But the nationalist press, with its bellicose pontificating, was pushing the Chamber to call for more: namely, that Wilhelm I go further and promise there would never be any other Prussian candidate. The Kaiser had replied that no further promises would be offered to anybody and that the matter of the Spanish throne was closed. However, the Ambassador had requested a new audience to seek such an undertaking. He had even gone so far as to pursue him on his morning promenade within the palace grounds. A magnificent caricature of this incident, portraying him abjectly tugging at the Kaiser’s sleeve, appeared in the German press on the same afternoon of 13 July. The Ambassador had simultaneously sent a dispatch to Paris from the town of Ems in which he related this disagreeable affair. In it, he described how he, a close friend of Napoléon III, and France’s representative, had been sent on his way like some nobody by a mere aide-de-camp, when he had simply come to put a perfectly legitimate request to the king of Prussia.

The previous evening, talk in the French newspapers had been of nothing but that dispatch, some declaring that war was the only solution to avenge the affront, others reporting that the worst had been averted, that all would be well and that the stock exchange had risen three points.

Leaning out of the window of his aunt’s apartment, Auguste had seen his street invaded by hordes of students and workers yelling Down with Prussia! To Berlin! at the top of their lungs, and brandishing tricolour flags.

By nightfall, all Paris was out in the boulevards. Handkerchiefs were fluttering from windows and balconies everywhere, urging the demonstrators on. By morning, the streets had still not emptied and the country was unanimous in its desire to avenge the insult suffered by the French Ambassador.

By five o’clock that evening, the headlines of the dailies were of one voice when it came to the war – even Le Figaro, which described how the stock exchange had plunged since it opened . . . And on top of all that, there had been no further news from his brother-in-law Jules since the latter had left for Brest to buy him a man. The recruitment board was meeting on the 18th; he had a mere four days left!

His friend Trousselier had managed to lay his hands on a booklet that was circulating illicitly at the faculty of medicine: The Health Officers’ Guide to Assessing Disabilities or Illnesses Rendering a Man Unfit for Military Service.

‘Take a look at it, maybe you’ll find a way of getting yourself out of this mess,’ he had said to him, offering him a little bit of hope.