INTERVIEWING BAZAINE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4525, 21 September 1875, Page 3

INTERVIEWING BAZAINE.

(From the Pall Mall Gazette.)

CaiWi'ds tres-savages have been flying the round of the papers for the last fortnight, quacking about Marshal Bazaine. A wellknown lion-hunter, anxious to "interview" the Marshal, went to Ramsgate intending to take lodgings at a certain number seven, and thus become the hero's next-door neighbour. Fortunately, he took the precaution of inquiring at number six. There he learned that, in the first place, the house was at that moment untenanted; in the second, that it had been recently let to a French gentleman, it was true ; but the foreigner in question was not Marshal Bazaine. Still, if not the rose itself, it was uncommonly near it, and the lion-hunter was on the scent. The French gentleman's name, it turned out, was M. Metzki. Metzki puzzled the lionhunter ; he was at fault. Metzki was uncommonly like Metz ; but the " ki" was suggestive of a distressed Pole. At this point he happened to come across a local paper and a communicative resident. The first stated, on some other authority than his own, that Marshal Bazaine had been seen at mass at the Catholic Church—well kown in Ramsgate as a Gothic gem of the elder Putin's and the communicative resident informed the visitor that he himself had with his own eves seen Marshal Bazaine riding about the" town, attended by six general officers ! The interviewer calculated thus : " To-day is Saturday, to-morrow is Sunday ; what happened last Sunday will probably happen this next Sunday : Bazaine will bo at mass ; I will go." So he engaged his lodgings, and on Sunday morning he went to the Catholic Church. It being the hour of high mass, a shilling was demanded of him as the price of a seat. The Irishman who was there to reeeivo the money was a trifle deaf, and made no reply to the question, "Where does Marshal Bazaine sit in the church ?" The intended interviewer entered, wandered about, could see nothing like the Marshal anywhere, was compelled to sit still during the sermon, and fidget for the remainder of the service. Then he made for the door, watching and waiting until the very last worshipper had disappeared. The Irish doorkeeper was leaving when the interviower was at him with "Why, Marshal Bazaine isn't here?" "Sure, Iniversaid hewas," answered the faithful ostiarius. "But," exclaimed the interviewer, "hasn't he been here?" "He'b not been near the place," was the answer. But the interviewer had made up his mind to find Bazaine. Ho went down to the station. A train arrived from Margate. Somebody arrived, too, with the intelligence that Bazaine had been seen smoking a cigar for two hours on the pier ! Heavens ! and the interviower not there. "And where had he gone now?" he gosped out. More this deponent could not state, that is of his own personal knowledge ; but he had heard that the Marshal had left Margate for Aldershot. The interviewer |forfeited his week's rent and quitted Ramsgate by the next train. There was only one other gentleman in his carriage. When they had got half through their journey, this individual Buddenly volunteered the information that "Bazaine" was at Ramsgate; he had just seen him, about half-an-hour before they started, standing on the West Cliff and looking at the French coast through a small telescope." It was too costly a matter to stop the train by signal (oven if the electric bell, or whatever the machinery is, would work) and too late to return. So the lion-hunter was content to seek his peaceful club, and while recounting his adventures and narrow escapes of seeing Bazaine, he heard what was probably the truth, via., that M

Eegnier—the M. Eegnier, calling himself Metzki —had recently taken the lease of number six, but had not, as yet, settled down in his new residence. This is the foundation of the Bazaine story.