I have had some conversation with Gramont about the nefarious Projet de Traité which the _Times_ has given to the world, but as he has written to La Valette about it, I had better leave you to receive from him the French version. The only curious, and to me quite new statement which he made, was that Bismarck had at one time offered, if France was afraid of the odium of occupying Belgium, to occupy it first himself, and then to retire in apparent deference to remonstrances from France, and so give France a pretext for entering.
It has long been a common belief among diplomatists that France and Prussia have at different times discussed the propriety of seizing, the one upon Belgium, the other upon Holland. No such scandalous iniquity has been contemplated since the partition of Poland, and it is much worse than the partition of Poland, for there might be some colourable assertions that Poland was turbulent, ill-governed, that most of the population were serfs, and that she was an inconvenient neighbour. But Belgium and Holland are free, extremely well governed, and, to say the least, perfectly inoffensive neighbours. One must leave it to the parties concerned to defend themselves from the reproach of such odious projects, and I hope they will.
The insinuation in the leading article in the _Times_ that the subject has been revived by France since the Hohenzollern crisis seems to me to be extremely improbable.
Bernstorff's attempts to make you vouch for the authenticity of the _Projet_, without committing himself, is as poor a little trick as I ever heard of.
I send you in a despatch the official account of the cause of the tardiness in producing Benedetti's despatch, that is to say, delicacy on the part of Gramont. The version accepted by the public is that the whole affair had been forgotten at the Ministère until at last Benedetti himself remembered it and had it looked up.
With the object of prejudicing European opinion against Prussia, the Emperor wrote the well-known letter to Gramont from Metz, on July 28, accusing Bismarck of having proposed to France the annexation of Belgium, but the sole result was that both parties were shown to have played an equally sordid part in the transaction, and they were consequently both induced to agree to the English proposal that they should give a new and formal pledge not to violate Belgian integrity.