was close at hand.

The creation of such a ship had preoccupied M. Dupuy de Lome for a long time past.  He had gone to England to see and study everything there—­ both in the State dockyards and the building yards at Liverpool and on the Clyde.  We had often talked the whole thing over together, and our views on the subject were in perfect agreement.  At last, during an interval of leave from my command, he came to me one morning with a great roll containing two complete designs under his arm.  The first for an armed frigate, built entirely of iron, the second for a wooden line of battle ship—­both to be exceedingly swift.  The first design, for the iron frigate, was Dupuy de Lome’s pet scheme.