Bismarck-Böhlen brought him a telegram. He was about to open it when the Warlock hastily entered the sitting room that served as ante-chamber, flourishing a copy of Le Temps, issued in Paris on the previous day.
"A Uhlan of the Advance has got me this paper. He took it from the person of a respectable bourgeois at whose house in Cligny he and his comrades called to drink a drop of wine. Judging it a welcome gift to me, the brave fellow rode here to bring it."
"There is wine of another kind on those pages," said the Minister, pointing to the journal with a smile.
Moltke read from the blood-stained paper:
"'The speeches delivered yesterday at the Chamber are unanimous in the declaration that the French people will be disgraced forever if the Army of the Rhine be not relieved. The dispatches received during the sitting of yesterday's Privy Council, from the Prefecture of Police, the Ministry of War and of the Interior, were of a nature to cause apprehension of the keenest. But the disposition of the people of Paris can be ascertained by any person whose ears are not stuffed with Court cotton-wool. Do not these shouts of "Dethronement!"—these cries of "A Republic! A Republic!" become louder every day?'"
He added:
"This bears out the text of Palikao's intercepted wire of yesterday to the Emperor; and the second from the Empress, virtually saying: 'Abandon Bazaine and Paris is in revolt!'..."
Commented the Minister:
"The Empress-Regent talks like a young woman. Palikao argues like an old one—the speakers in the Chamber gabble like a pack of old gossips, not one of whom looks beyond the end of her own nose. Paris was in revolution at the beginning of August. She will be a full-blown Republic before Christmas, whether Bazaine be abandoned or not."
Moltke said, helping himself from his silver snuffbox: