No Minister, who had done so much to stir up the war-feeling, ought to have made any such confession--least of all against a lady, who could not answer it.

M.Seignobos in his _Political History of Contemporary Europe_, vol.i.

chap.vi.p.

184 (Eng edit.) says of Gramont: "He it was who embroiled France in the war with Prussia." In the course of the parliamentary inquiry of 1872 Gramont convicted himself and his Cabinet of folly in 1870 by using these words: "Je crois pouvoir declarer que si on avait eu un doute, un seule doute, sur notre aptitude a la guerre, on eut immediatement arrete la negociation" (_Enquete parlementaire_, I.vol.i.

p.