Pyat, however, though he remained in hiding, clung to his story respecting
Metz, stating in _Le Combat_, on October 29, that the news had been
communicated to him by Gustave Flourens, who had derived it from
Rochefort, by whom it was now impudently denied. It subsequently became
known, moreover, that another member of the Government, Eugene Pelletan,
had confided the same intelligence to Commander Longuet, of the National
Guard. It appears that it had originally been derived from certain members
of the Red Cross Society, who, when it became necessary to bury the dead
and tend the wounded after an encounter in the environs of Paris, often
came in contact with the Germans. The report was, of course, limited to
the statement that Bazaine was negotiating a surrender, not that he had
actually capitulated. The Government's denial of it can only be described
as a quibble--of the kind to which at times even British Governments stoop
when faced by inconvenient questions in the House of Commons--and, as we
shall soon see, the gentlemen of the National Defence spent a _tres
mauvais quart d'heure_ as a result of the _suppressio veri_ of which they
were guilty.
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