INTRODUCTION.
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1‘ Mais comment done, Monsieur, vous voudriez
quitter VEurope dans un moment tellement critique,
ah, e’est incroyable ! ” These words were addressed
to me in the salon de lecture of the elegant hotel
■“ Beau Rivage,” at Ouchy, by a Spanish lady of
French extraction, who had, on the previous evening,
succeeded in opening my purse-strings fo r the benefit
■of the wounded during the Franco-German war,
which was then at its height. I had but just
returned from Strassburg, having witnessed the last
days of the siege and the entry of the Prussian troops
into that fine old fortress, built nearly 200 years ago,
■and recently so gallantly defended by the French.
After this great event few had any doubt as to the
probable issue o f the war, still it was but natural that
natives of France, of whom a great many belonging
to the upper ten thousand had taken refuge in
Switzerland, and not a few o f them at the very hotel
