Prince Victor turned to me as though he wished me to express his sentiments. I accepted the task.
‘It would have been better if you had taken Prince Napoleon into your confidence before giving any definite answer,’ I said. ‘General Garnier might have paid your elder brother the compliment of explaining the reasons for setting him aside.’
‘I did not consider the project sufficiently mature at that time,’ was the answer. ‘I thought it better to wait till the affair assumed a tangible shape.’
‘And this stage has now been reached?’ I inquired.
‘It has. My brother will understand that a pretext was necessary for the action of the Army, and that pretext could only be the danger of war. For a long time we were troubled with the difficulty that neither in Germany nor in England was there any disposition to attack France, and our treaty with Russia laid it down in the most explicit manner that the Tsar would only come to our assistance in the event of our being attacked.
‘But at last, thanks to the vigilance of Garnier and the other chiefs of the Staff, it has been discovered that Germany is secretly preparing for a stealthy spring; she is covering France with her spies, and, but for the timely arrest of this Dreyfus——’
I could not resist a subdued exclamation of triumph as the utterance of this name completed the chain of discovery. The whole intrigue engineered by the artful and unscrupulous French generals lay displayed to my eye, as on a map. I listened like one in a dream as Prince Louis continued explaining to his brother the peril of the French nation, the justification for the Army’s taking command of the State, and the consequent certainty of a Bonaparte restoration.
Victor listened silently, unable to think of any objection, and seeing his own chance of ever reigning as Emperor of the French slipping from him. It was I who put the decisive question.
‘You have, I suppose, taken the Tsar into your confidence, and convinced him of the reality of the danger?’
‘We have obtained the promise of his support,’ Louis answered.