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212 Roumania. This minister, Count Bray, has spoken to me with bitter regret of his success on that occasion. He complained that neither France nor Austria gave him the means of proclaiming neutrality—Austria, because it desired to overthrow him and his colleague at the War Office; France, because Gramont was confident of gaining the first victory, and with it the support of the Southern States.

Lebrun returned to Paris and made his report to the Emperor on the 21st June. Napoleon was disappointed. He said that the letters of Francis Joseph had justified him in expecting more than this. He must have known already the inevitable slowness of the Austrian mobilisation from his conversations with the Archduke. It would appear that the Austrian Emperor had promised more in their earlier correspondence. The limitation of the quarrel to a single issue selected by Austria compelled him to follow a policy which was not his own, and which Ollivier had emphatically repudiated. Besides, if the ally would only fight for one cause, what if the vigilant enemy should raise a conflict on another? It became his evident interest to do it at once, and to excite and inflame any topic of dispute that would provoke resentment in France, before the scheme of a challenge on the ground of the Treaty of Prague could be matured. If Bismarck knew his business, that is, if he suspected what was brewing, he had the strongest inducement to precipitate matters without waiting until the enfeebled Emperor had constructed all his batteries. That was the result of the secret correspondence between crowned heads, of the conference with Archduke Albrecht, of the plébiscite, of the substitution of Gramont for Daru, of the mission of Lebrun. The long intrigue passed suddenly into an acute crisis. It was necessary to be prepared for an immediate outbreak.

The next move of the great conspirator is most mysterious. A few days after the interview with Lebrun, the specialists were called in for a consultation. They met on 1st July, and drew up a report which was signed