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Gramont (July 20): "Faithful to our engagements, as laid down in the letters exchanged last year between our Emperors, we consider the cause of France our own, and will, as far as possible, contribute to the success of her arms." Vitzthum then went back to Paris with fresh promises. On the 24th Austria stated that she could not take the field till September. The statement that a treaty of alliance was signed at Paris between July 24 and 31 is probably untrue, and, in any case, Austria did not arm, and Prussia trusted her sufficiently to leave no troops upon her frontier.

It is unfortunate for the historian that one of the authorities which is likely to be used, unless protest is made against its accuracy, is the British blue book which contains documents sent round after the declaration of war by Prussia to the neutral Powers for the purpose of proving that France was the sole aggressor. We are made, for instance, to publish the fact that the Hohenzollern candidature was not known to the Prussian Government. Now the King, in conversations which have been published by Benedetti, admitted the contrary, and there is no sort of doubt upon the matter. The candidature may not have been known to the permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office, but if so, that is because he shut his ears and eyes.

What results from a detailed examination of the facts? That, if we neglect those which tell one way in favour of those which tell the other, it is possible to make an overwhelming case on either side. By stating nothing except what is to the letter true, it is possible to prove at will either that France or that Germany was the aggressor. The fact for the impartial mind remains that war between these rival Powers was brewing from 1866; that on the side of Germany there was steady and able preparation for a conflict which was seen to be inevitable, while on the other side there was hesitation which could lead to but one ultimate result.

CHARLES W. DILKE.

THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET.

I.

I COUNT my real start from the evening George Corvick, breathless and worried, came in to ask me a service, and more especially from the rapture of hearing it proposed to me to prepare for The Middle, the organ of our lucubrations, so called from the position in the week of its day of appearance, an article for which he had made himself responsible and of which, tied up with a stout string, he laid on my table the subject. I pounced upon my opportunity that is on the first volume of it--and paid scant attention to my friend's explanation of his appeal. What explanation could be more to the point than my obvious fitness for the task? I had written on Hugh Vereker, but never a word in The Middle, where my dealings were mainly with much smaller fry. This was his new novel, an advance copy, and whatever much or little it should do for his reputation I was clear on the spot as to what it should do for mine. Moreover if I always read him as soon as I could get hold of him I had a particular reason for wishing to read him now: I had accepted an invitation to Bridges for the following Sunday, and it had been mentioned in Lady Flora's note that Mr. Vereker was to be there. I was young enough to have an emotion about meeting a man of his renown, and innocent enough to believe the occasion would demand the display of an acquaintance with his "last."

Corvick, who had promised a review of it, had not even had time to read it he had gone to pieces in consequence of news requiring as on precipitate reflection he judged that he should catch the night-mail to Paris. He had had a telegram from Gwendolen Erme-I knew already about Gwendolen Erme-in answer to his letter offering to fly to her aid. I had never seen her, but I had my ideas, which were mainly to the

effect that Corvick would marry her if her mother would only die. That lady seemed now in a fair way to oblige him after some dreadful mistake, abroad, about some climate or some waters, she had suddenly collapsed on the return. Her daughter, unsupported and alarmed, desiring to make a rush for home but hesitating at the risk, had accepted our friend's assistance, and it was my secret belief that at the sight of him. Mrs. Erme would pull round. His own belief was scarcely to be called secret; it discernibly, at any rate, differed from mine. He had showed me Gwendolen's photograph with the remark that she wasn't pretty but was awfully interesting: she had published at the age of nineteen a novel in three volumes, Deep Down," about which, in The Middle, he had been really splendid. He appreciated my present eagerness and undertook that the periodical in question should do no less; then at the last, with his hand on the door, he said to me: "Of course you'll be all right, you know." Seeing I was a trifle vague he added: "I mean you won't be silly."

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"Silly-about Vereker! Why, I never find him anything but awfully clever."

"Well, what's that but silly? What on earth does 'awfully clever' mean? For God's sake try to get at him. Don't let him suffer by our arrangement: speak of him, you know, if you can, as I should have spoken of him."

I wondered an instant. "You mean as far and away the biggest of the lot-that sort of thing?

Corvick almost groaned. "Oh, you know, I don't put them back to back that way: it's the infancy of art! But he gives me a pleasure so rare; the sense of-something or other."

I wondered again. "The sense, pray, of what?"

My dear man, that's just what I want you to say!"

Even before Corvick had banged the door I had begun, book in hand, to prepare myself to say it. I sat up with Vereker half the night: Corvick couldn't have done more than that. He was awfully clever-I stuck to that, but he wasn't a bit the biggest of the lot. I didn't allude to the lot, however I flattered myself that I emerged on this occasion from the infancy of art. "It's all right," they declared vividly at the office; and when the number appeared

I felt there was a basis on which I could meet the great man. It gave me confidence for a day or two, and then that confidence dropped. I had fancied him reading it with relish, but if Corvick was not satisfied how could Vereker himself be? I reflected indeed that the heat of the admirer was sometimes grosser even than the appetite of the scribe. Corvick at all events wrote me from Paris a little ill-humouredly. Mrs. Erme was pulling round, and I hadn't at all said what Vereker gave him the sense of.

II.

If

The effect of my visit to Bridges was to put me more into position for profundity. Hugh Vereker, as I saw him there, was of a contact so void of angles that I blushed for the poverty of imagination involved in my small precautions. he was in spirits it was not because he had read my review; in fact, on the Sunday morning, I felt sure he hadn't read it though The Middle had been out four days and bloomed, I assured myself, in the formal garden of periodicals which gave one of the ormolu tables the air of a stand at a station. The impression he made on me personally was such that I wished him to read it, and I corrected, to this end, with a surreptitious hand, what might be wanting in the careless conspicuity of the sheet. I am afraid I even watched the result of my manœuvre, but up to luncheon I watched in vain.

When afterwards, in the course of our gregarious walk, I found myself for half an hour, not perhaps without another manœuvre, at the great man's side, the result of his affability was a still livelier desire that he should not remain in ignorance of the peculiar justice I had done him. It was not that he seemed to thirst for justice; on the contrary, I had not yet caught in his talk the faintest grunt of a grudge-a note for which my young experience had already given me an ear. Of late he had had more recognition, and it was pleasant, as we used to say in The Middle, to see that it drew him out. He wasn't, of course, popular, but I judged one of the sources of his good-humour to be precisely that his success was independent of that. He had become in a manner, none the less, the fashion; the critics at least had put on a spurt · and caught up with him. We had found out at last how

clever he was, and he had had to make the best of the loss of his mystery. I was strongly tempted, as I walked beside him, to let him know how much of the discovery was my own ; and there was a moment when I probably should have done so, had not one of the ladies of our party, snatching a place at his other elbow, just then invited his attention to some topic comparatively trivial. It was very discouraging: I almost felt the liberty had been taken with myself.

I had had on my tongue's end, for my own part, a phrase or two about the right word at the right time; but later on I was glad not to have spoken, for when, on our return, we clustered at tea, I perceived Lady Flora, who had not been out with us, brandishing The Middle with her longest arm. She had taken it up at her leisure; she was delighted with what she had found, and I saw that, as a mistake in a man may often be a felicity in a woman, she would practically do for me what I hadn't been able to do for myself. "Some sweet little truths that needed to be spoken," I heard her declare, thrusting the paper at a rather bewildered couple by the fireplace. She grabbed it away from them again on the reappearance of Hugh Vereker, who, after our walk, had been upstairs to change something. "I know you don't in general look at this kind of thing, but it's an occasion really for doing so. You haven't seen it? Then you must. The man has actually got at you, at what I always feel, you know." Lady Flora threw into her eyes a look evidently intended to give an idea of what she always felt; but she added that she couldn't have expressed it. The man in the paper expressed it in a striking manner. "Just see there, and there, where I've dashed it, how he brings it out." She had literally marked for him. the brightest patches of my prose, and if I was a little amused Vereker himself may well have been. He showed how much he was when, before us all, Lady Flora wanted to read something out to him. I liked at any rate the way he defeated her purpose by jerking the paper affectionately out of her clutch. He would take it upstairs with him, would look at it on going to dress. He did this half an hour later-I saw it in his hand when he repaired to his room. Then, thinking to give her pleasure, I mentioned to Lady Flora that I was the

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