Watertown Republican

Marshal MacMahon,
London Times Paris Correspondence.

Like every man who has led an outdoor life, the Marshal is frank, not knowing how to dissemble either his likings or his antipathies. He has a horror of long speeches and long dinners, thinking that in both cases it is a waste of time. When speeches are prepared for him--he does not compose them himself--they have to be short, and express the chief idea in one concise phrase. It was thus that he willingly said: "If the White Flag comes I do not answer for order in the streets. I summon to me the moderate men of long prepared phrases and of speeches with three heads." When he takes a journey and listens to the official harangues, there is a slightly ironical smile about his lips which would cut the orator short if he did not keep his eyes fixed upon his manuscript.

After his visit to the south during the inundations, I heard some one congratulate him on the trip. The Marshal stopped him, with his good-humored mocking smile, "Take care, you are going to make me a little speech."
Then, to neutralize his sarcasm, he added: "No, I have not had a success, but I have simply shown the people they were not forgotten, and that has given me pleasure."

Like all men who have had to carry on a war of strategy in Africa, the Marshal is distrustful without ill-will, for he only distrusts those represented to him as his enemies, and toward them he shows susceptibility. It would, however, be a mistake to think he obeys domestic influence. The general opinion asserts the contrary, and he has puzzled everybody as concerns this opinion. He has no preference for any party. The Bonapartists reckon on him because of his reminiscences, the legitimists because of his ministers. All are mistaken.

For the empire he has only preserved recollection, not gratitude, for it owed more to him than he to the empire.
For legitimacy he has preserved only respect, for he could not be devoted to a principle which denies the flag of the Malakoff and Magenta.