" That idea, however, was vigorously
pooh-poohed by the Boulevardiers, particularly as rumours of sudden French
successes, originating nobody knew how, were once more in the air.
Scandal, however, secured the attention of many of the people seated in
the cafes, for the _Rappel_--Victor Hugo's organ--had that day printed a
letter addressed to Napoleon III by his mistress Marguerite Bellenger, who
admitted in it that she had deceived her imperial lover with respect to
the paternity of her child.
However, we went, my father and I, from the Boulevards to the
Folies-Bergere, which had been turned for the time into a public club, and
there we listened awhile to Citizen Lermina, who, taking Thiers's mission
and Bismarck's despatch as his text, protested against France concluding
any peace or even any armistice so long as the Germans had not withdrawn
across the frontier. There was still no little talk of that description.
The old agitator Auguste Blanqui--long confined in one of the cages of
Mont Saint-Michel, but now once more in Paris--never wearied of opposing
peace in the discourses that he delivered at his own particular club,
which, like the newspaper he inspired, was called "La Patrie en Danger.
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