To all appeals for permission to let the captive army go to Algeria, or to lay down its arms in Belgium, the Germans were deaf,--Bismarck at length plainly saying that the French were an envious and jealous people on whose gratitude it would be idle to count.

De Wimpffen then threatened to renew the fight rather than surrender, to which von Moltke grimly assented, but Bismarck again interposed to bring about a prolongation of the truce.

Early on the morrow, Napoleon himself drove out to Donchery in the hope of seeing the King.

The Bismarckian Boswell has given us a glimpse of him as he then appeared: "The look in his light grey eyes was somewhat soft and dreamy, like that of people who have lived too fast." [In his case, we may remark, this was induced by the painful disease which never left him all through the campaign, and carried him off three years later.] "He wore his cap a little on the right, to which side his head also inclined.

His short legs were out of proportion to the long upper body.