Manchester, 10 August 1866 

Dear Moor, 

I don’t know whether I should offer full, semi- or no 
congratulations at all on Laura’s semi-engagement. But whatever 
quantity of congratulations may be admissible, it affects their 
quality not a wit, and I therefore congratulate with all my heart. 

About how much does the Trémaux book? cost? If it is not 
excessively dear on account of illustrations or anything, I'll get it 
myself, and then you won’t need to send it to me. 

To allay your butcher’s wrath and replenish your stock of paper, 
I am enclosing J/F 65865 and 66, 2 £5 notes totalling £ 10, dated 
Manchester, 30 January 1865. I wish that I could set aside more 
than £200 a year for you, but unfortunately I cannot. If all goes 
well, it is true that I shall probably be able to provide another £50, 
but cotton is falling again now, and Bonaparte’s note concerning 
the 1814 frontiers ** is alarming the philistine, and that affects the 
accounts. 

That note of Bonaparte’s seems to indicate that a nircu has 
cropped up between him and Bismarck. Otherwise, his demand 
would surely not have been so discourteous and unexpected, nor 
would it have been made at such a very inopportune moment for 
Bismarck. Bismarck undoubtedly stands to lose nothing by 
complying with it, but how can he do so now? What will his 
victorious army say to it? And the German parliament, and the 
Chambers, and the South Germans? And the old jackass,” who will 
now look as idiotically beatific as my black and white dog Dido 
when he’s eaten his belly full, and who has said, not an inch of 
German soil, etc.? 

The note was a great folly on Bonaparte’s part, but the howling 
of the opposition and probably of the army, too, will presumably 
have forced him to precipitate the matter. It may turn out to be 
exceedingly dangerous for him. Either Bismarck enables a 
concession to be made, and then he will be forced to start a war 
with Bonaparte at the earliest opportunity in order to take his 

P. Trémaux, Origine et transformations de Uhomme et des autres étres. - > William I