. L ] A- ;u J 6 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 086 007 931 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924086007931 In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1999 In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39. 48-1 992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1999 In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 1999 fyxndl Kittirefsiitg ^ilrratg K'VDO-i-X, 678-3 The date shWs when this volume was' taken. S .- To renew this book copy the iaU No. and give to'» • ' ■ >T-> ' the librarian. ,..> i , HOME USE RULES. All Books subject to ■' Recall. Books jiot used for. instruction or research are returnable within 4 -weeks. ■ r. '."'-- Volumes of periodi , cals and of pamphlets^ are held in the library • ^r. iSamutl ^Smiles' ^t'm EStork. THE HUGUENOTS IN FRANCE, AFTER THE REVOCATION OF THE EDICT OF NAKTES ; WITH A VISIT TO THE COUNTRY OF THE VAUD0I3. By SAMUEL SMILES, Author of " Self-Help,'" Sjc. Second Edition. Crown 6vo, lOa. 6d. " Nobody can read it without interest, without loving and admiring those whose atru^les and hardships the author painta so well, or without feeling a wish to resemble them," — AtheTusum. "Mr. Smiles has chosen a fine subject. He has gone conscientiously to the beat sources, and produced a work which will be interesting to all students of French character, and which fills a gap in English literature which was not creditable to our national Protestantism."— W^s/mtnsfer Btview. "It is impossible to read Mr. Smiles' narrative without being stirred deeply. Tlie book itself will be one of those pprmiment testimonies against religious intolerance and brutality which it is well to see raised up trom time to time." — Scotsman. W. ISBISTER fc CO., 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON. MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC REPRINTED, WITH LARGE ADDITIONS, FROM "THE DAILY NEWS." MEN OF THE THIRD t REPUBLIC " Tout persuade que je suis que ceux que Ton choisit pour de difFerents emplois, chacun selon son genie et sa profession, font bien, je me hasarde de dire qu'il'se peut faire qu'il y ait au monde plusieurs pcrsonnes connues ou inconnues, que Ton n'emploie pas, que feraient tres-bien, et je suis induit a ce sentiment par le merveilleux succes de certaines gens que le hasard seul a places, et de qui jusques alors on n'avait pas attendu de fort grandes choses." — La Bruyere. STRAHAN & CO. 56, LUDGATE HILL, LONDON 1873 [The right of Translation is reserved.'] ^: /f. /(ro5^ CORNELL LONDON PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO. CITY EOAD CONTENTS. PAGE M. THlEliS 1 MARSHAL ^LACMAHON 17 M. GAMDETTA 33 M. GREVY 46 M. BAETHELEMY ST. HILAIKE 58 M. ROUHER 70 THE DUC DE BROGLIE 96 M. DUEAUEE 108 M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS 121 THE DUC d'audipfret-pasquier 135 M. ERNEST PICAKD 147 GENERAL FAIDHERBE 160 BISHOP DUPANLOUP 171 M. LOUIS VEUILLOT . 188 THE DUC d'aUMAIE 202 M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN 221 FATHER HYACINTHE 235 MM. ERCKMANN-CHATEIAN 246 M. HENRI ROCHEFORT 257 M. EDMOND ABOUT 271 M. CASIMIE PERIBR. 285 M. JULES SIMON 295 M. TICTORIEN 8ARD0U 309 ADMIRAL POTHUAU 318 M. LOUIS BLANC 329 M. VICTOR HUGO 343 M. THIERS. A T the time when the Bourbon Restoration pressed heavily on the shoulders and con- sciences of Frenchmen, those who saw }''oung Louis Adolphe Thiers arrive from Provence with nothing in his 230cket but a prize essay on Vauvenargues, described him as a youth with a demon of restless- ness in his body, and a tongue that wagged like a bell's. A few years later (Jan. 1, 1830), when the first number of the Jfational appeared, on the most detestable of papers, and with the most ad- venturous of staffs, the writer who shared with Auguste Mignet and Armand Carrel the editorial triumvirate, began to take lead in society, and the graphic M. de Lom^nie says of him : — " He at- tracted curiosity at once by the southern twang of his voice, the smallness of his size, the incom- parable vivacity of his speech, and a glance the odd fire of which was heightened by the large 2 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. spectacles he wore ; also by a singular trick of fidgeting and shrugging his shoulders — all of which peculiarities, taken together, classed him as a being apart." The " being apart " had already at this period cleared the first steps of fame as if at a jump. He had been an art-critic ; had been shrieked at and menaced by painters ; had written on the drama, and offered to fight the entire male company of the Th^tre Fran9ais if they were not content with his judgments ; had gone a walking tour of the Pyrenees, and published a volume on them ; had held during several years the post of pen-of-all-work on the ConstitutionTiel, contribut- ing now a leader, now a review, now an epigram full of wit and personality, which would bring the ^dctim of it posting down to the ofiice, where an apology was invariably declined, and a duel ac- cepted with alacrity. Further, he had brought out his " History of the Revolution," which had galvanised France from end to end, and he enjoyed the reputation of being a Jacobin, who would be damned without remission, said the priests ; who would grow up to be somebody, prophesied shrewd old M. de Talleyrand. Men of this stamp, with a M. THIERS. taste for polemics, and a knack of hitting the right nail stunning blows on the head, are not pleasant adversaries for Ministers like M. de Polig- nac, and the latter had not been in office many weeks before the two had begun to do battle. M. Thiers had, indeed, remained in France specially to wage this war. Thinking that M. de Martignac's ministry was firmly anchored to power, and en- couraged by the success of the " History of the Revolution," he had proposed undertaking a " Ge- neral History of the World," and was actually about to start off on a voyage round the globe with Captain Laplace's Scientific Expedition, when Prince de Polignac's accession made him stop behind and found his paper. And a desperate paper it was, this National which the Eoyalist judges sought to smother with fines, and which the public kept alive and flourishing by subscrip- tions which covered the fines ten times over. Adolphe Thiers's articles were read aloud in the streets and caf^s. They grew every day in fire and boldness, and one of them, which has become almost historical from its title, " Le Roi regno et ne gouverne pas," was honoured with a vogue 4 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. whicli can only be paralleled by that of Henri Rochefort's Lanteme in more recent times. Thiers was, in truth, the Rochefort of Charles X.'s Go- vernment, and perhaps no better contrast can be established between the intellectual condition of Fi'ance in 1830 and in 1868 than by this com- liarison. The Rochefort of the Empire was, at the best, but a shallow and ignorant, although droll, flagellant. The Rochefort of the Restoration was devoured by a thirst for instruction in all its branches. Having felt, after publishing the third ■('olume of his " History," that he was deficient in special knowledge, he had set to work studying political economy under Baron Louis, and the art of war under Generals Foy and Jomini ; and of a summer's morning he might have been seen learn- ing to work field-pieces under the direction of some of his old schoolfellows, artiHeiy officers, at Vincennes. Moreover, it was he who first an- nounced as an axiom and practised as a duty, that to write the account of a battle one should have visited and minutely inspected for one's self the site where it was fought. The Bourbons disposed of, what more natural M. THIERS. than that the young champion whose pen had drawn up the famous " Protest against the Ordi- nances," should be called to a post under Govern- ment ? After he had read his " Protest " to the two hundred foremost Liberals in the Chamber and the Press, some one had cried out that it should be taken at once to the printing-office. " Unsigned ?" was Thiers's indignant answer ; " -we want names and heads at the end of such a docu- ment. In straits like these, a patriot should feel that he has no alternative but the guillotine or victory." There was the ring in these words which Frenchmen love, and the ex-journalist's ad- mirers failed not to predict that he would prove quite as stubborn and hard to beat in office as he had been out of it. Nor were they wrong. No- minally Under-Secretary at the Finance Office, under Baron Louis,. Thiers was virtually the prompter of the Cabinet, and it was a strange thing to see this indefatigable man holding an inferior place, and yet so working upon his chiefs by his zeal, enterprise, and perseverance, that they insensibly obeyed his lead. After Baron Louis it was Laffitte's turn to be guided by his subordi- 6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. nate, and in a general way it may be said that Thiers began to guide everybody with whom he was brought into contact. The biographers of his earher days had described him as uncouth, self- asserting, and not over-observant of the courtesies of society. AH this was changed now. He was quick of speech, generally monopoHsed the conver- sation, and had but a small regard for the prac- tical worth of other people's opinions ; but his geniality made his hearers forget this. How re- sist a man who stood with his back to the fire and talked to you for an hour to explain that an idea or an invention of which you fancied yourself the originator had been known long ago to him, and not only known but weighed and found wanting ? His experiences extended to all sciences. He had judged the prospects of railways from their out- set, and foresaw that they would never succeed in France. He was persuaded that the mission of his country was to be free at home and to exer- cise a sort of paternal dictatorship over the rest of Europe. He chafed under the influence wielded by the Duke of Wellington, which he called an " Agamemnonate ;" and which was an uncivilised M. THIERS. thing, a humiliating relic of those Treaties of 1815 against which he would never miss an occasion of stirring up the bile of his countrymen. He had not yet got to think much about the balance of power. He was for sending off armies to free the Poles, Italians, and Belgians, not perhaps that he cared so much about these Poles and others, but because it was necessary that France should win battles somewhere in order to revive the self-confi- dence of her army. Foreign Cabinets, however, taking alarm at these views, lie consented to shelve them on reaching a responsible position, first as Home, then as Trade, and finally as Prime Minister ; and as his experience ripened he honestly avowed on many pubhc occasions that for France to go fighting against all the other great Powers, even for such a commendable purpose as to obtain revenge for Waterloo, would really not be pru- dent. But ever and anon his French Chauvin thoughts would crop up in a speech, a letter, or in an impulsive communication to some aston- ished ambassador. He was not the man to keep a check upon his feelings. He liked to be mov- ing, doing, and saying. He fortified Paris, re- 8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. organised the army, developed and strengthened the system of centralization inaugurated by the First Empire, and -undertook a crusade against his old friends of the press, who were beginning to clamour that there was a great deal more of mili- taryism than of liberalism in his rule. This he denied, asserting that he was as fond of liberty as ever he had been. Perhaps he answered truly enough, but he chiefly liked the Hberty which is given to a people, as a gold-piece is to a child, with the in- junction, " Put it in a drawer and don't spend it." ^^^len the French took their liberties out of the di-awer, and seemed to think they were made for use, M. Thiers reproached them with ingi-atitude. That unpleasant little Egyptian business of 1840, when by his policy he at length drew down upon himself the visitation, of Lord Palmerston and the Treaty of London, forced the too patriotic states- man to retire. M. Thiers' s dominant quality was and ever will be bravery. To this virtue is generally alHed an active sense of honour, and M. Thiers is strictly honourable. Nothing could well be fairer than his method of fighting when in opposition ; and M. THIERS. the fear shown of him by M. Guizot, as well as the terrified hatred with which he was favoured by the Second Empire, sufficiently proved that his moderation was felt to be more dangerous than the uncompromising hostility of other men. The fact is, M. Thiers had his opinions built for him about forty years ago, like a house, and he has never moved out of them since. Not even in the hottest of his campaign against M. Guizot — not even when the Second Empire revelled strongest in its ill-got might — could one ever bring M. Tillers to indorse a programme which he would not have been prepared to fulfil if in power. In that delightful house of his in the Place St. George, where all the rising generation of Liberal Orleanists and moderate Repubhcans (that which Parisians term the Revue des Deux Mondes generation) sucked its political milk, he used to stand and hold forth with the vivacity of his sturdiest days against measures of tyranny or Government blunders. But he would never go beyond the length of what he termed les liberies nicessaires in his schemes for reform ; and new theories were impetuously refuted by him, come they whence they might. lo MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. In the last days of the Second Empire, when Napoleon III. tried to strengthen his tottering throne by a new Plebiscitum, M. Thiers was the most determined of his opponents ; and he was an influential member of the very small minority who voted against the war with Prussia. His conduct was then denounced as anti-national, his constitu- ents called upon him to resign his seat, the windows of his house were broken by an infuriated mob, and he found it prudent to quit Paris for Trouville, whence he magnanimously sent to the Emperor some valuable strategical notes. When the tide of disaster had set in he showed equal generosity. He opposed the motion of Count Keratry for the impeachment of Marshal Lebceuf ; and when, after the fatal day of Sedan, there was a general outcry against personal government, M. Thiers evinced extreme moderation, and contented himself with proposing a Commission of National Defence, a scheme which was supported by Count Palikao, Minister of the Regency. Then he made a diplo- matic tour of Europe and did all that could be done to remedy evils for which he was in no sense responsible. But he found the ears of M. THIERS. every statesman in London, Vienna, St. Peters- burg, and Florence closed to his appeals, and on his arrival at Tours (21st October, 1870), M. Thiers was authorised by the Provisional Govern- ment to make overtures to the Germans for an Armistice. His mission was at first unsuccessful, because he was instructed to insist on the re- victualling of Paris. France, however, was in no condition to resist any longer, and ultimately permission was obtained from the enemy to elect an assembly competent to treat for peace. M. Thiers was chosen by overwhelming majorities for no less than twenty-six departments, and decided to sit for Paris, where 102,945 votes had been recorded for him. On the 17th of February, 1871, M. Thiers was elected by the new National Assembly as "Chief of the Executive Power," and two days afterwards appointed his first Cabinet, which was composed of the most moderate men he could find for colleagues. M. J. Favre, foreign affairs ; Ernest Picard, interior ; J. Simon, public instruction ; Dufaure, justice ; Lambrecht, commerce ; Le Flo, war ; Pothuau, navy ; Pouyer-Quertier, finance ; Larcy, public 12 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. works. Within a week afterwards he signed the prehminaries of peace with Count Bismarck, four days having been spent in anxious but vain endea- vours to obtain some diminution of the enormous indemnity of five milliards exacted by the Germans. In a speech, broken by sobs, he told the Parlia- ment of Bordeaux the sad result of his negotia- tions, and the preliminaries of peace were adopted (March 1st) by 546 votes against 107. Since that time M. Thiers has held supreme power in France, and there is not a single department of administra- tion over which he does not practically preside, his Ministers being in fact his subordinates and instru- ments merely fulfilling his commands. To chro- nicle the actions of M. Thiers as President of the Republic, would be to write the history of France for the last two years. It is enough here to say that whatever has been done to restore peace and security to the country has been done by him, and that he has reigned with more absolute authority than was ever exercised by any French sovereign. Can it be said that he has changed some of his convictions now, and that in seeking to found a Republic he has thrown overboard his former pre- M. THIERS. 13 judices in favour of monarcliy ? This question would be best answered if M. Thiers were suddenly- removed from power, and then asked to offer an opinion on his successor. He is a man of generous views, patriotic to the core, and quite alive to the necessity of keeping his country out of dynastic prize fights. But his chief admiration for the Republic may be presumed to lie La the office which he himself holds under it ; else why in republicanising his countrymen should he take so much of the Republic into his own hands and leave so little in theirs 1 However, it will be a great thing if he manages to found the Re- public merely in name : the Elisha who catches up his cloak will have the task of establishing it in spirit. M. Thiers was born at Marseilles on the 16 th of April, 1797. His father was a working lock- smith, his mother the daughter of a ruined clothier. He was educated on the foundation of a public school in his native town, and, Uke most little men, had a strong fancy to become a soldier. After some trouble, however, he was got off safely to the College of Aix, and there studied law, not 14 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. very successfully. The authorities of the place were at first unfavourably impressed by his antics, and he tricked them out of a prize in a frolicsome way, but he ended by "winning their esteem, and they chose him, as promptly as possible, for their representative in Parliament. This dignity was, perhaps, the only one which ever overpowered him, and he was so full of it that his earliest speeches were ludicrously pompous ; but he soon glided into that easy conversational style, abound- ing with anecdote and illustration, which has made his oratory so fascinating. None of the published portraits of M. Thiers do justice to his appearance. There is an expression of liveliness and good temper in his face, an elasticity in his figure, which no artist has seized. In private life he has a very subtle power of charming, and great constancy as a friend. He is aristocratic in his sympathies, fond of soldiers and dukes, and has considerable admiration for here- ditary nobility. He chose a very grand duke to represent him in London, and a very grand mar- quis for Berlin. Simple almost to austerity in his personal tastes, he has, nevertheless, one of the M. THIERS. 15 best cooks in Europe, and his dinners are triumphs of taste, his conversation as exquisite as a wine of rare vintage. Seventy-five winters have not diminished the natural fires of his temperament. His intense love of fun and practical jokes has sometimes approached to buffoonery, or gone beyond it. He once saved himself from the rage of a mob of rioters, by a deed of such courage and effrontery that it cannot be told in English ; and he fought a duel at fifty-three years of age with M. Bixio, during a sitting of Parliament. It is a curious commentary on national manners, that so nimble and volatile a personage, who could hardly be named without a smile by Englishmen, should be considered one of the most serious men in France. The Legitimists only assert that there is a single blot on M. Thiers's fame. They blame him for having employed the secret service funds under his control, as Marshal Soult's Minister of the Interior, to buy the conscience of one Deutz, a sordid fellow who betrayed the Duchess de Berri to the Government of Louis Philippe. If this was an unchivalrous proceeding, it was also a shrewd one, for it put an end to a revolution which was 1 6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. keeping La Vendue in flames, and disturbing the peace of Europe. It lias been urged, too, that born poor, he required fortune ; born obscure, he required a name ; an unsuccessful lawyer, a second - rate author, he might have grown old in a newspaper office, had he not turned public troubles to his personal advantage. The same things might be said of many successful politicians, and will always be on the noisy tongue of disappointment. It might be justly answered, that if M. Thiers was once small and insignificant, placed fairly now upon the height of his reputation, he is a giant among his contemporaries. MAESHAL MACMAHON. COME seven-and-forty years ago there was en- tered at the Military School of St. Cyr a boy of seventeen, who, besides other merits, possessed that of being the son of a Peer of France, an ad- vantage which in those days rendered others super- fluous. St. Cyr was not then what it had been in the " Usurper's " — that is, in Napoleon's — time, a training place for aspirant captains of all classes. It was stocked with noblemen — Rohans, Montmo- rencys, Harcourts, Luynes ; and the great amuse- ment of these young bucks was to go to Paris of a Sunday and make disturbances at the Theatre Fran9ais by hissing Mdlle. Mars, suspected of Bonapartism ; or to pick quarrels in the streets with Liberal journalists. Perhaps the young cadet, who was by-and-by to be M. Thiers's chief lieu- tenant in the government of France, may have now and then planned in his dormitory how he c 1 8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. and his friends might fasten a quarrel on the " bumptious scribbler" who was defaming Charles X. in the Constitutionnel, and publishing his dis- loyal " History of the Revolution " in monthly parts ; and it is probable that if the scribbler in question had shown himself less ready on all occa- sions to lay down his pen for the sword, his life might have been made so burdensome to him as to have nipped his political ambition in the bud. Those were days when men did not keep their opinions in their breast pockets, to be displayed here and there when needful ; they flaunted them high on their heads, like a set of plumes. M. Constant de Rebecque, editor of the Mhierve, better known as Benjamin Constant, having fought half-a-dozen times, hired a fencing master at last to sign his articles for him, and give an account of visitors. This gentleman couched five officers of the King's Body Guard on the sward of the Bois de Boulogne within twelve months. Three-and- twenty St. Cyrians having thereupon drawn lots, and sworn to fight him turn by turn until he was worsted, he accepted the challenge, and would have MARSHAL MACMAHON. 19 more feasible plan of loosing upon him a rival bravo named Chocquart. The honest pair met on a patch of ground where the Avenue d'Eylau now stands, . the spectators being more than fifty in number, and comprising many of the leading writers of the Liberal press and the principal officers-in- waiting on the King. The duel lasted three-quar- ters of an hour, at the end of which time the Liberal champion, outwitted by a secret thrust, had his throat cut from ear to ear. And it is a pleasing characteristic of the period that Benjamin Constant, instead of wasting time in useless grief over his defender's fate, forthwith bethought him of hiring the vanquisher at an increased salary to take his place. Let any one who attended the earlier performances of Rabagas at Paris or Bor- deaux, and who thought them exciting, just imagine what the excitement was when, soon after Napoleon's death, it became bruited about that in a perform- ance of China, the actor Talma, who had been the Emperor's personal friend, would play the part of Augustus with his face made up like Bonaparte's ! The Theatre Fran^ais was crov/ded from roof to basement, the entire school of St, Cyr being tliere. 20 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. witli their white handkercliiefs tied round their sleeves in guise of Royalist armlets. The Latin Quarter students, who, like other Liberals of the day, made — Heaven forgive them l^-common cause with the Bonapartists, choked up the gallery and pit ; retired officers of the Grande Arm^e were everywhere to be seen with bunches of violets (the Imperialist flower) in their button-holes ; and the Guards officers, in full uniform, clustered together by dozens, ready for any such pretty piece of work as buffeting a Liberal first, and then skewering him afterwards. Of course the police, having wind of all this, carefully superintended M. Talma's dress- ing before the curtain rose, but whether it was from accident or design the actor was no sooner on the stage than he stroked down over his forehead the well-known wisp of hair which distinguished Napoleon ; and at this the house rose en Tnasse. The Liberals cheered enthusiastically, and the Royalists retorted with roars of Vive le Roi ! Nor was this mere empty barking with no bite to follow, for, above the din of voices, slaps on the face resounded loud and frequent ; and the Quoti- MARSHAL MACMAHON. centaine de duels a clos cette mdmorable soiree ; mais nous croyons qu'il n'y a eu de d&ouement fatal que dans sept cas seulemsnt." Brought up amid gunpowdery scenes of this kind — in the which he was always an active and foremost performer — is it to be wondered at that the young Maurice de MacMahon should have started in the army as a Legitimist fire-eater of the fiercest kind? Handsome, brave, and well con- nected, he was placed at once on the staff, and the Revolution of '30 found him fighting in the Al- gerian Expedition. He did not, however, give in his resignation because an Orleans had succeeded a Bourbon, but it is probable that he kept the worship of the Bourbons quietly locked up in his heart. There was a very numerous class of officers like him who swore allegiance to the new state of things, accepted promotion and favours from the Government, and even fought well for it. But they never loved nor respected the dummy form of rule which was neither fish nor flesh, neither monarchy nor freedom, and which dragged on a precarious existence without dignity abroad or safety at home for eighteen years. A French 22 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. soldier can understand roj^alism, and he can appre- ciate republicanism ; but bis frankness and bis innate good sense fret under a system composed of continual compromises and fictions. People wonder tbat tbe Orleanist monarcby, so sedulously nur- tured and propped from '30 to '48, should have collapsed in a couple of days ; but it would collapse again, and in half the time, should the French be ever so foolish as to restore it. The ties of tradi- tion and personal respect for the Sovereign which attach Constitutional monarchy to the English soil are wholly wanting in France. Constitutional monarchy there is an anachronism and an absur- dity. From the moment when the French de- finitely discarded their old Koyal family in 1830, upon finding that it refused to adapt itself to modern ideas, Repubhcanism became the only form of government compatible with the well-being and stability of the country. It would have been an immense benefit for France if officers of Mac- Mahon's stamp had perceived this and resolutely cast in their lot with the Republicans of 1848. But in 1848 MacMahon was a colonel, an ofiicer MARSHAL MACMAIION. 23 rest of it. He had watched the fall of Louis Philippe with silent contempt, and attributed it all to "Liberalism;" and though he suffered himself to be promoted to a generalship by the new Government — for one should never decline favours — yet he assuredly clung to the hope that France might soon be blessed with a " regime of order " again, which generally seems to mean a regime that has been tried before and has given fitful order to the streets by introducing disorder into the public finances, into the public morals, and into the public ideas of international amity. There is nothing in which political croakers more excel than in fhnging stones at a Government like the Provisional one of '48, accusing it of weakness, and shouting " Booby !" to it because it was knocked over. How many are there who care to remember that this Government of '48, composed of honest men who had not a thought but for their country's good, was assailed by fifty thousand priests and twice that number of nobles, who sowed hatred against it in the provinces ; by selfish myriads of shopkeepers, who, not having had the courage to maintain the dynasty they professed to 24 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. love, were now wliining for its return in the name of damaged trade ; and by gangs of Bonapartists working in the dark with money and fiilsehoods to stir up all the bad, envious, and ignorant blood of the country, for their own purposes ? And to sup- port it this Government was forced to depend on what ? — ^an army, whose officers, like MacMahon, vouchsafed it a sulky allegiance, and were never tired of clamouring after the least street riot, " Ah, yes, this all comes of liberty ! " The re-establishment of the Empire found General MacMahon quite ready to swear a fourth oath of fealty, and to accept such good things as Providence by the hands of the Imperial dynasty might cast in his way. He would have preferred a Bourbon restoration ; but Henri V. being unen- terprising. Napoleon III. was no bad substitute. There would be no freedom now, or any nonsense of that sort. The descendant of a man who had been proscribed for his faith would no longer have his ears shocked by hearing other men proclaim their faiths and their convictions. Napoleon was to be everything, and he — MacMahon — in common with •.ill nt.lTAr ofpnt.lp.iTien and nleheinns nf Fran no n/^^+l-v,",,^ MARSHAL MACMAHON. 25 but a cypher, prohibited from speaking or thinking for himself. Ennobhng consummation ! And how worthy a one to be fought for and prayed for in the name of order ! MacMahon was at this time a vigorous-looking gentleman, with clear blue eyes, a firm mouth, and silent ways. He had little to say on any subject ; but he was regarded as the most chivalrous among officers ; for, as the world is ordered at present, a man who would not abet the swindling of a penny at cards may consent to aid in cheating the liberties of a whole nation from it without ceasing to be the soul of honour. Then MacMahon was a good general, and indeed, for his own comfort, perhaps too good a one ; for, finding himself suddenly Duke of Magenta, after un- doubtedly saving Napoleon from a premature Sedan, he became by the same stroke a man upon whom the Imperial Government resolved to keep its eye, and whom it lost no time in despatching to Algiers, so as to get him out of the way. Poor Algiers ! The new-fledged Duke and Marshal could not ascribe it to Liberalism if everything went wrong here, as he had seen it do in France under the Republic. Most conscientiously did he try 25 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. guillotine and rifle, admonitions to the press and imprisonment of journalists. Despite these en- couragements, the ill-conditioned colony would persist in not thriving ; and after six years of ducal management Algeria Avas beginning to loom up before France as a dismal problem to be faced, when, luckily or unluckily, the " orderly " policy of that great slayer of disorder, the Emperor, turned the attention of the country to unpleasant subjects nearer home. The accession to power of the Oliivier Cabinet was the pretext chosen for abandoning the idea of founding an Arab kingdom under military rule, and MacMahon resigned the Governor-Generalship. On the declaration of war with Prussia he was appointed to the command of the 1st Corps d'Arm^e, charged with the defence of Alsace ; and on the 6 th of August, 1870, was defeated between Woerth and Reichsoffen by the Crown Prince of Prussia, and forced to abandon the line of the Vosges. He had 35,000 men under his oi-ders, the Prince was at the head of 75,000, and MacMahon's disaster was complete. He lost 4,000 prisoners, thirty-six MARSHAL MACMAHON. 27 to Nancy with only 18,000 men was so ably con- ducted, however, that the Emperor confided to him the command-in-chief of the new levies then mus- tering at Chalons. Unluckily, he was thwarted by much interference, and tied down to act on a plan of campaign which is now allowed to have been iU-considered. Having received formal orders to march to the relief of Bazaine at Metz, he was driven by the rapid advance of the Crown Prince into the trap of Sedan, and on the 1st of September, early in the morning, after being dangerously wounded in the thigh, resigned his command to General Ducrot. He cannot, therefore, be held responsible for the mischief that followed. After the Emperor's surrender, MacMahon was specially authorised by the King of Prussia to reside at Pourru-aux-Bois, a little village on the frontiers of Belgium, but as soon as his wound was healed he voluntarily shared the captivity of his troops in Ger- many. He returned to Paris on the 18 th of March, 1 8 7 1 , at the outbreak of the Communist insurrection. In the beginning of April he was appointed by a decree of the Executive power to lead the Versailles army, and on the 2 Stli of May, after some days of des- 28 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. perate fighting, made Mmself master of the capital, and issued a mild proclamation. At the supple- mentary elections of the 2nd of July following, several departments (among others the Seine) offered to elect him their representative, and a strong party in the Assembly desired to make him Vice-President of the Republic ; but he declined these honours, and refused to have anything to do with politics. And now, these subjects having been disposed of, MacMahon stands at Thiers' s right, with his hand on his sword and his lips enigmatically sealed. But why this silence ? Does MacMahon ignore the fact that a word from him at this junc- ture, when France is struggling desperately to re- gain her health and strength, would fall as the most precious of balms to heal her wounds ? Wliat would be the effect on the credit, on the hopes, on the prospects of France, if MacMahon were to step out at this moment and declare him- self a Republican ? There need be no abjuration, no infidelity, in such a statement. That man is no renegade who, considering his country's fall, MARSHAL MACMAHON. 29 one side is a great and generous nation over- whelmed, and yet prevented from rising and wielding her might by the unpatriotic machina- tions of a horde of Pretenders ; on the other, there is a man who, respected, and justly so, for his bravery and domestic virtues, has only to say a word to draw almost the entire French army after him in loyalty to the Republican flag, which is not the banner of a party or of a faction, but that of a whole people. Why does not MacMahon say this word ? He surely does not suppose that the title of High Constable which a Bourbon Restoration might give him, could rival that which would attach to his name as one of the pacificators of France and founders of French freedom ? Marie-Edmd-Patrice-Maurice de MacMahon was bom at Sully, near Autun, in the department of Saone-et-Loire, on the 13th of July, 1808. He descended from an ancient family of Irish Catholics, who followed the fortunes of the Stuarts, and took refuge in Burgundy. His father was one of the few personal friends of Charles X., who remained king of France just long enough to open the great gates of life for the future marshal, and show him 30 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. the way through. He first fleshed his sword and won the cross of honour at Algiers. He was aide- de-camp to General Achard at the siege of Antwerp, and was promoted to be a captain, at twenty-five. His military services have been more numerous and splendid than those of any living oSicer in the French army. He was at the storming of Con- stantine, in 1837, was wounded there, and behaved with signal gallantry. His courage, indeed, was a proverb. Having been ordered on one occasion to carry an order from General Changamier to the colonel of his regiment, which was separated from the corps d'arm^e by a vast horde of Bedouins, he was told to take a squadron of dragoons with him. " They are too few or too many," he replied : " too many to pass unseen, too few to beat the enemy. I will go alone." And he went. It was he who led the famous assault on the Malakoff, which decided the isSue of the Crimean War ; and Marshal Pelissier, seeing his extreme danger, twice sent him orders by an aide-de-camp to retire from the peri- lous position he had taken up. " Let me alone," roared MacMahon at the second message ; " I am MARSHAL MACMAHON. 31 do\\m the dangerous expedition of thei Kabyles, in 1857, and drove them from their mountain fast- nesses, which had previously been thought inacces- sible. It was he who won the day at Magenta, and turned defeat into victory. Finally, it was he who put doA^Ti the terrible civil war Avhich devastated France after her defeat by the Germans, and who saved Paris from destruction by fire. Such deeds have no faint claim to a nation's gratitude, and France has given him all she had to bestow. It is not going too far to say that he is the most popular man in the country. He lives a retired, unosten- tatious life, and though he displayed extraordinary pomp when se^t a few years ago on an embassy to Prussia, his manners are unpretending, and his dress plain. He seldom appears in uniform, and the only mark of distinction he wears is the red ribbon. His most marked characteristics are a love of children and a fondness for study. He made his triumphal entry into Milan with a little girl, who had offered him a nosegay, perched upon his holsters. He is probably as well versed in mili- tary history as Faidherbe, and is often busy with a child and a map upon his knees. His favourite 4 32 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. amusement is riding. In society he is shy, almost sad, and seems ill at ease. He likes to saunter about the boulevard, with his hands in his pockets and a cigar eternally in his mouth, when he is not on horseback ; and he is seen to most advantage at home surrounded by his family. M. GAMBETTA. A NYONE who has passed through the Rue de rAncienne Com^die in Paris, may have noticed an old house with a basso-reUevo high on its fa9ade, and opposite it a cafe with a low front. The house is all that remains of the Theatre Fran^ais of a hundred years ago ; and the coffee- house is the distinguished Caf^ Procope, where the wits and encyclopedians of the 1 8th century drank mulled claret and talked treason. The waiter will still show you in the room to the left a red marble table whereon, he asserts, M. de Voltaire used to write ; and, though one may believe this or not as one pleases — and perhaps it is better not to please, seeing how numerous are the Ameri- can tourists with a taste for relics — yet it is a fact that Voltaire did write here, that d'Alembert, Diderot, the two Crelaillons, and Rousseau, were paying customers, and that Marmontel, to outwit D 34 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. the police spies, who used to prowl in as they have (lone since and may do again, had invented for himself and friends a choice vocabulary, in which the names margot, javotte, and jeanneton did duty for soul, religion, and freedom. The lustre of the Cafd Procope has waned in the present century, but five years ago any stranger entering it of an evening might have seen there a young man who is, perhaps, destined to set as deep a mark upon history as even good M. de Marmontel. He was an almost briefless barrister then — a dark Italian- blooded young Frenchman, blind with one eye, not over well dressed, but with a voice as sounding as brass. It was the magic of the man, this voice. When silent he looked insignificant enough, but once he began to speak, the rather Bohemian crew of friends round him awoke to admiration. The desultory customers scattered about the other tables would prick their ears, and the landlord would hurry up in a scared fashion, to beg the impetuous orator to speak lower, because and here a whisper. But he with the ringino- voice would shrug his shoulders at the "because," M. GAME ETTA. 35 to it. He held the evening newspaper in liis hands with the report of a speech delivered by some one of that twenty-three — say Jules Favre or Ernest Picard — who breasted in the Corps L^gislatif the mob of M. Rouher's blatant hench- men, and, until the speech had been read through from end to end with sonorous bravos at the tell- ing points, there was no stopping him with dread of eavesdroppers. Then when the paper was laid down more drinking of beer would ensue than perhaps the matter strictly required, and the young barrister would blaze out into flashing com- ments on what he had read, adding what he would do and say if the chance were afforded him. Nor did his Bohemian friends smile at this. Each man amonsr them felt in himself that limitless confidence which impecuniosity begets, and they were also firmly persuaded that if their companion could only find the opportunity, he would soon set men's tongues rattling about him. Their com- panion did find the opportunity ; and next day the name of Gambetta was famous from one end of France to the other. At a time when men walked in fear of the gen- 36 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. (larmerie and of Judge Delesvaux, he had the courage to say, speaking in the Court of this very Delesvaux, that France had been waylaid by Louis Napoleon as by a highwayman and felled sense- less. Rochefort had already belled the cat in a similar fashion with his Lanterne, and so had Prdvost Paradol, yet earlier, with that article which entailed the suppression of the Courrier du DimaTicJie, and which likened France to a great lady who stoops to live with a groom. But Rochefort and Paradol were journalists — ^men whom one could silence by closing their presses ; whereas Gambetta was an advocate — that is, a man Avhom it would take trouble to gag, and who, besides, came at a moment when the Opposition was in need of a champion of a more vigorous sort than those it possessed. Jules Favre was all heart, impassionate but not aggressive enough ; Pelletan spoke like an enthusiast, Jules Simon like a professor, Picard like a wit, and Thiers as a statesman. This Gambetta was an athlete. He disdained all the classic attitudes of rhetoric, flung his arms about him, bangjed his fist down on the M. GAMBETTA. 37 desk — rang his voice tlirough the wildest changes, from the roar to the falsetto, and would have seemed to a deaf man the maddest contortionist out at large. But if you listened to him yoii were not likely to forget it. His oratory had all the energy, fire, and defiance of youth in it. He never hesitated for a word, spoke headlong, eveiy one of his phrases being coloured with that pic- turesque imagery of the south, always vivid, always new, and soaring at times to surprising heights in beauty of sentiment. There is no French parallel to that speech uttered on a grimy December afternoon of 1868 in the small Court of Correctional Police. The affair was an unimportant one — a prosecution of a newspaper for opening its columns to a subscription for erecting a monu- ment to a victim of the coitp dJitat — but Gambetta raised the case to the level of a State trial, and his harangue was an impeachment of the Second Empire such as acted like a clarion upon the entire Liberal army, and nerved it for the electoral campaign which was to be the last struggle but one of Imperialism. Yet a few weeks more, and Gambetta, no longer briefless, unknown, or ill- 38 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. clad, was being favoured with something like a triumphal ovation by the population of Toulouse, whose pet organ, I] Emancipation, he had come to defend ; and yet another few weeks, and with his name staring the public in flaming posters from all the dead walls of Paris and Marseilles, he had begun his twofold canvass as leader of the " Irreconcilables." Not a trim word tliis, but one of his own invention, and passably significant, if one remembers that it meant war without quarter to the Government then established. Others said, " Let us rally to the Empire if it grants us what we want ; " which, being interpreted, signified, "Here is an adventurer who stole our liberties from us eighteen years ago ; but, as he has managed to keep them so long, this is surely the moment for shaking hands with him if He will only give a few of them back." Gambetta de- clined to indorse this manly form of reasoning. He laid down the axiom that a perjured usurper should be able to rely upon the support of no man of principle ; and these views he trumpeted to the four ends of France, greatly to the chagrin of M. GAMBETTA. 39 felonies and murders so long only as they are political — that is, so long as they extend to the rights of millions and the lives of thousands, in- stead of to the lives and purses of one man or two. Whether Gambetta always propounded his ideas with temper and judgment is another ques- tion. A man who goes stumping will naturally catch the tricks of the stump, and our canvasser had not proceeded far before he had promised his future electors more goods and privileges, more freedom and wages, than even the millennium can fairly be expected to give us. But then there is this to be said for Gambetta, that even if he had vowed that every Frenchman should have a larded fowl and a bottle of Pomard every morning and evening on the establishment of the Republic, it would have been with some conscientious plan in his head for bringing this savoury consummation to pass. When one talked to Gambetta before the war, and whilst he was yet only a deputy, one was chiefly struck by his exuberant frankness. Even when he had just come down panting and dishe- velled from the Tribune, after some such thun- 40 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. dering speech as that where he cried to Ollivier — " We accept you and your Constitutionalism as a bridge to the RepubUc, but nothing more " — even in such moments there was a total absence of fose or affectation in his ways. It was rather too much the contrary. A remnant of Bohemianism clung to him. In alluding to a political antago- nist, the parliamentary epithets were not those which rose to his tongue soonest. He laughed loud, gripped one's hand rather than shook it, and would here and there launch from his seat, on startled M. Schneider's extreme left, some inter- ruption in round vernacular, which would cause even those discreet persons, the ushers with silver chains, to jump in unison. When the debates waxed warm, the milder members of the Left were generally to be seen pulling him back entreat- ingly by the coat-tails, and the bourgeois in the galleries, who watched these things, would go home muttering in horror, " II manque absolument de tenue ; ce n'est pas un homme serieux." The Gambetta of 1872 is a very different man. Power has passed through his hands, blood under his M. GAMBETTA. 41 bound to liis feet like an attacked lion, and shout in vibrating accents, " That is a lie ! " when some venomous shaft is spitefully shot in his direction by a member of the Right, but in ordinary re- spects he is now as serieux as any grocer in the Rue St. Denis can wish, and he even dresses with some care, which seems to be a great relief to a large number of worthy people who are resigned to the notion of his becoming President, but would be appalled at the prospect of his pre- siding over them without gloves. But will Gam- betta be President ? Amid the hurricane of abuse let loose upon him by the Bonapartists, and igno- rantly swelled by the yelping of those who yelp whenever they see anybody else give tongue — amid all this it seemed for a moment as if the ex-Dictator were going to be for ever swept away. But politics are a thing of ebbs and flows, and many a Frenchman (even among Gambetta's ene- mies) is beginning silently to reflect that the Dictatorship of Tours may not perhaps be judged by future generations as it has been by those impartial prints which take their cue from Chisel- hurst. That Gambetta committed blunders, sim- 42 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. ply proves that lie is like other statesmen past and future ; but it would be at least candid to admit that, entrusted to a vicious or heartless man, the power which he wielded would have served to remove not a few heads still simpering very comfortably on their owners' shoulders. Nay, one may as well go the whole length and say that if Gambetta had taken a few of those ex-Impe- rialist mayors, prefects, and councillors-general, who spent their time in exhorting the peasantry not to fight " for the Republic and for those in- fidels who wanted to restore '92," and treated .them as any Dictator of a hundred years ago, or as any Bonaparte of our own day would have treated them, he would have done not a little towards making his administration work smoothly, and adding to his own fame for statesmanship. That he neglected this means of promoting his reputation, and that, despite the foulest aspersions (levelled at him by all those who had least claim to throw stones of this sort), he left power no richer than he had entered it, is a fact which answers many calumnies. M. GAMBETTA. 43 though much is told. He came into this world of electors at the small tipsy town of Cahors, on the Lot, the 30th of October, 1838. It is said and printed that his family were of Genoese origin; but as he would probably have done quite as well without illustrious ancestors as with them, his friends have various theories on the subject, some inclining to the belief that he is his own father. He was inscribed on the French Law List as a member of the Paris Bar in 1859. He is not considered a learned man ; but he has, neverthe- less, acquired an amount of information that learned men would find useful. It is customary to think of him as a political Hercules, but his health is uncertain, and his physical strength not great. With respect to his vigour of mind, a curious anecdote is told. It is asserted that, being placed as a child in the custody of some persons he did not like, he wrote to his father to inform him, that unless he were immediately taken home he should put out one of his eyes, and as his father did not receive this com- munication with the respectful attention it should have commanded, he actually carried his threat 44 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. into execution. Tliat is the way in which tradition accounts for the loss of his eye ; and his likenesses are generally taken in profile. After a brief career as an advocate he was elected deputy for Pai-is and Marseilles. He chose to sit for Paris, but his electoral campaign had been too much for him, and he was laid up for a long time with a painful affection of the larynx. His first parliamentary speech worthy of note was a furious attack on the Plebiscitum ; his next, a protest against the arrest of Henri Rochefort. He took little part in the opposition organized against the Prussian war, and refused the advances made to him by the International to head a popular insur- rection when the Emperor had left Paris. After the catastrophe of Sedan, Gambetta's place was clearly marked out, and he became one of the most active members of the Government of National Defence. It was he who signed the decree con- voking the Electoral Colleges ; it was he who ordered the renewal of the Municipal Councils, and granted to Paris the same rights as other French Conmiunes. On the 7 th of October he M. GAMBETTA. 45 visional Government at Tours, quitted Paris in a balloon, and for nearly four months took all the powers and responsibilities of supreme authority into his o\vn hands. He united the offices of Mi- nisters of War, Interior, and Finance in his proper person ; and amazed the world by his activity. He raised armies out of nothing, and found money by magic to pay them. He resisted all attempts of his besieged colleagues to induce him to hold terms with the enemy, characterised their endeavours to make peace as " culpable and frivolous ; " and would have fought on as long as he lived had not shrewd M. Jules Simon contrived to outwit him, and frustrate his designs. At the close of the war he was elected deputy for six departments, and subsequently for three other departments. He now sits for the Bouches du Khone, and is (Thiers alone excepted) the most prominent statesman in France. He still lives a good deal in the street ; he may be generally seen and heard surrounded by a devoted band of friends, who expect great things when he next comes into power, though probably he -will be reluctantly compelled to disappoint them. M. GEEVY. CINCE the day wlien M. Boissy d'Anglas, whilst presiding over the Conrention, had the head of the representative Fdraud thrust under his face at the top of a pike — from that day to this the Presidency of a French Assembly has never been in any sense a sinecure ; and M. Gr^vy has some reason to congratulate himself that he should not only have directed a turbulent Legislature with firmness, but that he should have secured an uncontested name for impartiality. There are two ways of being impartial : we may either be BO by incurring the reproaches of all parties, or by satisfying all. M. Dupin, the most cele- brated of M. Gravy's predecessors (he was Pre- sident under the Second Republic, 1848-51), preferred the former course ; M. Gr^vy has se- lected the latter. Another difference between M. GREW. 47 Dupin, who was a species of human porcupine bristUng with epigrams and unpleasant to tilt against, kept the members in order by using his tongue as a bludgeon. He was also a humorous President. Being in the chair one day when his intimate personal friend Berryer was pouring denunciations on one of Prince Louis Napoleon's devoted ministers, he shouted, " Monsieur Berryer, if you continue to speak like this I shall be obliged to call you to order ; " then, leaning over his desk, he whispered in the orator's ear, " Pitch into him!" (" Tape dessus ! ") M. Gr^vy may, perhaps, have as much lurking humour as M. Dupin, but he does not show it. A short dapper man, with a face smooth shaved all but a trim fringing of grey whisker, thin firm lips, a square bald head, grey eyes, and a peremptory voice, he is the incarnation of dignity and presidential authority. Besides he has no need to resort to strong language or witty sallies to make himself respected ; respect is paid him unanimously by right of a career which has been spotless. M. Grdvy is not one of those men who conscientiously alter their opinions to suit their changes of 48 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. position, and who after a long life of such, healthy see-sawing cannot move a step to the right or left without explaining away a whole ream of speeches delivered against the very step in question. You might take stock of all the political sentiments Gr^vy ever uttered ; there is not one that would testify against him. Such as he is now, such was he twenty, thirty, forty years ago ; and we may almost contemplate as a jjhenomenon this Frenchman who never sang Hosannah on Louis Philippe's path, who spoke of Napoleon III. as he deserved, who thought (luizot a pedagogue, and Emile OUivier a poor creature ; and who yet was always prepared to admit, rather to the scandal of the fanatics among his set, that there were plenty of rascals in the Republican as in other parties. At the Revolution of '30, Gr^vy, then a Latin Quarter student, aged seventeen, took part in the fighting, and was one of the captors of the Baby- lone Barracks. He stood fire with cool bravery, forgot to brag about his doings, and went back to his books with the ambition of becoming a sue- Jl/. GREW. 49 cumstances decided it otherwise. He was retained to defend prosecuted journalists and conspirators ; and thus a man who should have grown into a learned legist, skilled in abstruse cases, and by- and-by into a judge, was diverted from v/hat was no doubt his instinctive bent. However, lie was never a sensational pleader. Clients were asto- nished to see that he thought much more of get- ting them acquitted than of raising himself a pedestal out of their briefs. He argued quietly and never bawled ; there were even cases where, suspecting his clients of seeking to make them- selves a charlatanic fame out of their prosecutions, he told them so with a frankness which was more new than complimentary. The events of 1848 found Jules Gr^vy in possession of a reputation for sense such as is not acquired every day of the week ; and the new-born Republic sent him to his native department, the Jura, to act as Chief Com- missioner. There were no more difficult functions on earth to exercise than these. The provinces had been so scared by the unexpected collapse of the throne in which they trusted, that the arrival of a Republican Commissioner was everywhere E 50 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. regarded as a direct visitation from the Evil One. It must be added that the majority of commis- sioners neglected nothing to keep up this favour- able impression. Ignorant and fussy young bar- risters, hangers-on whom the Government had imprudently despatched into the country so as to get them away from Paris, and whom it hastened to recall when it was too late to repah the mis- chief they had done — they raged about the depart- ments, spreading disturbance and consternation around them. Even the Jura, which was then, as it is now, the best educated among the depart- ments, took alarm at Republicanism preached in this fashion, and received M. Grdvy more than coldly. A few days, however, set ever}-thing to rights. The new Commissioner omitted to serve the cause he had at heart by declaring everywhere how great a man Robespierre was. He kept aloof from party demonstrations, treated all opinions with respect, and snubbed, with a contempt that somewhat astonished them, those gentlemen avIio are the drones and gadflies of Republicanism. The Jura, content and prosperous under such M. GREW. 51 great deal of trouble had there been eighty-six Gr^vys to bestow it upon all the departments instead of upon a single one, testified its gratitude by returiung the Commissioner to the Constituent Assembly by 65,150 votes. By this time Gr^vy was a well-known character. Stamped in public esteem as a man of will, he was elected at once Vice-President of the Assembly and member of the Committee of Justice, and he took his seat on the Left of the House, where he soon achieved a position apart among those who were for giving France an intelligent and acceptable Republic — ^not that fierce and chafing thing made up of prickly laws, which sits upon a community like a hair shirt. It would have been a useful lesson for the rural intellect if a few of those monarchical bumpkins who were then being indoctrinated into the perils of a commonwealth by Prince Louis Napoleon's honest agents, had been brought up to Paris by some of the cheap trains which began to run at about this period, and been made to listen to M. Gravy's speeches. Their opaque but King- loving minds might have been led to see that there could be nothing very dangerous in measures 52 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. advocated by so calm and conservative-looking a legislator as this one from the Jura. Not that Grdvy, however, was ever half-hearted in his advocacies. He supported radical reforms, would have nothing to say to party coalitions, which are like the manages de raison in private life, and generally terminate quite as stormily. On all important occasions his vote was opposed to that of M. Thiers, in whose liberalism, by the way, he then felt but a limited degree of con- fidence. His famous amendment with resrard to the Presidency set the seal, as it were, to his opinions. Mistrusting both General Cavaignac and Louis Napoleon, he moved that the Chief of the Executive be styled " President of the Council of Ministers," be elected for no definite time, but be removable at the will of the House. Had this amendment been voted, Prince Louis would have remained President a couple of sessions at most, but it is doubtful whether Republicanism would have benefited by it, for the next President would certainly have been the Prince de Joinville. How- ever, the amendment was lost by 643 votes to M. GREW. 53 liands, and three years later M. Gr^vy, driven from political life by the coup d'etat, which he had been one of the first to foresee, resumed his barrister's gowTL, and was little heard of, except in the law courts, till 1868. Ee-elected in that year by his old friends of the Jura, his majority over the official candidate was so crushing that it roused a panic at the Tuileries. But the new deputy did not return to the House as a speaking member. Not fond of wasting words where no practical result was to be hoped for, he let the officially packed Cliamber legislate as it pleased, and during the next two years his name was brought promi- nently before the public on two occasions only : first, when he voted in 1870 against the return of the Orleans Princes ; and secondly, when he de- clined to participate in the Revolution of the 4th of September. In both these emergencies he was at variance with the Liberal party. The Liberals voted for the Orleans Princes ; Grt^vy refused to do so, alleging that the presence of pretenders on French soil added strength to Eoyalist factions, and made the prospects of Republicanism more remote. He became President of the meetings in 54 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. the Rue de la Sourdiere, wliich took the name of the Gauche Ferm^e, in opposition to the Gauche Ouverte, presided over by M. Ernest Picard ; and declined to accept any compromise with the Im- perialists. He offered a determined resistance to the Plebiscitum, and met all offers of public employ- ment with a clear and resolute negative. Regard- ing the 4th September he was equally explicit. Opposed to violence in every shape, he could draw no distinction between popular or autocratical ille- galities. The members of the Corps L^gislatif, said he, were many of them elected imder pressure, but they were the people's representatives never- theless, and it was a citizen's duty to accept their will as law till a new Assembly was returned. These sentiments, which were shared to the full by M. Thiers, established between the two a political friend- ship which has been on the increase ever since- — despite the kind endeavours of mutual friends to convert these two first citizens of the Republic into rivals. M. Gr^vy, who was chosen a third time for the Jura in 1871, has now two bugbears — Monarchv M. GREW. 55 less dread of than the latter. He does not like M. Gambetta. The fervid, go-ahead, often reck- less oratory of the popular Tribune not unnaturally grates on the cold, logical, and slightly punctilious mind of the " French Aristides,'' as many term him. Whilst Gambetta was at Tours struggling like ten ordinary Ministers against Prussian force, Bonapartist intrigues, and bureaucratic red tape combined, Grevy was among those who insisted that an Assembly should be convoked to give the RepubKcan Government a legal sanction. Gam- betta refused, adding in the heat of argument that the time was one for acting, not for dehberating — though dehberating was not the exact word he used. Whereat IVL Gr^vy retorted, " Do what you may, you will never be a Republican ; you are fated to die in the skin of a rebel." It is well known that these words have been forgotten hy neither of the disputants ; and the only occasions on which M. Grdvy ever departs from his strict impartiality as a President are those when M. Gambetta is speaking. Fearful of letting his per- sonal feelings sway his judgment, he allows the ex-Dictator to say things which he would scarcely 56 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. tolerate from another quarter ; and on the days when it is certified beforehand that M. Gambetta is to ascend the tribune, he often leaves the task of chairmanship to one of his Vice-Presidents. Political rancours are, however, the shortest hved of all, and it requires no divination to foresee that if the Republic escapes being strangled either by avowed enemies or by indiscreet friends, Gr^vy and Gambetta may both of them at some future date sit side by side in a Republican Senate as ex-Presidents of the Commonwealth. Jules Gr^vy is, of all others, the man whose public virtues, talents, and private austerity best fit him to be M. Tillers' s immediate successor ; and after him Gam- betta, whose blood mil probably have gro^Ti more tepid by that time, may be installed in the Presi- dential chair without any chance of his entailing a fall of all the securities on 'Change. Is it pre- sumption to dream so far into the future? Perhaps ; but one may be pardoned for feeling confidence in coming events when one reflects that so long as M. Grevj' is to the fore the Republic need not perish for want of that rare thing — a brave and steadv M. GREW. 57 Fran9ois Paul Jules Grdvy was born at Mont- sous-Vaudrez, in the department of the Jura, on the loth of August, 1813. He was educated at the college of Poligny, and studied law in Paris. Very good men have not many marked days in their lives. They are too wise to go a hunting after the impossible ; and therefore meet with few aggressive obstacles. They do their duty without making a stir about it, as though it were among the necessary offices of life which should be performed in silence. They think there is no need to be noisy. Therefore they shock nobody, make few personal enemies, and are seldom maligned. They do not offer pay or place to any town crier for advertisements ; and that is the reason why no one thinks it worth while to get up early in the morning and praise them with a loud voice. Their existence is like the fertilising flow of a placid river in the summer time, and glides noiselessly to the sea which is at tlie end of its course. A M. BAETHELEMT ST. HILAIRE. GOOD sort of Turk beinor on the trudge to Constantinople, where he purposed presenting a petition to the Sultan, overtook an Armenian, whom he naturally began to question as to the character of the monarch under whom they both had the happiness to live. Tlie Armenian, who was a person fond of kings and of big people generally, instantly swelled his voice to recount the praises of his Sovereign. He was this and he was that ; his life had been as the course of a mudless stream ; perfection was too meagre a term to describe his virtues. The Turk with the peti- tion was pleased to hear all this : but when the other had finished he said, with a thoughtful wag of the head, " Yes, but how about his pipe-bearer ? for I have noticed that the doings of the great depend much less upon their own intentions than M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. sg would almost sooner have to deal with a spiteful Sultan who had a benevolent pipe-bearer than with a Sultan who was merciful and yet had a pipe- bearer who was vicious." At this present writing there must be more than one petitioner in France who is reasoning like the Armenian, and who feels much less concerned to know what reception his petition will meet with at the hands of M. Thiers than of the effect it will produce on M. Barth^lemy St. Hilaire, who is not M. Thiers' s pipe-bearer, but his chief secretary, privy councillor, and right-hand man, besides act- ing as leading whip for the Government party, and more or less as editor of the Journal Offtciel. These are many functions for one man to dis- charge, especially for a man who loves Aristotle more than politics, and has arrived at an age when it is pleasanter to see others bestir themselves than to do so oneself But M. St. Hilaire is not one of those men who seem to grow old. The pupils who sat under him Avhen he was first appointed to succeed Victor Cousin, in 1838, as Professor of Latin and Greek Philosophy at the College de France ; the memorialists who inter- 6o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. viewed him when he was unpaid secretary to the Provisional Government of 1848 ; the engineers who were amazed by his knowledge of Sanscrit and Hindoo literature when he went with them as commissioner to study the practicability of a Suez Canal — all these, and many others, would now find M. St. Hilaire little changed. A tall man with an ascetic face, earnest professional manners, and that slight stoop which reveals the scholar, his is the first figure that strikes any visitor to the Pre- sidential mansion, just as it used to arrest one's attention in former days at M. Thiers's house in the Place St. George. M. Thiers used then to say \- — " St. Hilaire is my regulator ; I never knew a thought of mine but was the better for being passed through his head " — and though this may have been but a friendly compliment, there is certainly this much of truth in it, that M. St. Hilaire' s skuU probably offers all the phrenological prominences which in M. Thiers's are most defi- cient. M. Thiers sees straight before him to the object at which he aims ; M. St. Hilaire considers the obstacles in the way. M. Thiers asserts ; M. BARTHELEMY ST. NIL AIRE. 6i incarnate, and must have a private idea that there is no country in the world really worth attention but France ; M. St. Hilaire is of opinion that there was a great deal of good in the Greeks, and that one might do worse at times than take a lesson from them. In all essentials the two friends — for they are intimate companions rather than chief and subaltern — think and hope alike ; but there is this difference between their modes of expressing themselves : that whereas M. Thiers's utterances snap with witful shrewdness, but re- quire to be underlined by the speaker's smiles and gestures to produce their full effect, the conversa- tion of M. St. Hilaire might be stenographed straight off, and be printed as it stood, without there being any need to correct the proofs. There is no French like it but M. Guizot's and Bishop Dupanloup's, so that memorialists who see their requests declined may know that they are being nonplussed according to the strictest rules of syntax, which is, at least, satisfactory, for one should always be thankful for small mercies. It is one of the enigmas of life how certain men, whom one would think specially fashioned by 62 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. nature for a stated sphere of duties, manage to adapt themselves to others of a quite opposite kind without the smallest apparent effort. There cannot be an hour of the day in which M. St. Hilaire does not think of his translations from Aristotle, and muse upon the notes that may be added to the next editions of the same. His idea of recreation must be to write a good article for the Debats on the worship of Vishnu ; his defini- tion of a well-spent afternoon would be standing in his rostrum at the College de France, with a hundred and fifty pupils around him, and dis- coursing exhaustively to them about the " Re- public " of Plato. And yet who could better than himself fulfil the political and social tasks which personal respect for the President of the Republic, and not by any means private inclination, have thi-own upon his hands, and induced him to discharge without prospect of reward ? Watch him as he moves hospitably about M. Thiers's drawing-rooms, extending a courteous greeting and saying just the suitable thing to everybody. It has not vet become the custom for nnv nnrt-.v n^ M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. 63 reception nights there is a throng such as no French Court, Royal or Imperial, has attracted during the present century. Dukes of the vieiUe roche, Bona- partist officers, Orleanist merchants and bankers, journalists, barristers, and Radicals of the finest scarlet — men of all ranks and opinions, in short, whom nothing but a Republic could have brought together (and yet they call it the Reign of Discord !), assemble there ; and M. Barth^lemy St. Hilaire glides about in their midst almost as much of a host as the host himself. To the Legitimists he speaks with respect of their Henri V., yet adds — not so pungently, perhaps, as M. Thiers, but with conciliatory logic — that France is not the less France because there is no King's head on its postage stamps, and that possibly the French may still be a great people even when they have no more princes to set them examples of good brotherhood. Among the Orleanists his esteem for Louis Philippe's sons is too well known to need repeating ; but he is not the man to shrink from telling even the Due d'Aumale that for a family to insist upon governing a country becau.se some of their ancestors did so, has about the same 64 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. sense in it as if different families were to claim the right to drive engines, conduct , omnibuses, or doctor the sick by hereditary privilege. As for the Republicans, he warns them that the game is now in their own hands, and that by being cool and cautious they cannot fail to win. Where M. St. Hilaire is seen to most advantage, however, is when quietly nursing one of that weak-kneed congregation who sit in the middle of the House, and call themselves " Centrists." A French Centrist is — eocceptis excipieTidis — a man who has never been able to make up his mind, nor is likely to. At the Opera he feels like a Monarchist, because the coronation scene in the ProphHe stirs up the loyal instincts of his imagi- nation. When he passes by the Invalides and perceives a battered -veteran with two crutches and three medals, he reflects : — " The Napoleons were certainly a great race." An evening's perusal of the Revue des Deux Mondes, however, sends him back to Constitutional Orleanism : and when M. Thiers speaks he gets a notion that he is a Re- publican. Then his hobby is to " ponderate " and M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. 65 by mutual alliances, agreements, and concessions. If this prince's son, for instance, were to marry this other prince's daughter, and if both families could be induced kindly to admit the Republic on condition, of their being appointed to the chief offices under it, how blessed a consummation that would be ! But again, his Repviblicanism is of a weathercoclv order, liable to abrupt changes. Let an oilman's shop in Paris catch fire, and he will discern the hands of the Communists in this piece of work, and clamour that MacMahon is the only man fit to govern the Republic ; on the other hand, let the Government give proof of vigour in dealing with its enemies, and he is the first to grumble that repressive measures were never to his liking. Salmon fishing is child's sport com- pared to the angling after this kind of gentleman. M. Barth^lemy St. Hilaire, who knows him well (there are about one hundred and fifty types of him in the House), has to follow him circum- spectly, manage never to frighten him, blow little ripples of flattery into his ears, and hook him by his tender point, which is the horror of assuming any responsibility, least of all such a one as occa- F 66 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. sioning a Ministerial crisis or a revolution. The history of states is not all comprised in the public records which every one can read ; there is always a secret history, and in such histories men like M. Barth^emy St. HUaire are the heroes. Active, conscientious, devoted, he walks in front of his chief much as those Persian feraskes who run ahead of their masters to remove stumbling- blocks, wave flies away, and beat the vulgar back. But the comparison is not, after all, quite a just one, for the ferash cannot perform his work without noise ; and M. St. Hilaire makes no noise. He is not a political shouter, a striker, or in any sense a militant. It is not even very certain that he understands the meaning of parliamentary tactics. All he knows is the part of persuading men, in polished language, to be reasonable ; and the fact that by no other magic than this he should have succeeded hitherto in keeping M. Thiers' s party compact, is a proof, if one were needed, that the French are only unmanageable when coerced by unreasonable means. M. Jules Barth^emy St. Hilaire is not by any M. BARTHELEMY ST, HILAIRE, 67 who weigh just now upon Governments, He is one of the most learned and respectable men in France. He is a financier of great experience, and a writer with thought and reason on his pen. Pohtics have been a study, not a trade, to him : and he has never derived much emolument from them. He is a Parisian by birth, and came to light on the 19th of August, 1805. Though he began his career as a Government clerk in the French Treasury, he showed a rare spirit of inde- pendence ; and from 1826 to 1830 wrote very freely in the newspapers. He was on the regular staff of the Globe, and went so far as to sign the protest of the journalists on the 28th of July, 1830. After the Eevolution he abandoned politics for literature, with an untroubled mind. In 1834 he was appointed Examiner at the Polytechnic school. When elected a deputy in 1848, he associated him- self with the moderate party, who sought to calm the phrenzy of that excited time. He approved the measures taken against the Socialists, but refused his confidence to General Cavaignac; and made him- self mouthpiece of that weak Dictator's opponents. Finally, at a period of life when ordinary men are 68 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. little disposed to set out as volunteers to seek a fortune, lie resigned his chair at the college of France rather than swear fidelity to the Empire, and recording his solemn protest against a form of government which dissatisfied his judgment, went tranquilly back to his books, and dived deeply into the history of the Indian philosophies. But he did not sulk in his retirement, and though he declined to mingle in politics he was ready to take part in scientific works of public utility. After the fall of the Empire, M. Barth(^lemy St. Hilaire was elected a member of the National Assembly for the Department of Seine et Oise by 47,224 votes ; and joined with Grc^vy, Dufaure, Leon de Malle- ville, and Vitet, in proposing that M. Thiers should be appointed Chief of the Executive power. He formed one of the committee of fifteen who were named to assist the Government in conducting the negotiations for peace with Prussia. He took his seat in the Left Centre, voted for the preliminaries of peace, the abrogation of the laws of exile, the treaty of commerce, and the return of the Parlia- ment to Paris ; but on more than one occasion he M. BARTHELEMY ST. HILAIRE. 69 of the Government, and his language was once (Feb., 1872) formally disavowed by the President. Such is M. Barth^lemy St. Hilaire, no timeserver, no led captain, but an independent, honest, and accomplished gentleman. There are, perhaps, few things in the life of M. Thiers which do more credit to his wisdom and character than that of having secured so firm and so honourable a friend ; there are, perhaps, still fewer things which on the windy eminence where he now stands are more comfort- ing to him. M. EOUHEE. rPHE Provincial who has come up to Versailles, and, at some sacrifice of time and personal dignity, obtained a seat in the Strangers' Gallery, asks his nearest neighbour to show him M. Thiers and M. Gambetta ; and when he has sated his eyes on these two, he says, " And where is Monsieur Kouher ? " M. Rouher is pointed out on one of the benches of the Right Centre, the prominent figure among a thin squad of Bona- partists, who sing out Ti'es bien ! with fine Cor- sican accents whenever their ex- Vice-Emperor rises to deliver himself, which, however, as times go, is not often. The Provincial, who has a tender heart much proner to sympathise with fallen might than his brothers the Parisians, would like to say that misfortune has thinned M. Rouher ; but, after considerins' him attentivelv for a moment hp. is M. ROUHER. that, except for his no longer having a bright scarlet portfolio on the desk before him, nor wear- ing a white cravat, nor being surrounded by a buzzing and supple-backed throng of worshippers, he is just the same Rouher as the Provincial saw five years ago, shouting, Jamais ! Jamais ! Jamais ! It was shouted in a firm, brave voice, this triple Jamxiis ! and the two hundred and sixty official claqueurs, who were supposed to represent the clerico-Caesarist proclivities of the French nation, banged their hands together as if they had never heard anything like it ; and the Provincial, on returning to his home, was grateful to think that the Pope still had a few temporal acres to enhance his sanctity withal, and that, thanks to M. Rouher and the two hundred and sixty champions of order and religion afore- mentioned, the acres would be his to all eternity at the least. Nobody has ever been able to discover how much M. Rouher really cared for the Pope, or whether, in truth, he cared for him at all ; but it was the distinctive trait of this eloquent Minister's genius to make it always seem as if he cared im- 72 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. mensely about every theory lie advocated. Some- times lie harangued his claqueurs on the same theory, though from opposite stand-points, within a very brief interval.. But this did not matter. Wlien a man wants to remain in office uninter- ruptedly through all the variations of the political barometer, he must study the habits of that accommodating reptile the chameleon ; and then he will not find it difficult to speak up for Itahan unity one year, against German unity the next ; to propound that every nation should be free to choose its ruler, and yet set up a French garrison over the Eomans and an Austrian archduke over the Mexicans ; to spend one-half his term of office in snubbing the clerical party, and the other half in burning iacense to it. But perhaps M. Eouher never so well displayed the elastic texture of his mind as when, one fine afternoon, and without premonitory warning, he made an enthusiastic speech in favour of the liberty of the press — that meddlesome institution which, as he had repeat- edly vowed during eighteen years, should never want gag or fetters so long as he was there to M. ROUHER. 73 the probability of the potent Vice-Emperor's resig- nation. A year previously, Caesar had published his letter about " cro^vning the edifice," and it was contended that since, after twelve naonths' delay, his Majesty really meant to keep part of his imperial word by getting his new Press Bill passed, M. Eouher must inevitably resign sooner than abet such a departure from the Napoleonic tradi- tions he cherished. But one need never despair of a man who is at once impressionable and elo- quent. Everybody who knows the &uh rosd history of the Second Empire has heard how M. Rouher drove down to the Tuileries on that February morning in 1868, and told his master that this new recantation was really more than he had the courage to undertake. It was not as if he had attacked the press years before only ; but liis last denunciation of it was scarcely three months old. Then the Emperor answered, " If I asked you to go and face fire for me, you would go. This is a lesser service ; I rely on your affec- tion to perform it ; " and in French fashion he embraced him. Overcome and bewildered, the Minister started for the House, and there made 74 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. that famous speecli in which he pleaded for the four million electors who had been children when their fathers voted the first Imperial pl^iscite, and who could only be expected to vote plebiscites in their turn if liberty were given them. Gambetta, who — not yet a celebrity — was in one of the pubhc tribunes on this occasion, is reported to have exclaimed, " He is the prince of orators : there is not a man in our party who can hold a candle to him ! " Of course, this, being uttered under the excite- ment of the moment, need not be taken for M. Gambetta's dispassionate verdict on M. Eouher. The Vice-Emperor was, indeed, neither a great orator nor a great Minister ; he was second-rate in both respects. Bluif, seemingly candid, fond of rather heavy jokes, and gifted with that hearty self-confidence which makes a man talk unhalt- ingly, he was further assisted by the encourage- ments of the gentlemen who had been elected to the Legislature by his instrumentality, and who roared " Bravo ! " with most touching cordiaUty whenever he opened his mouth. But if one saw M. ROUHER. 75 upset by some telling philippic of Jules Favre, or driven into a corner by one of tbose shrewd, sharp, and long speeches of Thiers, then was the time to judge of his oratory. The performance was gene- rally hke the floundering of an over-armed and over-furious knight out of a morass. The Minis- ter would plunge at his adversaries ; a great deal of his rhetoric was spent in arm- gyrations through the air ; and, whatever might be the topic under discussion, a railway bill, a biU for levying more taxes, or for suppressing more liberties, the wind up of the speech was invariably the same — that is, a flourish of the " spectre rouge,'' an appeal to the memories of '93, of M. Marat, and of the waste- paper currency. Of course this form of oratory has its uses ; for when you can accuse an adver- sary of wishing to revive the guiUotiae, you are spared the trouble of confuting his logic ; but it is not oratory which future generations of Frenchmen can be expected to rake up from old newspaper files and copy respectfully into elocution books. As to M. Rouher's statesmanship, it seems un- generous to say of a Minister who clung to office eighteen years that he lacked capacity, and left 76 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. scarcely one good piece of work behind him ; but on this point just one word. You take a nation and strip it of all its liberties ; you fetter it, gag it, and throw it at your feet. Then you say to it, " I am going to govern you." There is no press worth mentioning ; the constituencies have been so manipulated that they are as supple in your hands as gum-balls ; the judges and magistrates have surrendered you their independence ; and you have a large army to put your enemies to reason. Then you set to work, and in eighteen years you double your country's debt. You ahenate one by one all the friends she had. You scatter broadcast the love of extravagance and the taste for all that is corrupt in morals, false and flashy in ethics. Reckless and inconsistent in your dealings with other nations, you drag your country into one war after another, and syste- matically foster in the people the love for this bootless fighting which you call glory ; yet such is your infatuation that you refuse to see how you must inevitably meet some day with an enemy strong enough to withstand you, and you keep M. ROUHER. that on the day when invasion comes it sweeps over them like a dekige. Then, when tliis has happened, wlien the country is devastated, and other men are sti'uggUng with jaded heads and aching hearts to repair the mischief which you have done, you come back with an injured look and say, "Here am I, the man whom you are un- gratefally abusing. It was my policy, and my friends', that brought about the disasters from which you all suffer ; but Napoleon III. is none the less at this moment the lawful owner of this Commonwealth, and the master to whom all the forty millions of you, its citizens, owe respect and obedience. As for me, when matters are restored to their old footing I shall probably be Prime Minister again ; meanwhile, as there is no man more competent than I to advise you how a country should be managed, the best thing you can do is to listen deferentially to my counsels." This is the pith of what M. Rouher has to say whenever he now opens his mouth in public. He is the spokesman of the Emperor party, as distin- guished from the Empress and Regency faction, which the wise M. Q^ment Duvernois leads ; and 78 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. he believes in a Bonapartist restoration as he does in his own infaUibihty, and possibly in the Pope. Let us do him the justice to add, however, that being in private life a charming man, of plea- sant and chatty mood, he does not scruple to admit that the Emperor and he — but principally the Emperor — did commit a few blunders to- gether, and he will profit by the remembrance of these when the time comes. Of course, the chief blunder was that Press Law. If there had been no Liberal papers, the Opposition would never have waxed strong ; consequently the Emperor would not have been driven, for dynastic reasons, to slap Germany on the face ; Sedan would never have been fought ; and the Tuileries would not now be roofless. Therefore, obviously and indisputably, according to M. Rouher's complacent logic, the authors of all France's misfortunes are the Libe- rals. It behoves every Frenchman of sense to remember this. Voltaire tells a quaint story of a princess of Babylon who was taken prisoner by a king of Tartary. The king was a rough churl, and he in- M. ROUHER. 79 intended classing her forthwith in the numerous category of his wives. " Whereat," said the young lady, in relating the adventure, " I stamped my foot and looked proudly at him, for I had been told that we princesses had a dignity and a majesty in our glance which it was impossible to resist. But the king only laughed. He said I was a saucy girl, but that I should soon think better of it ; and so, patted me on the shoulder, and left me." If this anecdote is introduced into a sketch of M. Kouher, it is merely to say that great men do not always bear their high rank stamped on their brows ; and that, shorn of their power, they may sometimes have to do a good deal of foot-stamping before convincing people of their eminence. Thus, if M. Rouher, one of the most powerful men in France, were, for instance, to fall into the hands of Signor Fuvio, the brigand chief whom his Holiness the Pope seems to have so much difficulty in suppressing, it is to be feared that it would scarcely occur to that personage to call him " Eccelenza." In one way this might be lucky for the ex-Minister, for he would probably have to pay but half ransom ; Fuvio would cer- 8o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. tainly set him down as a retired grazier or a country lawyer, and let him off cheap, disdainfully. One day when M. Rouher reigned supreme, Madame Eouher, who was giving a dinner party the same night, wanted to have a certain head- dress of hers ready for the evening. Her hairdresser lived in the Rue de la Paix, and M. Rouher, who happened to be going to the Ministry of Justice in the Place Vendome, said he would execute the commission, which was simply to leave a parcel containing the aforesaid head-dress, and request that there might be no delay in returning it. Unfortunately, the ordinary attire of a French functionary — Cabinet Minister or other — is exactly that of a butler, black tail-coat and a white cravat ; so that M. Rouher, who, in jumping out of his brougham, had not taken the precaution to throw on an overcoat, looked for all the world like a servant as he climbed the staircase leadine to the first-floor, where the hairdresser resided, and was sharply apostrophised by the concierge., who asked him why he had not gone up the back- stairs ? The thing was considered an excellent M. ROUHER. 8 1 few hours later ; but the outside public enjoyed it still more than the guests, for when the story was spread about by the press, it occurred to everybody who knew the Minister's plain features and plod- ding gait, that the concierge, could not have made a better mistake if he had been a wag and done it for the purpose. Eugene Rouher, who is now verging on his fifty-eighth year, is a native of Auvergne, which is supposed to be to France what Boeotia was to Greece, and Essex, of yore, to England — the pro- vince whose intelligence is scarcest. He was bom on the 30th of November, 1814, and is the son of an attorney. The Auvergnats are mostly brawny fellows, tall, broad-shouldered, thick-tongued, and loutish. It is from them that are collected all the water-carriers and coal-heavers of Paris, and the exclamation, " Bah ! c'est un Auvergnat," is generally held an ample excuse for anything like being drunk or disorderly, or assaulting the pohce. As every medal has its reverse, however, the Auvergnats are acknowledged to be patient and laborious, so that many of them who have begun by being water-carriers end by being mil- G 82 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. lionaires ; and more than one who has started in life, like Eugene Eouher, with nothing but his own dogged energy to help him, has found that energy no bad capital in the end, and drawn first- rate interest therefrom. It is an encouraging thing for young Frenchmen to note how almost all the men who rise to power in their country rise from nothing. In England we are accustomed to look upon France with a kind of pity as a land much more backward than ours in respect of en- lightenment, and yet — ^if it were meet to establish comparison— where should we find' in England a road so broad and sure as that which in France lies open to merit ? Eugfene Rouher, like MM. Thiers and Guizot, sprung of humble stock — so humble indeed, and so poor, that, as he confessed a few years ago in a public speech, his clothes were wofuUy patched when he went to school, and put him in grievous dread of being laughed at. This was in the pleasant old town of Riom, where women are famed for their milk-white teeth ; but where schoolboys are probably no better than else- where. However, young Rouher g-ot over his M. ROUHER. 83 had most likely a good deal to do with it. If a playfellow chaffed him about the queer cut of his pantaloons, he knocked that schoolboy down — a sound form of argument, and conclusive, which earned him the only sort of academical fame he ever acquired. It has been said that he is too ignorant even to be inconvenienced by historical precedents ; and in this respect he differs from most other eminent French statesmen of the present century — the Duke de Richelieu, Villfele, Casimir Pdrier, Thiers, Dupon, and Guizot, who were all scholars. Young Rouher was no scholar. He studied books, but had small love for them ; and when, after passing through the University of Clermont,* he entered the Bar of that town, he was quite unknown, and it never occurred to any- body to prophesy that he would some day be ii great man. Imagine a thick-set lad with a fat face, firmly planted on a pair of dumpy legs, in the middle of a court of justice, and bellowing a speecli with a blurting voice, to convince three sceptic * Another account says that M. Eouher studied law in Paris, and was called to the Bar at Riom. 84 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. judges as to the innocence of a client. Every four or five minutes tlie stout lad pauses to mop tlie sweat off his brow iTith anything that comes to hand first — ^liis pocket-handkerchief, a corner of his black stuff gown, or the long white fall round his neck. This done, he sets off again in the same energetic way as before ; tossing his arms about, plunging his head backwards and for\yards, roar- ing, uttering threatening ejaculations, and panting noisily like a buffalo. The judges look on im- passibly, for they are used to it. It is the young barrister, Eugene Rouher, pleading, as he always does plead, by throwing all his heart into it, and making as much fuss to save his client from a five franc fine as he would to snatch him from the guillotine. Orators who thus roar are not the best, but they always get on well. There is a class of litigants who cannot feel happy unless their counsel makes a substantial row. An advocate who would argue their cause Avith masterly logic, but in a quiet voice, would not suit them ; they would never feel as if they had had their money's worth unless there had been the proper amount of screaming, pound- M. ROUHER. 85 Doubtless there were many orators more learned and clever than Eugene Rouher at the Bar of Clermont, but there were none to come near him in vigour or in obstinacy. It was a marvel to thin, unimpassioned men, how he would work himself up to such pitches of excitement ; and how he could stand the unceasing drains which he put upon his system. But the way in which he would deal with a plate of beef when he came out of court did something to solve the question. He was a man of simple tastes and scrupulously sober ; but tAvo pounds of steak, a whole fowl, and a bowl of salad were no more than he could dispose of at breakfast ; and it was noticed that he always spoke better after he had put a good quart of red Burgundy under his waistcoat. He never tried to write a book ; he had other fish to fry. He had not been five years at the Bar before there was more work for him than he could find time to do. Up at six and never in. bed till midnight, his life was one of hard labour such as would astonish some of those gentlemen who pretend to the exclusive title of " working men." By the time he reached his thirty-fifth year he was pocketing 30,000 francs 86 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. por annum (a fine income at that time), and his fellow-citizens were talking of him as a likely candidate for the Chamber of Deputies. Needless to say that he set up as a Liberal. Liberalism is the most convenient of faiths, because it saves a candidate all the trouble of reasoning. "VMien a man constitutes himself the advocate of existing institutions, he may be called upon for the why and the wherefore ; when he proposes to demo- lish institutions, his good motives are taken for granted. Nevertheless, Eugfene Rouher was not a spitfire Liberal. He had too much rough good sense to fall into the cant of Eadicalism. He affected no more Liberalism than was just enough for electioneering purposes ; and when once in the House, he sided with that moderate group who on most questions took the sensible view, and voted ac- cording to their lights, one day with the " Eight " and another Avith the " Left." At first he made no great impression as a speaker. He was eclipsed in a chamber which, besides the two leaders of Eight and Left, counted such orators as Lamartine, Arago, Berryer, Cr^mieus, Ledru-Rollin, Louis M. ROUHER. His place seemed to be rather amongst the mem- bers who were good workers in committee, and could make a tolerable speech on a question of second-rate importance. It should be remarked that French parliamentary oratory was then at a much higher standard than it is at present. There has never been such a combination of talent as was seen in the last Assembly elected under Louis Philippe, and in the first elected under the Second Republic. The Revolution of February, 1848, was an un- pleasant blow for Eugfene Rouher, who feared for a moment that his career was at an end. France had made such a terrific stride during the 24th of February, that men of practical, semi-conservative views like him, were left far in the lurch. The deputy of the Puy de Dome accepted the Republic just as one accepts a hail-storm or an attack of fever, resignedly. He even had the courage — a rare courage at such a time — to make no secret of his regret for what had happened, and it was no doubt to this honest franlmess that he owed the honour of being sent to the Constituent Assembly by his old electors, the majority of whom thought in their hearts as poorly of the Republic as he did. 88 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. In the new Chamber M. Rouher, of course, took his place amongst the "friends of order." From the first he persistently opposed the noisy clique headed by Louis Blanc, Easpail, Bianqui, Barbds, and a few other excited enthusiasts. His vote was always given in favour of energetic resistance to mob rule ; and at a time when there was so much foolery of all kinds in speech and action, his utter- ances had a healthy tone, which attracted atten- tion, and soon placed him in the category of rising men. It is a curious thing to remember, that whilst M. Eouher was steadily making his way by force of common sense, two of his future colleagues, MM. Billault and Baroche, who afterwards became noted for ultra-imperialism of the most extreme kind, were then distinguishing themselves by the violence of their Radical sentiments. M. Baroche was being elected in the Charente, as a more advanced Liberal than his competitor, M. Eugene Pelletan. M. Billault had drawn up for his own constituents an address so wildly subversive, that the Advocate-General, Sandon, to whom he submitted it, pronounced it too hot even for 1848, and he was obliged to tone it down. M. ROUHER. 89 After the election of Prince Bonaparte to the Presidency, the attitude assumed by M. Rouher became more anti-republican than ever.. In com- mon with all sensible people, he had been tho- roughly disgusted by the weakness of the Provi- sional Government. The events of the 23rd, 24 th, and 25 th June had stripped him of the last of his illusions, and it was evident to all who took any interest in him that he would give his entire sup- port to the first prince who was strong enough to re-establish a monarchy. Many people may have forgotten that the prevailing impression in Paris during 1849 and 1850 was that the Presidency would be merely an interregnum preceding the restoration of the Count de Chambord, or the accession of the Prince de Joinville. Nobody looked upon Prince Bonaparte's tenure of power as serious, or likely to become definite. This is what allowed the Prince to steal so long a march on his opponents. Whilst Legitimists and Orleanists con- spired in secret, thinking too lightly of the Presi- dent to treat him as a dangerous adversary, the latter was quietly making his plans and selecting his men. One of these men was M. Rouher. Louis go MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Napoleon, who is a good judge of mankind, rated him instantly at his true worth. He saw in him a resolute, hard-working member, whose influence was daily becoming greater in the Chamber ; and he put him into the Cabinet as Minister of Justice, a difficult post to fill, but one Avhich, after all, re- quired rather stubborn good sense than tran- scendent abilities. Up to this time M. Rouher had had no marked preference for any particular dynasty. It is true, he had on one occasion exclaimed in the midst of an excited speech, " T}ie, Revolution 0/ 1848 was a catastro]phe ! and your Republic is a disgrace !" but these ejaculations, which well-nigh got him expelled the Chamber, were taken rather as monar- chical than dynastic regrets. M. Rouher would probably have sworn allegiance to the Count de Chambord, the Duke d'Aumale, or the Prince de Joinville, with the same readiness as to Prince Bonaparte, if one of the former had been in office ; but having once cast in his lot with the President, he was quite shrewd enough to see that it was his best interest to remain faithful. Besides, as already said, he was essentially a friend of M. ROUHER. gi order, and cared little wlio reigned so long as the ruling hand was strong enough. Nevertheless, Louis Napoleon did not give him his full confi- dence when he placed him amongst his counsellors ; so that although M. Rouher may have foreseen, yet he was in no way privy to, the couf d'etat. Tlie President knew quite well that M. Rouher was one of those men who bow to a coup d'itat when it has succeeded, but who are not venturesome enough to risk their heads for it before it is accomplished. However, that M. Rouher' s business capacities for oflSice had fully justified the Prince's expecta- tions was fully proved by the fact that his name fioTired on the list of the new Cabinet issued on the 3rd December, 1851 ; and from that time until July, 1869, he remained in office with but one interruption of a few months — January to Septem- ber, 1852 — when he resigned on account of the confiscation and sale of the lands belonging to the Orleans family. This resignation of M. Rouher is a feather in his cap ; it was the act of an honest man and a gentleman. The sale of the Orleans property was a deed of pohtical iniquity quite con- traiy to the spirit of the age, and even M. Rouher' s 92 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. worst enemies have admired his conduct in oppos- ing it. Somebody has said that " happy nations have no history," by which is meant that when events flow by in peaceful, unbroken monotony there is nothing for the historian to dwell on. The same thing may be said of the lives of men, and may be applied to a certain degree, in this particular instance, to M. Rouher. The political life of this statesman has been singularly happy. Raised to power by dint of hard work rather than by force of talent, he had the rare good fortune to keep his place twenty years by the same simple means as he got it. He has been a hard worker and a hard talker, but little else. Appointed suc- cessively to the posts of Minister of Commerce, Minister of the Interior, Minister of Finance, and Minister of State, he has left behind him in all these offices the reputation of a man who gets through any amount of business, and gets through it fairly. But if we except the negotiation of the Treaty of Commerce, the honour of which he shares with the Emperor and M. Michel Chevalier, he has left behind him no monument such as that which a true statesman looks to for future fame. M. ROUHER. 93 There are no great acts with which his name can be associated. He has had in his hand boundless opportunities of doing good, and has generally neglected them — not perhaps from aversion to doing good, but because the idea of progress has never been one which he has cared to grasp. Quite satisfied with his own position when in power, he has always thought that everybody else ought to be satisfied with theirs, and cries for reform became gradually synonymous in his ears Avith factiousness. He was so blind to the real con- dition of France, that on the day following the de- claration of war against Prussia (16th Juty, 1870), he solemnly assured the Senate that " France was ready to fight," and that " the day of victory was near." A few weeks afterwards he was obliged to flj' to England, and narrowly escaped falling victim to a mob at Calais. On his arrival in London he founded La Situation, a Bonapartist newspaper, which must have cost somebody a gi-eat deal of money. At the general election of the 8tli July, 1871, he presented himself as a candidate for the Gironde and the Charente Inferieure, but was de- feated in both places. After that he resided for a 94 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. time in Paris, and contributed several articles to La France, a journal favourable to the fallen empire. M. Severin Abbatucci, one of the most devoted of the Emperor's adherents, having resigned his seat- to make a vacancy for M. Rouher, he was elected as member for Ajaccio on the 11th of February, 1872, and almost immediately afterwards fought a wordy duel with the Duke d'Audiffret - Pas- quier. As a parliamentary orator, he is no better than he was as a forensic pleader, his main strength consisting in energy and roaring. The speeches he delivered as Minister of State, in defence of im- perial policy, are inflated but empty. He insulted the Opposition, but he never dared to meet it in fair argument, and now he is himself in Opposition he is seldom plausible or logical. Had he lived in a country possessed of parliamentary institutions and a responsible Cabinet, he would never have risen high nor remained in office long. His hard-working quahties would have stood him in good stead as a chief clerk, for instance, or an efficient under- secretary, but his shallowness of reasonino-, his narrowness of mind, and his extraordinary obstinacy would have exposed him to repeated defeats, and M. ROUHER. 95 have shattered the most robust faith which the most robust of parties could have put in him. If he kept in power so long in France, history- will probably record that it was mainly because he had no rivals. From 1851 to 1869 political life was extinct. M. Rouher ruled as the governor of a prison may be said to rule over a community handcuffed, gagged, and closely guarded. Now, however, that the breeze of liberty has begun to blow once more over the land, the best thing he can do is to retire into private life. His days as a Minister are past. If he returned to power he could add nothing to his fame as an exceptionally lucky man, whereas events might possibly impair the reputation he enjoys of always getting well out of scrapes. THE DUG DE BEOGLIE. T^HE Due de Broglie, who does not quite lead, but aspires to lead, the Orleanist party, is a very finished type of the class of noblemen who would be ruling France at this hour if the Kevo- tion of 1830 had never taken place. Supposing Charles X. had become suddenly prudent and retained the Martignac Ministry, there is a proba- bility that the Bourbon dynasty might have struck new roots ; the hereditary House of Peers, a much more liberal and popular body than the Chamber of Deputies of that period, would have continued to flourish ; and the present Due de Broglie, after sitting a few years in the Lower House for his department, the Eure, would in due course have succeeded his father and distinguished himself in the Upper Chamber as a French Whig. This might even have happened, though less certainly and smoothly, if the Orleans monarchy had sur- THE DUC DE BROGUE. 97 viveA Had the Eepublie of 1848 lasted, the results would have been the same, for the Ee- publie threw a broad road open to talent in all its forms, and the influence of clever dukes was quite as much felt as under the Eoyalty. But the Empire, which put the whole political machinery of France out of gear, flung aU such educated and obnoxious Constitutionalists as the Broglies, d'HaussonviUes, Edmusats, and Montalivets vio- lently out of their grooves. They became as exiles on their own soil, a small, well-read, and much-hated band, whom the Empire feared and combated with all the weapons of its unscrupulous arsenal, and whom, in drawing-rooms where Bona- partist wits lisped their jokes, it was thought funny to laugh at as le parti des parapluies or le parti Buloz. This last name was, of course, an allusion to the Revue des Deux Mondes, which, with the Journal des BSats, formed the two pulpits whence the parti des parapluies made their voices heard, not loudly, but patiently and eloquently, during eighteen years, for the enlight- enment of a very light-needing community. One must never forget the good that was done H qS MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. by tlie Orleanists, or rather by the Constitutionalists, under the Second Empire. They were the chief educators of the present generation. Imperialism had little to dread from the Legitimists, who sulked and educated nobody — not even them- selves ; nor did it much fear the Republicans, who, being a disunited body, often visionary and gene- rally too plainspoken, were easy to defame and suppress. But it was not easy to suppress men who launched their criticisms under cover of his- torical essays or academical speeches. This Minis- ter might frown at reading a very knowing paper on Tiberius, and that other might bite his lips on hearing the institutions of the Empire pulled to pieces under the cupola of the Institute ; but there was no handle for a prosecution in either of these offences, and the Ministers had to bear the appreciative smiles of the literate among the public as visitations not to be avoided. Looking back upon those days, one must own that despotism almost had its compensation in the exquisite plea- sure people felt in reading the attacks against it. A new book, a clever article full of demure irony, M. Eugene Forcade's fortnightly bulletins, the re- THE DUC DE BROGUE, 99 ception of a new Orleanist at the Academy, some double-edged lecture by one of the Professors at the Sorbonne — all these were treats to which there is no parallel where press and tongue are free. Paris revelled in them ; and it must have often occurred to the inhabitants of the Tuileries that it would be almost worth while to have a conspiracy once a year, and a street riot every six months, to be free from that pestilent swarm of moderate Liberals who were always setting their stings on the sore places. No family was more quietly active than that of the Broglies in this work of discomfiting the Im- perial dynasty and propagating opposition to it by hterary and social means. Descended from a family which during the last century alone counted three field-marshals on its roll, the pre- sent Duke's father was a proved Liberal, who had inherited his love of freedom from that Prince Victor de Broglie, his sire, who, after adopting the principles of the Kevolution, had been guillo- tined under the Terror, less as an aristocrat than as a hater of injustice. It was of no use for Bona- partists to call such a man either a Jacobin or a 100 MEN OF THE 7HIRD REPUBLIC. bigot. He was simply a cultivated, accomplished, and patriotic nobleman, wbo was as adverse from Koyalist as from Democratic excesses, and had proved this throughout his whole career. It was he who, almost alone in the House of Peers, and being then the youngest member of it, had stood up for Ney. In 1816 he had spoken and voted for a full amnesty of all the Republicans and Bona- partists whom the Eourbonists judges had con- demned. In 1817 his voice had been raised repeatedly and vigorously in favour of the liberty of the press. Both as a peer under the Restora- tion and as a Minister under Louis Philippe, his ideal had been to endow France with a political system like that of England, and there is little doubt that if there had been more Frenchmen like him to assist in the experiment the thing would have become possible. But his crowning work, and that which he regarded with the greatest pride, was the education which he gave his sons. M. Guizot, in a recent memoir, has recorded how full, painstaking, and judicious this education was ; and it may be added in a general way, that when French noblemen are educated — which, thanks to THE DUC DE BROGUE. the clergy, is less often than might be — they are taught to a pitch of perfection not common in other lands. Besides, the young Broglies had not only the advantage of their father's teaching ; their gifted mother, Madame de Stael's only daughter, imparted to them many of the quaUties of her own generous heart and beautiful mind, so that the boys grew up to be, if not paragons, at least young Frenchmen of no ordinary promise. In 1848, whilst the late Due de Bi'oglie was sitting in the Legislative Assembly on the benches of the Moderate Royalists, his eldest son started in journalism with as much diligence as though he had his bread to win by his pen, and soon his name was classed among the foremost of the rising generation which it was then thought would guide France for the next thirty or forty years. It is difficult to realise the full bitterness of the dis- appointment which must have fallen upon men who, like Prince Albert de Broglie, then saw their newly opening careers suddenly closed to them by the covbf d'etat, and perhaps the bitterness was the greater in this particular case, as no efforts were spared by the Imperial dynasty in endeavouring to 102 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. conciliate the Broglies. Just as the First Napo- leon, very anxious to see a field-marshal of the old nobility at the head of his parvenu staff, sent a sj)ecial ambassador to Miinster, where the Mar^chal de Broglie was living since the Kevolution, to invite him to return to France, so Napoleon III. would have esteemed it no mean triumph if the great family, whose name had been in French- men's mouths any time these two hundred years, had consented to accept honours and places from him. It happened that during most of the Second Empire the department of the Eure was governed by that gallant and expensive M. Janvier de la Motte, who has since become notorious : and this gentleman was as glib-tongued a missionary as any that could have been selected for the work of proselytising. " What did the names of dynasties signify after all ? Had not the Bonapartes done as much for French glory as the Orleans family ? And liberty — what did that mean ? Had not the friends of liberty murdered M. le Due's father in '93, and overturned the King he loved in '48, and would not they go on murdering and over- turning so long as their hands and tongues were THE DUC DE BROGUE. 103 free ? Surely, then, it was the mission of all patriotic and liberal noblemen to rally round the Sovereign whom the people had selected, and to co-operate with him in establishing institutions which should be really suited to* the character of the nation," &c. Underlying this lurked more than one hint that if " M. le Due " pleased, a seat in the Senate was ready for him, and that his heir, the Prince Albert, could begin life either as a councillor of state, an official deputy, or a minister plenipotentiary. But the Broglies were never to be caught. Theirs was not a constitutionalism which, like that of the Dupins and the Laroche- jacqueleins, could compound with Csesarism under the specious pretext of its having been submitted to by the nation. They loved liberty as a religion ; they courteously rebuffed M. Janvier ; and with- out descending to factious plots, they made of their house the resort of all the eminent men of France who thought like them. As a result, the letters they wrote to each other were (as has since been irrefutably proved) carefully opened and read in the Postal "Cabinet Noir;" all M. Janvier's screw-power was brought to bear against their 104 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. nominees at election time, and they were now and then treated to a domiciliary visit Hke that one in 1861, when the police seized all the copies of a work lithographed by the late Duke for private circulation, and entitled, ilfes Fwes %ur le Gouverae- ment de la FraTice. In 1870, at the time of the Ollivier fervour, it was rumoured that Prince Albert de Broglie, who in that year succeeded to his father's title, was about to accept a high diplo- matic post ; and had he done so, it would certainly have been from no abating of Liberalism on his part, but from the belief that the Empire had at length come round to parliamentary views. As it turned out, however, the rumour was unfounded. More cautious than poor Prdvost-Paradol, his friend, the new Duke was afraid to trust in Par- liamentarism, Caesar-born and only a few weeks old. The Empire is dead and buried now, the Re- public has succeeded it, and the Due de Broglie, who was elected to the National Assembly as deputy for the Eure in 1871, has served the new regime as ambassador* and legislator. It * Appointed Ambassador Extraordinary to London on the 19th February, 1871 ; resigned 1st May, 1872. THE DUC DE BROGUE. 105 is pretended by many, especially among the very Liberal, tliat in this twofold capacity he has not quite fulfilled what was expected of him ; but this is not so disappointing as it would appear. Imagine a man sculling in a very fast outrigger, and keeping ahead of a boatful of people seated in a "tub;" then imagine the people in the tub getting out of this slow contrivance on to a fast steamer which will overtake the outrigger, and soon leave it out of sight. The position of the man in the outrigger is that of the Due de Broglie. A couple of years ago he was consider- ably in advance of the French nation, huddled in the Napoleonic tub ; but since then the tub's crew have got on board the Republican steamer, and it is now the Orleanist outrigger's turn to lag behind. Keeping up the metaphor, one may say that the Duke's reason for not deserting his outrigger is chiefly a want of confidence in the pilot who is guiding the steamer. The Broglies were never Thiersists. Under Louis Philippe, the late Duke was Guizot's supporter ; under the present system, his heir is one of those who hold to monarchism from the conscientious belief that it can give more io6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. freedom than a Republic. This inference he draws from England, which in all things is his model ; but one may trust he will end by perceiving that the crown which fits one nation is not necessarily made to cap another, and that having arrived at this discovery he will lend his name and his talents to found that form of free government under which alone France can hope for stability. Under Bourbonism, Orleanism, or Bonapartism, the country can only count upon one-third of its children — that is, only put forth a third of its strength ; under the Republic it should be able to rely, and generally does rely, upon all. M. de Broglie can scarcely wish for a more convincing proof of the eclectic nature of Republicanism than the fact that M. Thiers's Cabinet comprises men of all shades of opinion, and that if he — M. de Broglie — is not seated there, the fault is his, and not that of the President, whose parliamentary proclivities he is doubtless too hasty in suspecting. The family of Broglie, or Broglia, came to France in the suite of Mazarin ; they are of Italian origin, and the name is pronounce'd Broille. They were admitted as princes of the Holy Empire THE DUC DE BROGUE. 107 in 1759. The present Duke was born on the 13th of June, 1821 ; and was married on the 19th of June, 1845, to Mademoiselle Pauline- El^onore de Galard de B^arn. He has five sons. His principal literary work is "L'Eglise et I'Empire Remain au IV'-SifecIe" (1856, 2 vols., 8vo.), which has passed through five editions. It is rather 'a bald history of the reign of Constantine, written from the Catholic point of view ; and was followed by two other books, " Julien I'Apostat " and " Theodore le Grand," neither of which attracted much attention. He was elected a member of the I^rench Academj' as successor to Father Lacor- daire. M. DUFAUEE. A CRABBED, sour-featured little veteran, who has a knack of snubbing impertinent deputies so roughly that they avoid being impertinent again, M. Dufaure, Minister of Justice, President of the Council of State, and, when M. Thiers is not present, Chairman of the Cabiuet, gives one rather the idea of a cross-grained provincial lawyer than of an experienced jurist and most able states- man. He sits at his bench gathered up in a bundle, his lean hand stroking his wrinkled face, and his eye fixed with no friendly expression on the members, whoever they may be, who look as if they were going to accost him. Supposing a facetious colleague were to paste in front of his desk a paper, inscribed " Take care ; he bites ! " one would be inclined to put trust in that paper, and make a circuit sooner than approach M. Dufaure. Yet if business renders an interview unavoidable M. DUFAURE, 109 one is surprised to see tlie sour expression fall from tlie Minister's face like a mask. He smiles a rather paternal smile, but answers in a clear, well-toned voice, which strikes one as being strong to a degree for so aged a body. This pleasant state of things lasts until the petitioner, querist, or whatever he may be, prefers some request which the Minister is unwilling to grant. Then back comes the sour look, the thin lips close up like a spring-trap, and by a prompt emphatic negative, M. Dufaure shows his interlocutor that statesmen who retain all their faculties at seventy- four are not to be caught with chaff. M. Dufaure was the acknowledged head of the French Bar throughout the Second Empire. If ill-luck dragged one into a lawsuit, one's avo'wi always said " We must try and retain Dufaure." Only, it was not so easy to retain Dufaure, for Dufaure had been known to earn in one year as much as 300,000 francs, which, according to French notions, was phenomenal ; and briefs were piled up in his chambers by the hundredweight. Youno- " stagiaire " advocates admired the fer- vour of Berryer, the atticism of Chaix d'Est-. no MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Ange, the rapid rhetoric of Allou, and the clever special-pleading of Lachaud ; but Dufaure was the man whom they would have liked to emulate, because Dufaure won all his suits, and was so redoubtable an adversary, that litigants had been known to back out of an action, and even pay the costs, on hearing that he was to appear against them. He knew the Code by heart, and his brain was a voluminous dictionary of legal precedents. No public prosecutor could ever catch him at fault ; no judge ever overruled him on a point of law. There is a good story of his having been retained at the eleventh hour to defend a pro- vincial editor prosecuted by Government. He arrived in the small town where the tribunal sat, pulled the loosely drawn indictment of the local procurator to pieces, and made out for the de- fendant a case so plain that the three Imperialist judges, in deep disgust at such a necessity, were obliged to nonsuit the Government. Meeting the Prefect the next day, the Chief Judge was frowned at by that functionary, who bitterly reproached him with the collapse of the suit. " Yes, indeed " answered the Judge naively, " but we were not. M. DUFAURE. ■warned that Dufaure was coming, else we should have prepared our judgment beforehand. As it was, you see, we were taken unawares." But though Dufaure was such a master pleader, law was much less his vocation than politics. He had been thrown back to the Bar by the coup d'etat, but he chafed under this mishap, and wistfully thought of the days when he led a powerful party in the Legislature and was regarded as future Prime Minister. Dufaure had begun his career at a time when the Re- storation seemed resolved to undo all the work of the Revolution, and when Liberalism was a much more perilous creed than it has become since. Practising at Bordeaux, he knew that the attentive eye of the police was fixed upon him, and he was one day advised that a carbonaro con- spiracy having been discovered, means might be found of implicating him in it if he did not keep a watch over his forensic utterances. This was a delicate way of hinting that false witnesses cost little under a religious Government ; and Dufaure, who was never foolhardy, took the hint to this extent that he let the dynasty alone, and called 112 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. himself a Constitutionalist. Whether this would have kept him out of hot water, if Prince Polignac had remained in office, is a moot point ; but the Bourbons having been dismissed, Jules Dufaure was enabled to give his opinions fuU play, and in 1834 was returned to the Chamber by the electors of Saintes as a moderate Liberal and supporter of M. Thiers. Party programmes being a little com- phcated in those days, it is difficult to define what exactly constituted a moderate Liberal ; but one may state in a general way that it meant a poli- tician who in all things was prepared to go just a trifle beyond the party in power, whichever it might be. Thus Dufaure was progressive without rashness ; he criticised the estimates, kept a vigi- lant look-out on the Government's foreign policy, held equally aloof from clericalism and iconoclasm, and by the end of five years had made himself so respected a name as a shrewd, powerful, yet not factious debater, that on the formation of the second Soult Cabinet, in 1839, he was called to the Ministry of Public Works. In this capacity he had to bear the brunt of the discussion as to whether the construction of railways should be M. DUFAURE. 113 undertaken wholly by Government or be left to private companies. The theorists who hold for " special men," and had argued that the Minister of Public Works should be an engineer, and not a barrister, were surprised at the extent of technical knowledge which the new man soon acquired ; but his parliamentary doings gave the key to but one- half of his ability. The best of his labours was thrown into departmental work. He would have no obstructiveness from understrappers. Ked tape and routine were things he tabooed from the outset. Inventors met with a courteous at- tention at his hands, to which officialism had not accustomed them ; and the energy he displayed in pushing on the cutting of the Corsican roads, which were to suppress brigandage, and the com- pletion of several much-needed canals, was a thing without precedent in those pre-Haussmannite days. Unfortunately his tenure of office did not last long enough. The Administration of which he was a member had no working majority in the House, and was overthrown by M. Thiers, who, after a six months' holding, was compelled in his turn to retire in favour of M. Guizot. M. Dufaure had 114 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. ceased to think on all subjects witli M. Thiers, but from motives of personal friendship he did not combat his Ministry. He did not either think entii-ely with M. Guizot, and, though offered his old place at the Public Works Office on the latter' s accession, he declined it, and settled down as leader of a mixed party, which, under his guidance, grew more and more liberal every year in proportion as the Ministry seemed to grow more deeply rooted in office. There were few statesmen at that period Avho did not think M. Dufaure would succeed M. Guizot in the Premier- ship. He was not popular out of the House, nor indeed very much so in it ; but the Centrists rallied round him because they knew his parlia- mentary worth, and felt that his was a strong and firm hand. During the agitation in favour of the Reform banquets in 1847-8 he showed how inde- pendent this firmness was, by separating himself from half his supporters and siding with the Ministry. MM. Baroche and Barrot (the former afterwards a fanatical Caesarist, then a zealous Liberal) had framed a motion for impeaching the Cabinet on account of this interdiction of the M. DUFAURE. 115 banquets in question. M. Dufaure courageously- said — " The Ministers would have deserved im- peachment had they allowed the banquets. I have no sympathy with the Liberalism that re- quires to be fomented by toasts and after-dinner phihppics. Our principles need to be advocated in cold blood. We must speak to the people, not over our cups, but from the tribune, through the Press, and off electoral platforms." This declaration was deemed so high-principled that people were stupefied when, a few weeks later (the Revolution of 1848 having taken place in the meanwhile), M. Dufaure was returned to the Con- stituent Assembly as a Democratic Republican, and forthwith voted for the exile of the Orleans dynasty, to which he had, as Minister, sworn eternal fealty, as also for some other new measures by no means Conservative. The sarcasms showered upon him on this occasion might well have affected a more pachydermatous politician ; but the neo-Republican met them very quietly by saying that, the Re- public having been established through no agency of his, he had only submitted to it from necessity, but that having once submitted to it, his duty as Il6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. a citizen commanded him to try and make it as stable as possible. Conformably to these views he voted with the Moderate Republicans, and three months after the accession to power of General Cavaignac accepted from this well-meaning but rather weak Dictator the post of Minister of the Interior, which was at that moment the most im- portant office in the Cabinet. The great work on hand was to prepare the Presidential election, and Cavaignac called Dufaure to his aid, much less as a servant than as a patron. He looked to Dufaure to plead his cause with the bourgeoisie, who were not fond of soldiers, and Dufaure did so, throwing himself into the contest with almost Yankee en- thusiasm, and repeatedly adjuring the nation by speeches, Ministerial circulars, and street placards, to choose " a man for their President and not a name." One would have thought that, after ex- hibiting such partisanship, Dufaure would have felt pledged not to accept place under a Bonaparte ; but within six months of the election (on the morrow of which he had resigned), he was back at the Home Office, and remained there till Louis Napoleon dismissed him because of his domineer- M. DUFAURE. 117 ing fussiness, say the Bonapartists ; because of his endeayours to make the President rule by parha- mentary means, says the more probable version. The Liberals did not readily forgive Dufaure for having sat in a Bonapartist Cabinet, and the ex- Minister was once again obliged to defend himself against public irony by asserting that so long as a man bides faithful to his principles he is not bound to cleave with servility to any dynasty or indivi- dual. " The man or the family that is to rule is the nation's concern," said he, "and not mine." The disadvantage of this theory is that it is rather too convenient a one when it leads the propounder of it to places and emoluments. The public might have appreciated M. Dufaure' s amenability to conversion, had he remained plain M. Dufaure ; but seeing that each modification in his views hoisted him a step higher up the ladder, they smiled, and associated him with M. Dupin of weathercock memory. In this they were wrong, however, for after the couf d'etat M. Dufaure might have become a Senator and a Chief Justice if he had pleased to turn his coat, but he retired with dignity from political life, and gave himself Ii3 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. out during the next twenty years as a repentant Orleanist. M. Dufaure's return to power last year after his long eclipse was considered by everybody as a fitting and fortunate thing ; and the ex-Minister of Louis Philippe, of Cavaignac, and of Prince Louis Napoleon, has been during the past twelvemonth the most valuable and trusted colleague of M. Thiers. His departmental duties require tact. He has to appoint judges, magistrates, and procurators ; and when this is done he must fulfil the yet more delicate task of keeping these right learned per- sonages from betraying too much zeal in their avocations. A French procurator is always inclined to make his presence and his political opinions felt ; M. Dufaure is trying to teach his procurators that they have no right to possess any opinions. As to his judges, he inherited them fi-om the Empire, and his chief concern is to convince them that they need not be afraid of him. If M. Dufaure were younger, one might expect him to introduce reforms into the French judicial system — to reduce the preposterous number of judges, to institute trial by jury for civil causes, to arrange M. DUFAURE. 119 that judges should be promoted by seniority, and by the election of their colleagues, so as to render the judicial bench completely independent of Go- vernment, and to abolish the "instruction secrfete," ■which Emile OUivier condemned, and purposed suppressing, if he could, two years ago. But at seventy-four a statesman has not much propensity to innovate, and perhaps in this particular instance it is as well that it should be so. French Eepub- licanism has earned such a character for demolition, that it is as weU a few abuses should be suffered to linger under it at first, in order that there may be no terror among those Conservative souls who can never see a cobweb swept away without clamouring that the whole house wiU come down with it. Jules- Armand-Stanislas Dufaure was born at Saujon, in the Charente Inf^rieure, on the 4th of December, 1798, and studied law in Paris. At the general elections of 1871 he was chosen for three departments, and now sits for the Charente Inferieure among the members of the Left Centre. He voted in favour of the preliminaries of peace, the abolition of the laws of exile, and the mainte- nance of the commercial treaties. He is, perhaps. 120 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. a solitary example of an ex-Minister of three French Governments who is not a Knight of the Legion of Honour. He has also the rather rare distinction of not being a voluminous writer ; and has published nothing but a few official reports. M. ALEXANDEE DUMAS. A BOUT five-and-thirty years ago there began to be seen in the house of that famous spendthrift of money and genius, called Alexandre Dumas, a boy who now describes himself as having been vivacious and playful, but whom his contem- poraries state to have been a reserved lad — proud, and precociously sharp at retorting whenever his vanity was hurt. He was ten years old, and came home from his school on Sundays and holidays to be shaken hands with by his father, and then left to fill up his time as he pleased, or as he could. The house was full of literary toadies, Bohemians and impecunious artists. These formed the great Dumas' court, burned incense under his face, ate his dinners, borrowed his money, and forgot to repay it ; and passed his boy about from hand to hand as an artistic curiosity that was to be admired, or as a pet-dog that was to be spoilt. 122 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. No youth, as the author of La Dame aux Cavielias has since acknowledged, could have been worse brought up. At school, the colossal popularity of his father — for it was colossal at that period — threw its reflex on him, and made him as distinc- tive an object for curiosity and importunate ques- tions as if he had always been dressed in scarlet. At home, the very unedifying scenes he witnessed, the easy manners of the ladies in whose company he was thrown, and the base cringing of the male crew who lived on his father's prodigahties, earty tinged his thoughts with a streak of that bitterness which time never quite removes. In this fashion the lad grew up until he was eighteen, at which age his father placed a roll of bank notes in his hands and spoke in this paternal wise : " When a man inherits the name of Alexandre Dumas he should lead the life of a prince, dine at the Caf^ Anglais, and be generous with his money. Go and amuse yourself. When you have spent that you shall have more. If you contract debts I will pay them." Nothing could be plainer or more con- ducive to morality. Young Dumas threw himself headlong into the torrent of Parisian life, ran M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 123 obediently into debt, drew, without stint or scru- ple, on his well-pleased father, and was never lectured by the father save on the meanness of parsimony. But this healthy sort of existence must necessarily experience checks when father and son both lead it together. The elder Dumas practised all he preached ; and by degrees the cash-bowls on his desk (his money was never locked up in drawers, but lay in bowls, open to all comers) began to be more and more often empty. One day when the son came to levy supplies from them he found they were in possession of the bailiffs, along A?ith the rest of the house's furni- ture ; and though his father cried to him with one of his hearty laughs that this was nothing, and that money was as fast earned as spent, yet this little episode set young Dumas thinking that if he should suddenly become an orphan he should find himself face to face with his own debts and his father's, possessed of no assets and no profession, and, besides all this, having a sister to support. It may be that some less material thoughts min- gled with these, and told him that the life he had been spending was not a very noble one, and that 124 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. a man has other missions to fulfil than those of rolling about Boulevards in a phaeton and signing his name to I U's. Anyhow, the resolution he took in the course of one day, and unflinch- ingly adhered to during several years, revealed in him a firmness of character and an honesty of purpose which could not have come from parental example, and must have been innate. He severed himself completely from his former mode of living, his friends, and associations. He discarded his phaeton and grooms, sublet his fine lodgings, sold off his furniture, dressed plainly ; and having con- voked his creditors, told them with frankness that he was unable to pay them then, but that, if they would give him time, he would work till he had discharged his obligations to the last farthing. One would have been glad to record that the creditors met this assurance in a believing spirit ; but the fact is, they tried to lodge him in Clichy. He eluded them, however ; took refuge at Fon- tainebleau in a small inn room, for which he paid 30 sous a day, and there during two years worked like a man. He had already written a novel, an absurd book, called " Les Aventures de Quatre M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 125 Femmes et d'un Perroquet." He now changed his style, and, perceiving that he had not imagination enough to compose sensational novels like his father, set himself to the minute, analytical pour- trayal of such social manners as he had observed. As his lot had been cast in the very loosest of social spheres, " La Dame aux Cam^lias " was the first result of his observations. This novel was a fair success. Then he wrote the dramatised ver- sion of the tale and submitted it to his father, who, not suspecting him of having much brains, was startled at the dramatic power of the work, and, with tears of pride, as he himself often repeated, accepted it for the Theatre Historique. That theatre, however, like many other undertak- ings of the great man's, was at this time on the eve of bankruptcy, and young Dumas was soon obliged to set off with his piece on a round of managerial visits, which lasted two years. Oddly enough, it was in most cases his name which damaged him. Alexandre Dumas the elder, hav- ing been the most successful author of twenty preceding years, had naturally accumulated a ver}^ satisfactory collection of rivals, and it was feared 126 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. tliat some of these would be only too delighted to hit a blow at the father by organizing a cabal against the son. Other managers took alarm at the inunorality of the drama, and this immorality also disquieted the authorities, for when La Dame, aux Gamelias was eventually accepted by the Vaudeville its performance was prohibited by the Home Minister, M. L^on Faucher. Is it to this that we must attribute M. Dumas' distaste for Republican institutions ? Certain it is that the following year, when the Empire had been esta- blished, M. de Morny actively bestirred himself to get the piece licensed, and, of course, succeeded. He had a nice little theory of his own, this K de Morny, on the morahty of stage pieces. Every piece was acceptable according to his no- tions, so long as it excited the public to talk on other topics than politics ; thus La Dame aux Camelias would be moral, and Ruy Bias not so. The moral piece was therefore performed in 1852, and took the actors who played it, the manager, the audience, and soon the whole town by stonn. It was the most startling success on record. M. Dumas' astonished creditors emerged from their M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 127 lairs, pounced upon him, and had him arrested eight times within a fortnight. But the manager was there to pay, for the young author had become in one evening almost as famous a man as his father in thirty years. There is not a Parisian but knows the " Dumas Fils,'' who then took his place among the half- dozen princes of French dramatic art. A tall, strongly-built man, with a bald forehead, woolly hair, moustaches with wax to them, and keen grey eyes, he was not unlike his father in face, but seemed to have no single mental characteristic in common with him. Cold and rather haughty in his manner, he wielded a species of wit which fell upon its victims like the thwacks of a well-made riding-whip. When he paid his father one of those occasional visits which filial duty com- manded, the greater Dumas' sycophantic familiars all shrunk away, not liking to risk a weal from that terrible tongue, and even Dumas Pfere him- self felt uncomfortable in the presence of this son who had grown up to be so unlike him, and whose domesticated, orderly ways now began to strike him constantly in the light of a reproach. 128 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. It was often said that father and son had quar- relled, but this was never true. The elder Dumas had too warm a heart, and the younger was too good a son, for a collision to be possible. Only they saw but little of each other, because when one man in a family has banned debt as a pesti- lence, whilst the other persists in looking upon it as the natural state of man — when one picks his society, and the other admits all men to his fellow- ship — when one is all sentiment, and the other all sense, intercourse is apt to be unprofitable. So j^oung Dumas kept to his own set of friends — a brilliant artistic set, in whose company all the superficial ice in his nature thawed — and he worked. This point must be dwelt on, that the highest of his productions is and always has been the result of thought and labour. He does not, as his father did, sit down of a morning with six- and-thirty blank pages quarto size before him, and make it his duty to cover tliem with writing of some sort before going out. Having got an idea — or a paradox, for to his essentially French mind it is all one — into his head, he turns the same over , patiently by himself, discusses it with his friends, M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. and after twelve months, sometimes two years, of this mental incubating, produces Diane de Lys, Le Demi Monde, Le Fils Naturel, or La Question d' Argent. Whilst the Empire flourished it was the younger Diunas' great good fortune to be fre(i from any fear lest his pieces should not attract attention enough. Politics being hushed, the starting of any emotional social problem was like the firing of a shell amid perfect stillness ; and as each new piece of Scribe's successor at the Gym- nase was brought out, the author had the inex- pressible satisfaction of seeing society wrangle fiercely as to whether he were an earnest censor of social abuses or a corrupter of public morals. This is always pleasant ; indeed, fortune can do nothing more for one. But, yes ; it can make of one an homme sirievx, as M. Alexandre Dumas aspires to be thought at this hour. Having played under the Empire something of the part which Alcibiades's tailless dog is popularly supposed to have filled at Athens, he now seeks to be one of the oracles of the day, — to rank, in fact, among the " Men of the Third Republic." Since M. Thiers has guided France, K 130 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. M. Dumas has launched two new "psychological" comedies and three pamphlets, all of which tend, as he asserts, to the regeneration of France ; and the latest of which (the pamphlets) has been in most Parisians' hands for the last month,* and is likely to linger in Parisian women's memories for yet some weeks to come. But it may be doubted whether anything that M. Dumas writes in his present frame of mind can evoke results deeper than a succes de curiosite, or will survive him ; and this for the reason that, falling into an error very common with professed censors, he has got to paint his countrymen much blacker than they really are. M. Dumas fancies himself still under the Empire. He forgets what bereavement and distress have passed through most French homes. Taking cases of crime and depravity that were monstrous, and exceptional even at the worst of times, he holds them up to his countrymen, and bids them see themselves as in a mirror ; so that if one were to collect M. Dumas' verdicts on his countrymen from the plays and pamphlets recently published, one would learn that the French were ' September, 1872. M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 131 politically and socially, morally and intellectually, the most flippant, unprincipled, debauched, and ignorant people under heaven. Against this judg- ment one may be allowed to protest. There are really few countries where honesty is more com- mon, practical morality more deep-rooted, and respect for the law more general than in France. To ignore this argues either a very cursory study of the national character, or a cynicism grown chronic, and incapacitating its owner from seeing things as they are. But perhaps M. Dumas is aware that the French love to see their foibles scoffed at by one of themselves, and possibly the object of his numerous bits of "psychology" is merely to gratify their passion. If so, some friend should warn M. Dumas that a doctor who would prescribe a reckless course of astringents, even when pressed by his patient to do it, would con- duce neither to that patient's health, nor to his own good fame as a physician. Many different accounts are given of M. Dumas' birth. His father announced it thus : — " On the 29th of July, 1824, while the Duke de Mont- pensier was coming into the world, was born to 132 MEN OF 'THE THIRD REPUBLIC. me a Duke de Chartres, Place des Italiens, No. 1." As soon as he was old enough to go to school, Alexandre Dumas was sent to the establishment of a M. Goubaux, who conducted two kinds of business at the same time ; and manufactured a scene in a broad farce for the Ambigu Comique, on the margin of a page of Cicero. The leisure he could steal from his duties as an instructor of youth was also frequently de- voted to the task of putting in a dramatic form the honest socialist romances of Eugfene Sue. From the custody of this lively pedagogue, the boy was transferred to the College Bourbon, where he distinguished himself as a silent and laborious student. He read everything that came in his v.'ay, and one day his father found him diligently perusing M. Gerardin's novel, " Emile." "What do you think of the book?" asked the elder Dumas. " I think," answered the lad slowly, "that when a father refuses to give his name to his own son " "Well?" , " The son should take it." M. ALEXANDRE DUMAS. 133 " Take mine, then, at once," returned liis father, and henceforth he was formally acknowledged, and unceasingly bragged about, by that prolific writer. Indeed, they both bragged about each other. The father called his son "a Wonder of Nature;" the son called his father "a Prodigy." They felt the gayest and most good-humoured affection for each other, that of the younger man being very tender and protecting. "My father," he used to say, "is a great child I had when I was little." 1£ Alexandre Dumas first presented his celebrated piece, Le Demi Monde, to the Comedie rran9aise, where it was well received, and well paid for ; but Mademoiselle Rachel having taken a dislike to him, she used her influence to have its perform- ance indefinitely postponed. M. Dumas im- mediately bought back his play, with money borrowed from M. Montigny, and now writes almost exclusively for the Gymnase. The amount of his gains as a dramatic author is very large, and probably every work he produces can hardly be worth less than ten or twelve thousand pounds to him; besides which, nearly all his plays keep 134 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. permanent possession of the French stage, at home and abroad, and bring him in a fine income, from his rights of authorship. He is therefore very rich, and, it is pleasing to add, very generous and very charitable. THE DUG D'AUDIFFEET-PASQTJIEE. T^HE Due d'Audiffret-Pasquier is the one " new man " whom the recent French Session has produced. Gaston, Count, afterwards Duke dAudiffret-Pasquier, was born at Paris in 1815. He is grand-nephew and adopted son of the Cliancellor Baron Pasquier, who was raised to a dukedom by royal ordinance of King Louis Philippe, dated 16th of December, 1844. The present duke was declared heir to the title and estates of Pasquier by the terms of this patent, and it was confirmed by Napoleon III. That was all which could be said of his grace worth hearing till 1871, when he was returned to the National Assembly as member for the Department of the Orne by CO, 226 free and independent voters residing in the neighbourhood of his landed property. A year ago he was politically unknown; if an Orleanist restoi'ation were effected to-morrow, he ijS MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. •would probably be Minister of Finance in a Cabinet having M. Casimir P^rier, his brother-in- law, for its chief, the Due de Broglie for its Foreign Secretary, Due Decazes at the Home Office, and M. Saint Marc Girardin at the Education Board. How lonar he would agree with these distin- guished men is another question, for he ■ has a great deal of that earnestness which makes politi- cians love the front seats on Ministerial benches, and we should doubtless soon be having a Pasquier party and a Broglie party united in considering JI. P^rier objectionable from his Thiersist ante- cedents ; but divided on the capital point as to who should take M. Pdrier's place when once he had been supplanted. The contention would no doubt end by each of the gentlemen having his turn at the chief office ; and then, so far as can be at present judged, M. d'Audiffret-Pasquier would sliow himself a good Prime Minister' of the active and meddling kind — well meaning but obstinate, shrewd but not thoughtful or learned, honest but being daily taunted with jobbery by the Bonapart- ists and extreme Republicans, who would be on THE DUC D'AUDIFFRET-PASQUIER. 137 the look-out for the sHghtest financial abuses in his administration in order to magnify and con- trast them with the two virtuous speeches which have brought M. d'Audiffret-Pasquier to celebrity. Tliese two speeches were those delivered by the duke in his capacity as chairman of the Commis- sion for investigating the war contracts. After the peace with Germany, the clamours about official jobbery and peculation were so vehe- ment and universal, that the Assembly was obliged to appoint a Commission of Inquiry, armed with more than ordinary prying powers. The Commis- sion at its first meeting proceeded to elect a chair- man ; but the choice, under the circumstances, was extremely difficult to make. A man was required who should be personally clever, bear a popular name, or hold such high rank as to command respect, and yet be free from all ties to any political party. Such men are not common, and it was really a windfall that sent M. d'Audiffret- Pasquier, a duke, the son of an able financier (Receiver-General from 1839 to 1856), and the nephew of the much-respected Chancellor Pasquier — a man who had never pledged himself to any 138 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. political creed, and yet one who, in his short parliamentary career, had already earned a name for most commendable zeal in private committee work. There are many members who, like M. d'Audiffret, shine greatly in committees, but who, less favoured than he, never get the chance of a sensational speech to hoist them into public fame. They are generally quiet men, with a taste for toil, who come down to Versailles by the early Paris trains, and carry sheaves of statistical papers under their arms. They read the yellow books (French for blue books), muse over the estimates, and are more respected than liked in official circles. But their grateful and lazier colleagues in com- mittee appreciate them to the full, and mark their sense of this by electing them to report on bills. This means that the honoured and hard-working member shuts himself up in his study and writes with painful conscientiousness one of those elaborate documents which take three hours to read, and are as remarkable for the grace of style they exhibit as for their magic potency in causing the House to thin. On the morrow of the reading, various newspajjers dub the report " eloquent " or " soul- THE DUC D'AUDIFFRET-PASQUIER. 139 stirring ;" the members who speak to its contents asperse it with a word of civil praise, and this constitutes all the hard-working member's reward. The solid glory is reaped by the haranguers who have not heard the report read, have at most skimmed throitgh it in its printed form, but who hold this superiority over the reporter, that they possess the gift of ready tongues. M. d'Audiffret- Pasquier, a reporter who could speak as well as work and indite, was an exception to the general rule, and when people saw this small, sallow, and rather clerkly-looking man stand up and beard that still dreaded champion of Cfesarism, Kouher, it took everybody by surprise. The exordium of his thrilling speech on the 22nd May was like the rattling of war drums, and every one of his phrases came up fast and firm as companies of soldiers at the double. There was no halting for the right word, no uncertainty of gesture. Facts, accusa- tions, statistics, deductions, all followed each other with the rapidity of a charge, and when on his apostrophising his antagonist with the words Vare, legiones redde ! the whole House rose, quivering in its excitement and acclaiming, the sight was one 140 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. not to be forgotten. There may be various styles of eloquence, and that style may be the most respectable which allows the speaker to remain cool and his audience to sit quiet ; but if it still be oratory to bring seven hundred gentlemen to their legs with moist eyes, hoarse throats, and extended hands, then assuredly the Due d'Audiffret-Pasquier is an orator. His second speech, however, that in which he overhauled the contracts of Gambetta's Govern- ment, was much less successful than the first, and this for a plain reason ; it was a speech made to order, delivered unwillingly, and based upon an unjust view of facts. M. d'Audiifret having assailed the Empire, simple people had clamoured, " Now you must trounce Gambetta, or else it will be unfair." And, accordingly, M. d'Audiffret had to set to work to please this simple people, or rather the six Bonapartist papers who had egged them on. But the positions of Gambetta and of the Empire Avere not similar, and it was only an astute and unscrupulous Bonapartist who could pretend they were. The Empire was an esta- blished Government which had never been stinted THE DUC D'AUDIFFRET-PASQUIER. 141 of money, and if it had honestly employed the funds entrusted to it France could have kept any coalition of armies in the world fi'om invading its soil. Instead of that, one could not probe an Imperialist budget without detecting corruption in every branch, high or low, of the public service. Supplies voted for one department were transferred to another by the system of virements ; millions of francs set down every year under the heading of artillery experiments were expended goodness knows how, for there was no keeping any watch over them ; other sums were voted for changes in military uniforms, whereas it has been discovered since, that most changes of this kind were effected at the expense of the contractoi-s, who not only charged nothing to the Treasury, but even paid heavy bribes to big people in order to obtain the contracts. Again, fortresses, ships, and arsenals were reported fully armed and stored, when in many cases they were empty ; and a French Admiral has recently acknowledged that if France had gone to war with a maritime Power the collapse of her fleet must have been as utter as that of her army. It amazes one now to think 142 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. of how the French nation was hoodwinked, and the more so as the officials of the Empire had ended by growing reckless with impunity, and flaunted their ill-gotten gains defiantly in the face of the public. One could enumerate half-a-dozen Ministers who, having entered office penniless, were enabled after a comparatively short tenure of office to buy landed estates, and build sumptuous town houses. Nor did all this cease when the nation's disasters had commenced. Whilst the enemy was actually on French soil, and whilst tearful proclamations from the Empress Regent were adjuring all classes to remain united and to trust in Government, people in high places were buying up rifles, horses, and cattle, by the agency of secret friends, from whom they repurchased them on behalf of the nation at a profit to them- selves of 17 francs per rifle, 75 francs per horse, and 30 francs a head per ox. These are all facts which M. d'Audiffret-Pasquier was in a position to prove. On the other hand, what was Gambetta's predicament ? This unfortunate Dictator was sur- rounded on all hands by enemies ; there was scarcely a soul beyond the circle of his o\\ti friends THE DUC D'AUDIFFRET-PASQUIER. 143 wliom he dared trust. Bonapartists were defaming him in the villages, and working persistently to rnin the credit of his Government by assuring London and Belgian bankers that all debts con- tracted in his name would be repudiated. He was daily assailed by hordes of speculating contractors, concerning whose honesty, having no police at his command like that of the Empire, it was almost impossible to enlighten himself; besides which, with the Germans making giant strides over the whole country, contracts had to be concluded on the spur of the moment, there being no time for long parleyings. It is somewhat puerile under such circumstances to come and complain that £1,200 should have been bestowed amiss on one occasion, and £300 on another. The only wonder is that Gambetta's confidence should not have led him to be duped out of sums a hundred times more considerable in those desperate efforts he made to save his country. The Due d'Audiffret failed to establish any parallel between the Empire and Gambetta, and, being a shrewd man, he must have felt this even whilst he was speaking. All he did was to exasperate the Extreme Left, who 144 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. were disposed to be on good terms with him be- fore, and to earn some very compromising applause from those gentlemen on the Extreme Right who are never so jsleased as when Republicans are being put to shame. These were meagre results, and disappointing to outsiders who admire good states- manship without reference to party. In swelling the canting chorus against Grambetta, and putting the blunders of this sometimes erring, but always honest, politician into the same bag as the turpi- tudes of the Empire, ^e showed that he lacked judgment or impartiality. It is this which impels one to predict that he would make only a tame Prime Minister. But M. d'Audiffret is stiU in the youth of politics. He is only fifty-seven, and has probably not yet allowed his defects to grow stiff upon him. He may stiU unlearn some of his prejudices, and if he do so his eloquence, his capacity for hard work, and his sterling hatred of dishonesty, must make of him a valuable public servant. He is much liked in the Department of the Orne, where he resides, though he has never been able to acquire there that seignorial influence which the THE DUC D'AUDIFFRET-PASQUIER. 145 Broglies, the Luynes, and the Larochefoucaulds still ■\vield around their domains, all revolutions not- withstanding. M. d'Audiffret's enemies pretend that this chagrins him, and that he is one of those who would have the influence of the nobility re- vived on the model of the English aristocracy, hereditary Upper Chamber included. That is in all Hkelihood an exaggeration, for M. d'Audiffret does not talk hke a man who would hke to see his country begin a retrogressive voyage up stream. However, it is perhaps a pity that he should be a duke of such recent creation, for if his dignity were older he might attach less importance to it. He was allowed by special grace of Napoleon IH. (1862) to inherit the title of his uncle, the Baron Pasquier, who had been made a duke by the citizen King; and it is, by the way, one of the pet complaints of the Bonapartists that this nobleman having accepted a signal favour from the Emperor, has now turned round on his "benefactor." M. d'Audiffret, it is needless to say, applied to the Emperor, as he would have applied to the Shah of Thibet, had that monarch been in possession of France, and he did so simply because his uncle L 146 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. had requested him by will to take that step. But, once again, there is no blinking the fact, that if M. d'Audiffret had inherited his coronet from the crusading times, like the Harcourts or the Noailles, he might have afforded to be, not more Liberal possibly, but more Republican. That so little has been known till lately of M. d'Audiffret-Pasquier in public life is perhaps the highest compliment which can be paid to him. M. EENEST PICAED. AF the men Avho composed the 4th September Government there is one respecting whom even the most vehement Monarchists have always spoken good-naturedly, and this is M. Louis-Joseph- Emest Picard, who is at present French Minister at Brussels, but who, if all goes well, will be in the Cabinet again before long, and probably remain there for some time. In person he is stout, plea- sant featured, and hale, giving one rather the idea of an Englishman than a Frenchman. In fact, both in countenance and manners he reminds one not a little of Lord Granville, having the same bright and knowing smile, the same voice, buoyant and fresh as healthy weather, and a like skill in putting opponents to silence by witticisms judi- ciously launched. Men of such a kind are certain to succeed in life, because their presence is grateful ; but whilst they achieve popularity by their social 148 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. qualities, they are apt in critical moments to dis- play an amount of tact, firmness, and statesman- ship which takes the public by surprise. This has been the case with M. Picard. Bom at Paris in 1821, he was called to the Bar in 1844, became Doctor of Laws in 1846, and had the good luck at the outset of his career, and by no other magic than that of his pleasing looks and winning character, to attract the attention of the great bar- rister Lionville, who took him in hand and ended by giving him his daughter. Picard did not make much way so long as Louis Philippe and the Second Eepublic lasted ; but after the cou'p d'Hat he soon took up a position as one of the best Hght skirmishers at the Palais de Justice. He was not a noted speaker. His utterances flowed so na- tui-ally that people did not count them for oratory ; and many fell into the mistake of supposing that an advocate who pleaded so colloquially, addressing the judges in an easy, humorous, and cool-tempered strain, without ruffling them or exciting himself, was not one to be trusted with important briefs. Picard's practice consisted chiefly of press cases, and suits in which the litigants were anxious M. ERNEST PICARD. 149 rather to turn their adversaries into ridicule than to pound them with heavy rhetoric. Now and then, however, a big brief would fall to his lot, and he would carry it through with caution, spirit, and success. But popular fallacies are not things to be eradicated in a hurry, and as the man who, having once been fee'd to solve a riddle, could never get it out of his friends' heads that riddle- guessing was his vocation, so Picard had to submit to the imputation of being "le spirituel Picard," but nothing more. However, a reputation for wit served Picard better in Paris than probably a renown for erudi- tion would have done. Having amassed a little money, he had invested it in shares of the Siecle newspaper, and been elected by his brother share- holders a member of the board of managers. The Siecle was then the most powerful of the Opposi- tion journals. It had a circulation of over 70,000 ; and when Picard brought it to support the candi- dature of Emile Ollivier at the general election of 1857, OUivier's success was assured. Picard was one of the few Liberals who at first put implicit trust in Ollivier. Tlie Republican party did not 150 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. much fancy this man, and it occurred to many of them that Picard himself, who championed his friend's cause with so much warmth, would be a far better and livelier representative. Accordingly, the next year, on the occurrence of a vacancy in the 4th Circumscription of Paris, Picard was nomi- nated and returned without much difficulty, the tacit understanding between himself and his elec- tors seeming to be that he should act as the comic man in the troupe of Five Liberals who played the Opposition parts in the Chamber. These five were, including Picard, Favre, Ollivier, Dr. Hdnon (since Mayor of Lyons), and Darimon, who subse- quently rallied to the Empire, lost his seat for his pains, and Avas imperially compensated with a Consulate. They were a compact and valorous little band, every one of whose speeches (when parliamentary reports began to be published again in 1860) was devoured like bread in famine time by the politically-starving community, but Picard's speeches were the best relished of all. They were full of those epigrams which are as the salt of life to Frenchmen, and they conveyed truths none the less unpalatable to Government because wrapped M. ERNEST PICARD. 151 in humorous language. Picard was the bugbear of the Duke de Morny, that tortuous-minded but brilHant and courtly President of the Chamber, who, himself a wit, had found no one to cross swords with until this supple-tongued barrister came and proved himself his match. It was a pleasure to watch the two, both genial and self- possessed, as Frenchmen can be even when ex- changing the most cruel thrusts ; but Picard generally had the advantage, because his antago- nist had so many more vulnerable points than himself " After all, M. Picard, I suspect you are at heart a Red Eepublican," exclaimed De Morny one day. " I suppose you call us Red," was Picard's quiet retort, " because there is so much of our blood on your hands." At the elections in 1868 Picard was again returned by an enthusiastic majority, being one of that list of nine Opposi- tionists (Thiers, Favre, Pelletan, Gu^roult, Ollivier, Darimon, Simon, Garnier-Pages, Picard), who, sup- ported by a coalition of the entire anti-Bonapartist press in Paris, swept the official candidates com- pletely out of the field, and led to the retirement from political life of M. de Persigny, then Home 152 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Minister. This triumph was so crushing that, when the general election of 1869 was at hand, the Government "revised" all the circumscrip- tions ; that is, cooked them in such wise as to render the interests in them most conflicting. Thus, Picard's circumscription was made to include the aristocratic quarter of the Madeleine and part of the democratic Faubourg du Temple ; Ministers calculating that between two such stools the Oppo- sition candidate must come to the ground. But in this they were wrong. The Madeleine and the Temple agreed perfectly as to the "spirituel Picard," who came back to the Chamber more popular than ever — so popular, indeed, that having been elected simultaneously in the Department of H^rault, and having decided for party reasons to sit as member for the latter place, his Parisian constituents were seriously annoyed. They sent him a deputation fifty yards long, who assured him that he was their man, a Parisian every inch, who represented their tone of mind, and would be quite thrown aM^ay upon a bumpkin constituency. Picard answered, laughing, that he should certainly return and ask Paris for a seat if the peasantrj' M. ERNEST PICARD. 153 got tired of him, and this seemed to soothe his memoriahsts. Less than eighteen months after- wards, the 4th September Revolution took place ; and M. Picard was appointed Minister of Finance on the following day. He proved a busy member of the new Government. His first act was to abolish the stamp-tax on newspapers, and to post- pone the presentation of commercial bills of exchange. On the 25 th of January, 1871, he accompanied M. Jules Favre to Versailles to treat for the capitulation of Paris, and obtained the 200,000,000 francs fixed for the ransom of the city. On the 8 th of February he was elected to the National Assembly for the two Departments of Seine-et-Oise and Meuse, and decided to sit as deputy for the Meuse. On the formation of M. Thiers's first Cabinet (19th of February), he be- came Minister of the Interior, resigned on the 31st of May, and was named Governor of the Bank of France on the 5 th of June ; but refus- ing that arduous post, he was sent as Envoy to Belgium on the 10th of November follow- ing. Now it is the fashion at this moment for all the 154 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. dolts in France — for all tliose born lackeys who can never hear talk of freedom without feeling themselves insulted — to fling mud at the " men of the 4th September." They say that if the Revo- lution of that day had not occurred, peace would have been made after Sedan, and France spared at least three out of her five milhards indemnity. That is all very well ; but who was to make peace after Sedan ? The Empire was not overturned on the 4th September ; it fell like a rotten fruit from a tree ; and the men who took its place were no more responsible for the Revolution than a person would be who was swept to a high spot by a head- long torrent. No doubt it would have been better if everjrthing had been done regularly — if the Corps Ldgislatif had voted the downfall of the Empire, and set up a new Government, with M. Thiers at its head. But M. Thiers would not have made peace. The people were resolved upon two things — the dismissal of the dynasty which had disgraced them, and the continuance of the war until the invader was repulsed from the soil, or until the levies en ■nmsse of the entire nation had been routed. A man who had talked of peace M. ERNEST PICARD. 155 would have been torn to bits in the streets ; a statesman who had signed a treaty surrendering Alsace Avith two milliards would have covered himself with eternal infamy ; and, worse than that, he would have afforded those very Bonapart- ists who are now croaking about the jDrolongation of the war a pretext for exclaiming, " If it had not been for those Republicans who overthrew the Empire, Palikao would have raised provincial armies, which, acting in conjunction with Paris, would have expelled the Germans without its costing us an inch of soil or a farthing of money.'' The fact is, the defence of France by the men of the 4th September will be remembered with pride in national annals so long as the history of the terrible war itself is remembered. It may be that the defence was i-ash, and that language was used on some occasions out of keeping with France's shattered strength ; but he will be a poor French- man who, twenty years hence, does not feel grate- ful with all his heart to those men who, accepting the task of government from predecessors who had left them neither soldiers, money, nor arms, con- tinued the struggle against invasion until the con- 156 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. querors themselves admitted that the vanquished had retrieved their honour. Ernest Picard was the Minister who settled down most easily to his work. In a country where re- volutions are frequent, it is some comfort to see new men arrive who do not plunge into their departments hke bulls into china shops. Picard dismissed nobody, kept at arm's length all those begging gentlemen who march at the tail of poli- tical parties like the looters behind armies, jobbed no friend into a sinecure, and displayed an amount of personal dignity which at once anchored him to the esteem of all his clerks, great and small. As for the public, it was with something like wonder they saw pensions, salaries, and rentes paid as punctually during the siege as if nothing had happened, and their confidence in the new Finance Minister grew strong. In Cabinet Councils Picard' s suggestions were short, liberal, and practical. He was for adjourning all political questions- until an Assembly had been elected, and for confining him- self and colleagues exclusively to siege measures. In this he was different from the section who busied themselves, with rather ill-timed party zeal, M. ERNEST PICARD. 157 about the re-naming of streets and the destruction of Imperial mementoes, and it was even whispered among some of the hotter subordinates that his fervour for the good cause was turning tepid. Picard gave answer to this, by saving the Govern- ment from the insurgents on 31st October, and by saving the insurgents from the Government after- wards. Being at the Hotel de Ville at the mo- ment when Flourens' bands arrived there, he lost no time in parleying with the mutiny, but slipped out of the building, and hurried to give Trochu's second in command orders to march all the Breton battalions to the rescue. The general to whom he spoke happened to be one of those jolter-headed warriors who seem to think it blasphemy in a civilian to speak on military matters, and he hesi- tated. " I beg you to remark," answered Picard, " that I have not asked you for your opinion. You will obey me or not. But if you refuse, I shall cancel your commission of my own authority, and appoint on the spot another general to take your place." The general, who had never heard such language, strode off in great surprise to do as he was bid ; and Picard, on his side, hastened to the IS8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Finance Office, where, finding a revolutionary quo- rum of three installed in his private room, and signing themselves cheques on the State exchequer, he locked them in adroitly, and kept them in durance until the evening, when, the rebellion being quelled, he let them go their ways. The professional insurgent party did not forgive Picard for having so cleverly marred their game. Al- though on the morrow of the insurrection he was the first to move that there should be an amnesty, he was marked out for visitation ; and when the Communal war broke out, it was with some diffi- culty that he escaped from the revolutionary com- panies who had been sent to surround his official residence and apprehend him. He was then Home Minister, and remained so till the close of the civil war, when he resigned, contrary to the wish of M. Thiers, who likes him and esteems him at his just value. But between the Right, who regarded him as too Liberal, and the extreme Left, who reproached him for the vigorous measures he was obliged to take during the Commune, his part was a difficult one. After the next general election he will return to the Chamber with an Assembly M. ERNEST PICARD. 159 doubtlessly very differently composed to this one. The dominant element will be moderate Kepub- lican, and then Ernest Picard will be once more selected for power as the best representative of that class who wish for a Republic without excesses one way ox the other. Meanwhile he is learning experience in the practical working of a free Government from a countiy which is Eepublican in all but the name. GENEEAL EAIDHEEBE. TF M. Gambetta were President, Louis-L^on-Csesar General Faidherbe would be his War Minister, and the French army would be managed by a smile- less general of the Cassius type, lean and thoughtful. There are Chanzyists and Faidherbeists, the former perhaps predominating over the latter ; but one has only to look at the dark, spectacled face of the hero of Bapaume, Pont-Noyelle, and St. Quentin, to guess that he would intellectually outweigh two such men as his rival. Chanzy has dash, spirit, and all the brilliant qualities which, in prosperous cam- paigns, carry Frenchmen from victory to victory. It would be a very melancholy business for any ill-commanded army that came across his path. Faidherbe is not only the man for adverse times, as he conclusively proved during the late war, but if he were entrusted with a well-equipped army at the outset of a campaign, there is probably not a GENERAL FAWHERBE. i6t living general who could make him budge from his positions. This further difference exists between the two captains who are to be the champions of the " revanche. " — as the hotter-headed French- men hope — that Chanzy is in politics a free lance, moderate Republican to-day, to-morrow possibly a Royalist or an Imperialist, with the baton of field- marshal on his scutcheon, and a ducal coronet on his brougham. Faidherbe has declared himself a Gambettist in terms so plain that it would be dif- ficult for him to recant even if he would. This accounts for his being viewed by the present Go- vernment with a somewhat cool and careful eye. Before the war it was thought that, the French army contained several hundreds of such officers as Faidherbe, and that in time of need they would press up to show the world what French military education was. Every year, indeed, that much- vaunted forcing-house, the Ecole Polytechnique, used to turn loose a hundred and fifty young men with pale faces, who settled do^vn into engineer and artillery commissions, and inspired the public with the sincerest confidence. They had been well taught, were adepts at trigonometry, and could M 1 62 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. capture the strongest citadel in Europe for you (on paper) after two hours' reflection. But from the day when they left school, under the firm im- pression that Metz was impregnable and that there was no system of tactics like their system, — from that day until the hour when they died they never made a step forward in their studies, never per- fected themselves, never cared to believe that there was anything new in science beyond that which they had been taught as boys. And how should it have been otherwise ? Men will seldom bestir themselves unless goaded to it by competition, and the officers from the Polytechnic School had no competitors. Their career was laid out for them, smooth as a privileged road under Government patronage and protection. Public works, improve- ments in gunnery, inventions, were all taken from their hands, and any civilian outsider bold enough to devise, improve, or invent was frowned out of all official spheres as an intruder. What would have been the use of working under such circum- stances ? It was even occasionally dangerous to work, for although Government made a point of employing none but Polytechnicians in its engi- GENERAL FAIDHERBE. 163 neering and scientific operations, a due regard was always had to hierarchy, and a captain who had claimed to know more than a colonel, a lieutenant to be more inventive than a captain, and so on, might have found it the worse for them. So the young and enthusiastic geniuses just fresh from their examinations early learned to keep their zeal to themselves, and when they had got hold of a new idea to button it up in their pockets, imtil they were grey enough and exalted enough to put it into practice by force. By this time, however, the idea had generally got grey too, and the result of all this became apparent when, on collision with the Germans, it was discovered that the French possessed an admirable scientific corps of mediocre gentlemen, aU imbued with a profound respect for their chiefs, and with notions twenty years old. That Faidherbe should have been one of the few and striking exceptions to the average kind of ofiicial engineers may be attributed in a measure to his having spent the larger part of his career in the colonies. He was born at Lille, June 3, 1818, and inherited much of the dogged perseverance of f64 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. his fellow-townsmen ; at twenty years of age he had already distinguished himself as a military student. Soon after leaving the School of Ap- plication at Metz, in 1842, he was sent to Oran, thence to Guadaloupe, then back again to Algeria, and in 1852, having attained captain's rank after ten years of the most brilliant services, to Senegal as snb-director of the engineering foi-ce. Two years later he was promoted to his majority, and ap- jiointed Governor of Senegal, a post he retained, with but a few months' break, until 1865, it being unanimously allowed that no better colonial gover- nor (according to French ideas) had ever been seen, and that Faidherbe would undoubtedly carve his way to something high in his profession, not un- likely the Governor-Generalship of Algeria. It is to be noted that the Algerian campaigning Faid- herbe had gone through in the training which acts prejudicially on ordinarj'- French officers, those easy victories over revolted Arabs, the indolent life led between the raids, the laxity of discipline rendered necessary by the guerilla nature of the warfare, and, above all, the habit of moving about in only very small bodies of troops, tend to pro- GENERAL FAIDHERBE. 165 duce that type of officer which finds its lowest embodiment in the absinthe-drinking swash-buck- lers of the Boulevards, its highest in such leaders as MacMahon and Bourbaki, who are almost in- vincible when commanding 10,000 men, and seem well-nigh helpless when they have to manage 100,000. It needed a man of Faidherbe's essen- tially cold temperament to withstand the enervat- ing influence of Algeria's cheap glories and semi- Asiatic customs. The officers who were his com- rades describe him as having been always a quiet, studious, sober man, fond of leaving the dinner-table for geographical researches ; and not particularly good-tempered, though generous and ready to oblige. Whilst others smoked and lolled, he read; and one of his favourite subjects of meditation was the aggran- dizement of France as a colonial power, A French Clive in this respect, he would have had his coun- try become mistress of the whole Mediterranean coast of Africa and Egypt, and hold England in check by keeping the keys of the Suez Canal and the Eed Sea. He attached little importance to European frontiers. The possession of Belgium or the Rhenish Provinces seemed to him a trifle as 1 66 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. compared mth the gigantic influence which France might acquire by devoting to African conquests a few of those troops she kept so needlessly on foot to try and frighten Bismarck or to found an im- possible empire in Mexico. There are at the Navy Office despatches of his to this effect as remarkable as any which Colonel Stoffel wrote from Berlin ; and it cannot be denied that if the Second Empire had followed the policy which Faidherbe sketched, but contrived to do so without adopting that part of it which concerns Egypt and conflict with Eng- land, it would have been well, not only for France, but for the cause of civilization throughout the world. Faidherbe' s despatches, however, under- went the fate usual to such things. They fell into the hands of sniggering clerks, who docketed and stowed them by ; and now they lie on dusty shelves, to be consulted by mice or by some pri- vileged visitor, who, in search of materials for Faidherbe's biography, turns over their patiently- written leaves with pity for so much good thought and good ink wasted. In 1865 Faidherbe was recalled, by his own wish, from Senegal. He had subjugated one King of Cayor, annexed a hundred GENERAL FAIDHERBE. 167 square leagues of territory, and reduced to reason a most disagreeable prophet called Omer-el-Hadji, who had been making himself unpleasant to the French during a series of years. But the climate, or more truly, perhaps, discouragement at finding his ambitious schemes for colonization and con- quest unnoticed by the Home Government, had tired him out, and he gladly accepted the command of the subdivision of Bone, his promotion as General of Brigade bearing date 1863. He failed in an endeavour which he made to obtain active employment at the first outbreak of the war ; and the next thing heard of Faidherbe was when he took the command of the Northern Army during the invasion and the proconsulate of Gambetta. Within a month afterwards he offered battle to the Germans at Pont-Noyelles, fought for two days successively with great obstinacy, and saved Havre. A great deal has been said of the Loire Army, the Eastern Army, and even of the Vosges Army, which little deserves to be talked about, but up to this moment — in France at least — the Army which Faidherbe so ably commanded has not yet received its due share 1 68 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. of praise. The Prussians, more perspicuous than their foes, know what Faidherbe is worth, and class him first among hving French generals. Prompt at organizing, implacable as a discipli- narian, never rash, but, when circumstances need it, taking no more account of soldiers' lives than of dried leaves, he held his men in hand as no other commander then did, and inflicted losses on Manteuffel and Goeben which those generals and their lieutenants will not forget. The French claim Bapaume as a victory, and St. Quentin as half a one. There may be two opinions on this point, but certainly the admirable strategy of Faidherbe in both battles served to show what a display he might have made had he been fighting on equal terms. Any notice of Faidherbe would be incomplete which treated of him only as a soldier, without considering the part he may soon play as a politician. At the armistice elections on the 8th of February, 1871, he was returned to the Assembly by the electors of Lille ; but, soon after the peace, he tendered his resignation with some noise, and when re-elected, on the 2nd of July, for three Departments, he GENERAL PAID HER BE. 169 again resigned, after taldng his seat as deputy for the Nord, contending that the Assembly was exceeding its prerogative in prolonging its session after the treaty was concluded. The Government then sent him off on a scientific mission to study the Libyan monuments and inscriptions of Upper Egypt. Simultaneously he dedicated his book on the Avar to Gambetta, and proclaimed himself a Radical. The suddenness of this conversion on the part of the ex-colonial governor evoked some conunent, and the Bonapartists raked up a letter, not many years old, in which Faidherbe, thanking Prince Napoleon for a personal service, vowed his loyal attachment to the Imperial dynasty. A man may vow his attachment to a horse, how- ever, and yet think differently when the brute turns out a bolter and throws him ; so Faidherbe, or any other man, has only to mention Sedan as the best of all excuses for any abrupt repudiation of Csesarism. But though a conscientious Repub- lican to-day, Faidherbe might turn out a very dangerous ruler of a Republic, and this is what one may fear of him. As a War Minister, acting under a civilian President of a firm stamp, lie might do I/O MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. good ; if he aspired to the Presidency, and the nation were to favour his views, there would be mischief The temptations in the path of a mili- tary ruler are too numerous in such a sword-wor- shipping country as France ; and keen, clever, ambitious soldiers like Faidherbe are not the men to be impervious to them. For the Kepublic's sake one must hope that until free institutions are fairly rooted to the French soil, not only Faid- herbe, but all other generals, will be resolutely excluded from the chief executive office. BISHOP DUPANLOUP. A PRELATE, witli the ascetic features of an anchorite, the manners of an eighteenth century marquis, the piercing eye of a soldier, and the combative eloquence of a crusading monk, Monseigneur Dupanloup — the priest who received Talleyrand's death-bed confession — stands in point of talent at the head of the French episcopacy ; and in his diocese of Orleans he is not only bishop, but king. It was thought last year that M. Thiers would raise him to the archbishopric of Paris ; but M. Thiers probably mused as to what would be the temperature of the capital when the hottest ecclesiastic in France got commencing hostilities with the Republican municipality about educa- tional or other delicate matters, and he preferred selecting Monseigneur Guibert of Tours, who is not a godlier man but a quieter. There must have been many not among the devout only whom 172 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. this choice disappointed, for Monseigneur Dupan- loup, an academician, a deputy, the most remark- able French preacher since Bossuet, and a contro- versialist of world-wide reputation, would have made a right imposing primate, of whom Parisians might have been proud ; and every time he de- livered a sermon in Notre Dame there would have flocked crowds to hear him such as even Father Ravignan and Father Hyacinthe never attracted. But each of these sermons would assuredly have operated as an explosion, casting up matters for dispute and bitterness over all the quarters of Paris, Monseigneur Dupanloup being a prelate who has never consented, and would never consent at any price, to put a curb upon his tongue. Once enthroned in the capital, it is certain he would have waged upon Belleville, Montmartre, and the favourite newspapers of those localities, a war with- out truce or pity. As vacancies occurred in the parish churches he would have filled them up with ardent priests of the proselytising sort. The spiritual domination which weighed so lightly on the faithful of Paris during the mundane rule of Quelen and Sibour, and under the bourgeois-like BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 173 tolerance of Affre, Morlot, and Darboy, would have made itself implacably felt in all that regarded infidel literature, under which head would have been banished from every metropolitan home lay- ing a claim to religiousness the books of Littre (dictionary included), About, and Taine, and all journals not tending directly to orthodoxy and edification. It would have been a glad time for the Monde,, Union, and other kindred prints ; the trade in sacred images, wax tapers, and probably also the fish trade, would have received a welcome stimulus ; and there would soon have arisen peti- tions to the Legislature covered by thousands of , signatures, and praying for a revival of the Corpus Christi processions, abolished in Paris since 1832, At election periods, Monseigneur, who has already shown at Orleans what a determined bishop can do with a well-drilled and obedient clergy at his orders, would have converted every one of his vicars, curates, and chaplains into electoral agents ; and the struggles of the Imperial era between irreconcilables and official candidates would have been remembered as child's play beside the con- tests that would have supervened between lists 174 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. wholly Radical and others wholly Ultramontane. For where prelates like Monseigneur Dupanloup reign, neutral tints fade away. Paris has never yet enjoyed a bishop who marched all his clergy about like a battalion, and commanded them to use the pulpit, the school, and the confessional, as instruments for achieving such and such a pur- pose. There are even Parisians who might deny that such a thing was possible in their city, and these may be congratulated upon not having been allowed to witness the experiment. Under Mon- seigneur Dupanloup such Parisians as are Catholic at all would almost all have became rabidly so. As for the others, plunging more furiously than ever into free-thought, they would have torn his lordship's pastoral letters off the church doors, raged exasperatedly against him in their clubs, caf^s, and journals, and if he had been caught in an insurrectionary moment by the rougher spirits among the party, he would have had no quarter shown him. In the last-named contingency, Monseigneur Dupanloup would have been the man to court martyrdom rather than flee it. Fronting his executioners with prelatial contempt, he would BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 175 have repeated as calmly in his last moment as every morning at mass, " Judica me, Deus, et dis- cerne causam meam de gente non sanct^." But the powerful Bishop of Orleans is not a prelate of the Wolsey or Richelieu type, nor is he Mazarin. He is Dupanloup ; that is, a priest who will leave his individual mark as one of the most perfect embodiments of clerical ambition alhed to private sanctity which this century has seen. It is cus- tomary to write of all bishops that they lead saintly lives ; in this instance the saying would be no more than strict truth. Frugal as a hermit, an abstainer from wine, sleeping on a bed like a monk's, and rising at four, summer and winter, Monseigneur Dupanloup supports an existence which would seem penal servitude to many a so- called working man. Read all that Victor Hugo says of Bishop Myriel in his " Mis^rables," and you will get a notion of Monseigneur Dupanloup's charity, which is so munificent as to have left him occasionally in very straitened circumstances. Recall everything that has been stated of Fdn^lon's exquisite sweetness of voice and urbanity of de- meanour, and you will have no exaggerated con- 176 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. ception of what Monseigneur Dupanloup is in his conversations with strangers. But this is the Dupanloup of private life. See him sweep up to his throne in the Cathedral of Orleans, with his head erect, his body clothed in lace and jewelled vestments, and a resplendent procession of thurifers and priests chanting before and behind him, and you will understand why so many have stigmatised him as a proud prelate of the old school, who arrayed himself in violet cashmere and cambric, and would only eat, like Monseigneur de Nar- bonne, of spendthrift memory, off gold plate. Nothing is too rich or majestic, according to Bishop Dupanloup, for the ceremonies of the Church, nor for his own adornment in taking part in them. He holds that the Church should speak to the eye and the ear as well as the mind ; that she should be supreme in the State ; that nothing should be done in education or government but through her or by her ; and he is quite consistent with himself when, humble and unpretending at home, he shows himself surrounded with all the pomp he can command when officiating as a bishop. There is something, however, in Mon- BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 177 seigneur Dupanloup's tone of voice, in his style of writing, in his conversation, and even in his look when most exalted by the splendours of Church pageantry, which first puzzles, and then strikes one as slightly dwarfing the dignity of the man. Eeflect a little, and you will perceive that Mon- seigneur Dupanloup's life, which has been devoted in a large measure to school teaching, has set upon him the ineffaceable seal of the pedagogue. Bom in 1802, of very lowly parents, in Savoy, Mon- seigneur Dupanloup was brought up at the ex- pense of an uncle of his, who was a priest ; and it was to the habits learned from this good man that he was indebted for his extremely rapid rise. Soon after his ordination, the Duchess of Angouleme, hearing of the Abb^ Dupanloup's skill as a cate- chist, came to watch him instruct the children in the parish church of the Assumption, and she was so much pleased with his gentleness and his eloquence, that she caused him to be appointed confessor to the little Duke of Bordeaux (now Count of Chambord). Shortly afterwards the Abbe Dupanloup became catechist to the Orleans Princes, and then chaplain to the Duchess of N 178 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Berry. After tlie Revolution of 1830 he founded the Acad^mie de St. Hyacinthe, an institute where young men of all classes, but principally workmen, came to hear religious lectures, and in 1834 he was offered, but declined, the head mastership of the Paris Seminary. He accepted, however, the post of chief professor {jprefet des etudes), and his teaching was so lucid, patient, and successful, that in 1837 Archbishop Quelen insisted upon his undertaking the head mastership, and at the same time appointed him Vicar-General of the diocese. As most people are aware, one of M. Dupanloup's favourite pupils at the seminary was Ernest Renan, who was then being trained to the priesthood, and whom the Bishop has never ceased since to call his " erring but beloved sheep." On the death of Monseigneur de Quelen, M. Dupanloup be- stirred himself most actively to prevent the appointment of the King's nominee, Monseigneur Affre, whom he thought too lukewarm ; and, failing in his endeavours, resigned his Vicar- Generalship. Monseigneur Affre taught him on this occasion a generous lesson in forgiveness by creating the office of Honorary Vicar-General for BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 179 him, and by entrusting him with a confidential and important mission to the Papal Court. Mean- while, M. Dupanloup, who, by his Lenten sermons at St. Roch and his Advent lectures at Notre Dame, had acquired the reputation of being the most erudite and impassioned preacher in Paris, was appointed Professor of Sacred Eloquence at the Sorbonne. He delivered but half-a-dozen lectures ; for on his sixth appearance, having trampled on the doctrines and memory of Voltaire before an audience composed for the greater part of Latin Quarter students, he excited such a terrific uproar that a breach of the peace was appre- hended, and he could never again obtain a hear- ing. In 1849, under the Second Republic, and Count de Falloux being Minister of Public Instruc- tion and Worship, M. Dupanloup at length ob- tained the crowning reward of his career, and was collated to the see he has filled ever since. If Monseigneur Dupanloup had been personally am- bitious, his promotion to an Archbishopric and to the Cardinalate would have followed as matters of course. Napoleon III. would have been delighted to count so distinguished a prelate among his parti- rSo MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. sans, and Monseigneur Dupanloup might easily have adopted the plan of some of his astute episcopal brethren, who, giving themselves out for staunch Imperialists, became Archbishops, Cardinals, and Senators, and only turned round on the Empire when it had nothing further to bestow on them. But the Bishop of Orleans was too honest for trickery of this sort. Finding that Napoleon III. did not intend to govern on the ultramontane principles, he declared himself his foe without delay ; and the pamphlets he wi-ote against the Emperor's policy (notably that reply to an anony- mous pamphlet of the Emperor's own, " Le Papa et le Congres, 1859") were so scathing, that Monseigneur got identified in many peoples' minds with the Liberal party. Needless to say that on no point was Monseigneur a Liberal ; in fact, politics proper were with him quite a secondary consideration. He had served the Restoration and the July Monarchy ; and he would have been quite willing to uphold the Empire, or even a Republic which would have let itself be guided by the Church. His weapons of attack were the pen and the pulpit, but he wielded a yet more dangerous BISHOP DUPANLOUP. one in the schools of his diocese, and this brings one back to the point that both in speech and style Monseigneur Dupanloup is essentially a peda- gogue. He showed it in his assaults on M. About (1860), in his public reprimands of M. Veuillot for excess of zeal, in his pastoral letter (1869), which gave a lesson to the Pope, in the fearless rebuke which he administered to the Germans when imprisoned by them in his episcopal palace (1870), and in his recent lecture to the Academy, apropos of M. Littr^'s election. He has shown it again in his epistles to Dr. Manning and the Archbishop of Malines, in the counter project which he presented against M. Simon's education law, and in the somewhat patronising support he has extended, and is stiU extending, to M. Thiers, whom he regards as a good substitute for Gambetta, but nothing more ; and he will show it so long as he lives, and can see his lessons repeated and propounded by the whole of that doctrinfiaire party of mixed Orleanists and Constitutional Le- gitimists who boast that they are his disciples. When the roll of France's ecclesiastical worthies comes to be called for the last time, Kichelieu will 1 82 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. step to the front with an axe, Bossuet with a sword, Monseigneur Dupanloup with a ferule. The little village of St. Felix, hidden away in the Alpine forests near Chamb^ry, is the birth- place of this illustrious soldier of the Church mili- tant. Seventy years since, under the First Empire, that part of Savoy was annexed to France as the Department of Mont Blanc ; but it was not • till 1838 that M. Dupanloup obtained his letters of naturahsation as a French subject. It may please scrupulous ritualists to be informed that he was baptised on the day of his birth, though it was the 3rd of January, and received, with the holy water, the three Christian names of F^lix-Antoine-thUi- bert. His mother was a pious woman, who brought him up carefully, at the cost of much pinching and self-sacrifice. When her brother had taught him as much as he could well learn at home, he was sent, at eight years old, to Paris, and placed at an ecclesiastical school in the Eue du Regard, under the direction of the Abb^ Tesseyre. Having speedily carried off all the prizes to be won there, he was transferred to the Seminary of St. Nicholas du Chardonnel, and BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 183 thence, at eighteen, to the College of St. Sulpice, where he made a very pleasant and valuable ac- quaintance. It had happened (1820) that the young Prin- cess de Kohan, while admiring herself in the looking-glass, when dressed for a ball, had in- cautiously approached too near the fire and was burnt to death. Her husband, inconsolable for her loss, and unable to bear the desolation of his home, had sought refuge in the priesthood, and became Cardinal Archbishop of Besan9on. Every year during the vacation he invited a select few of the students of St. Sulpice to visit him at his Castle of La Koche Guyon, and young Dupanloup was received with especial favour. The Cardinal was deeply imbued with the love of letters ; he knew how to make the driest researches of science attractive ; and it was from him that his guest learned that exquisite courtesy of speech and manner which distinguished the French nobility half a century ago. Under his guidance the young man became an accomplished gentleman and a skilful instructor. His teaching at the Paris Seminary was so successful that Pope Gregory XVI. 1 84 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. ■wrote to him that he was " the apostle of youth." He had a pecuKar dislike for still waters, and thought that boys who have not a little devil in them are commonly hypocrites. This opinion was subsequently borne out by one Verger, whose conduct was so exemplary that Dupanloup said uneasily, " That boy frightens me." He after- wards assassinated the Archbishop of Paris. But though cheerful in his morality, M. Dupan- loup was always as austere as an anchorite towards himself, and while Vicar of St. Roche some rich penitents subscribed to furnish his room, which was uncomfortable enough to excite their com- miseration. When the upholsterer came with his goods, and showed his receipted bill, the Vicar smiled and answered, "A few sticks are sufficient for me. I beg, therefore, that you will sell these fine things, and pay the money to the clergyman of your parish. I shall always be too well lodged while the poor are hungry." Indeed, his charities were so large, that he once gave his pastoral staff in pledge to a beggar, having nothing else ; and it had to be bought back again for him. BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 185 Every week he invites the workmen of Orleans to his house, where they pass the evening in playing dominoes, chess, or draughts ; but no cards are allowed. On these occasions he gives moderate refreshment and homely advice, not unmixed with shrewdness, to anybody who asks for it, and they generally go away pleased with their visit, though some of them complain of the episcopal tea, which, according to the notions of French country people, should only be offered to the sick. As soon as he is up the Bishop has several secretaries hard at work upon his correspondence, and employs others in pamphleteering. His con- ception of an idea is lively, and his dictation rapid ; but he returns again and again to the first draft of a book, and corrects every line minutely. Pub- lishers and printers are driven to despair when they find that he wants as many as twenty proofs of a single sheet ; and probably nothing but the prodigious sale of his writings when thus laboriously polished would reconcile them to having anything to do with him. From long before dawn, often till deep into the night, he toils unceasingly ; and when 1 86 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. exhausfion overtakes him at last, he seizes a stout stick for support, and sets off for a walk by the banks of the Loire. If his mental fatigue resists this rough treatment, he takes a journey to Switzer- land, and seeks health in his native air, wandering about on foot among the Alps, where his reputa- tion has gone before him — ^fortunately ; for in one of these pedestrian tours he was benighted in a storm, and could not get shelter at a curate's house tUl he had assured the worthy man that he was "the bishop of the newspapers." He was asked, some time since, if he thought that the conversion of Talleyrand was sincere. He replied, " Yes, certainly. A man often dies im- penitent, but he never tries to dupe his Maker." Then he told how the old diplomatist had resisted the attempts of all the clergy in Paris, till he found a very simple way to that callous heart. A niece of the prince was about to take her first communion, and he caused her to be led in her white frock to the bed where he lay dying. The child knelt down, and her tears rained fast upon the withered hand he stretched out to her. A terrible sigh of anguish and remorse burst from BISHOP DUPANLOUP. 187 Mm. " Go, my child," he said ; " go and pray for me." He was an altered man after that. " He confessed, and received absolution very humbly," asserts Monseigneur Dupanloup. M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. npHE marriage of a travelling mechanic and a peasant girl produced the most famous writer of the Parisian press. It came about in this wise. In a little village of the Gatinais, towards the close of the First Empire, one Fran5ois Veuillot, a native of Burgundy, who was wandering about in search of work, saw a pretty face at a cottage window, and stopped to look at it. Tlie window was overgrown with honeysuckle and eglantine ; a voice, like the carol of a bird, came singiner through it. The young woman to whom these good things belonged was honest and hard working. Though she had a high temper, she had also youth and health, with strong common sense. After a short courtship, she and Fran9ois Veuillot were married. Neither of them had any money, so that the match was in every respect well assorted. Their son Louis, the journalist, was born at M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. Bojrnes, in the Department of the Loiret, on the 11th of October, 1813. They had then several other children, and having been robbed of their earnings by a close-fisted employer, the father of the family was glad to get the offer of a place at a wine merchant's vaults, in Bercy, near Paris, where wages were better and more safe. Such is the account which M. Louis Veuillot gives of his birth and parentage. When some allowance has been made for putting prosaic facts in glowing words, it may be read with implicit trust, for the writer is by no means given to hiding away the truth about himself or others. The humourist who described somebody as " an angry boil on the face of civilization" had in view a gentleman possessing many of the charac- teristics of M. Louis Veuillot, that most Catholic joumahst, who damns ninety per cent, of huma- nity every morning ia the choicest French, and with the heartiest fervour, from the columns of the Univers. Taking Monseigneur Dupanloup as the Orbilius of the Church in France, then is M. Louis Veuillot the Beadle of it. Indeed, such is I go MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. the efficient title lie has himself claimed ; for, having been satirized by M. Emile Augier, in his comedy Le Fils de Giboyer, he retorted upon the Voltairean grandson of Pigault-Lebrun : — " Our modem Aristophanes talks of me as plying the cudgel before the Ark. He is quite right. I have always aspired to fill in the Church the office of the Beadle, who puts chattering raga- muffins to silence, and kicks out dogs who would interrupt Divine service." So much amenity within so small a space would suffice by itself as a portrait of M. Veuillot. To touch off the^ picture one has only to add that the original is sixty, though he carries these years as if there were but forty of them ; that he has a mouth and eyes which would do very well without alteration for a mask of Sarcasm ; and that the general aspect of his shrewd, wrinkled, pitted, and aggressive features would entitle those who dis- like the idea of a Beadle to call M. Veuillot the French John Wilkes. If M. Veuillot has Wilkes's face, wit, and combativeness, however, it is fair to mention that he has also the British polemic's excellent heart in private. An artist having M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. igi called on Mm to ask his sanction for a carica- ture to be published in a comic paper (the laws of the Second Empire rendered such sanction necessary), was so much struck by the great literary Beadle's cordial manners, and by the absence of all clerical pedantry in him, that he went out vowing he would smash his pencils rather than ridicule such a man. There are occasions, too, when, writing of a dead or a fallen adversary, M. Veuillot is humble, just, and generous ; some recent articles of his on the death of M. Gu^roult are a proof of this. It is, perhaps, a pity, though, that M. Veuillot should wait until his antagonists are under ground before being so tender to them. During a long time the Parisian public were persuaded that M. Veuillot was a humbug, and the fault lay in the startling suddenness of his conversion, which rivalled that of the apostle on the road to Damascus, though it unfortunately took place in a less reverent age. The son of a cooper, who, finding no work in his own vil- lage, emigrated to Paris, and opened a public- house there, Louis Veuillot's early boyhood was 192 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. passed in pothouse society. He rinsed the glasses; furbished the copper pitchers, had sous thro\vn him ; and nothing whatever then presaged that he would one day be the great lay champion of Catholic orthodoxy, and the favourite writer of the Court of Rome. At thirteen, having picked up at the Ecole Mutuelle (Ragged School it would be called in England) just knowledge enough to read and write, he was hired as copyist by a solicitor, who happened to be brother of M. Casimir Delavigne, the dramatist. This circum- stance brought a number of literary men to the ofSce — amongst others. Scribe, Dumas, Hinard, and Auguste Barbier. The solicitor's pupils, getting play orders from those gentlemen, occasionally gratified young Veuillot with one ; but they were chiefly liberal in lending him novels, and what novels may be guessed from Veuillot' s own con- fession. He says that the most moral works he read at that time were those of Paul de Kock. There was in M. Fortune Delavigne' s office, how- ever, one Ollivier Fulgence, a steady young clerk, who noticed the boy's ravenous passion for read- ing, and one day surprised him writing an essay. M. LOUIS VEUILLOl. 193 He read the essay, learned that it was Veuillot's custom to compose one every day " for practice," and from that time lent him the works of good authors, revised his essays for him, and took him in hand like an elder brother. One must bestow a word of respectful homage on those often obscure men who in this bustling age of ours thus play the part of the good Samaritan. Whether their well- meant efforts succeed or fail, assuredly they will have their reward. At nineteen Louis Veuillot had, thanks to his own industry and his friend's encouragements, so far educated himself that he was not only a very ready and trenchant writer, but a much more scholarly one than the majority of those young journalists who come fresh from doing nothing at school. His friend Fulgence assured him that literature was his vocation, and procured him employment on the staff of the semi-official Echo de la Seine-Infirieure, which M. Hubert, after'wards Minister of Justice, had started in opposition to the Republican Journal de Rouen. Veuillot's province was dramatic criticism ; but he soon obtained promotion to leader-writing, and, the editorship of the paper 194 vI/£JV OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. having become vacant, lie found himself influential enough to induce the proprietor to appoint his friend and benefactor Fulgence to the post. These two then conducted the paper alone, and a most lively paper it was ; Veuillot's articles resounding like the cracks of a carter's whip over the grave old Norman city, and drawing down upon the writer, in the course of business, two duels — one with an unappreciated actor, who whistled a bullet through his hat ; the other with a Radical jour- nalist, who, being rather a better shot, sent his bullet through the side of Veuillot's coat, within three inches of his heart. Veuillot's writing was what would in England be called personal — that is, when he caught hold of a man he made him feel it ; but it was just the writing needed in Govern- ment prints; and in 1833, the official organ of P^rigueux being in search of an editor, M. Thiers, then Home Minister, and keen-eyed as a hawk for discerning talent, recommended the Prefect to en- gage " that young fellow who is making such a stir at Rouen." Louis Veuillot accordingly went to the chief town of the truffle province as editor of the Manorial d& la Dordogne, and the joyous M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. 195 ex-journalist Romieu being soon after appointed Prefect of the Department, P^rigueux became a pocket edition of Paris — gay, riotous, wit-growing, and scandalful. Louis Veuillot, wlio soon got the title of Romieu's best chum, was the Ufe and soul of the noisy set, which comprised amongst other members Pierre Magne, since Minister of Finance under the Empire, and General (afterwards Mar- shal) Bugeaud, who loved carousing as much as war, and took a fancy to Veuillot for his dash, his pluck, and the eighteenth century vehemence of those extraordinary leadei's which used to be written amid the champagne popping of prefectoral suppers, and printed piping hot, to the amaze- ment of such inhabitants of P^rigueux as were sober folk addicted to quiet reading. But Veuillot did not confine himself to prose. He fired at the Opposition in verse lampoons, modelled after those of Piron, of unholy memory ; and he incurred a third duel with a Radical, who missed him, but whom he declined to shoot (the combatants stood at ten paces apart), saying, with doubtful charity, " You're not worth a bullet." By the year 1837 his fame as a journalist had become so well esta- 196 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. blished, that M. Guizot, then in the Cabinet, sent for him to write leaders in the Charte, the Minis- try's pet organ. Veuillot's principal fellow-contri- butors were Rouqueplan, Ed. Thierry, Malitourne, Edmond Texier, Forgues, and Ourliac, all skilled writers, but he overtopped them every one, and he was busy making the Charte a real power in the press when the Cabinet coUapsed, and the Charte ■with it. Immediately Veuillot was enlisted as editor to a new doctrinaire papei'. La Paix ; but in a few months he had so alarmed the proprietor, that the latter cancelled the treaty which united them, and it was at this juncture (Easter, 1838) that, feehng the need for a holiday, the spitfire journalist went on his memorable pleasure trip to Rome with his friend Fulgence. Rome during the Holy Week ! More than one infidel has felt moved by the gorgeous solemnities of these re- ligious feasts ; nevertheless Paris was not quite prepared to see Veuillot come back so extremely moved as to belabour his old friends right and left. He returned a Christian indeed ; but what a Chris- tian ! A Christian angry with and ashamed of himself for his former life, and vowing to devote M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. 197 his whole existence thenceforth to the propagation of principles he had ignored or slighted — a Chris- tian who, not content with crying Mea culpa for himself, wished the whole phalanx of his friends and foes to join in the chorus with him. Those who objected to be dragged back to the paths of holiness in this way by the scruff of the neck were tabooed out of his acquaintanceship ; and thus it arose that these outcasts, forming a close-packed and astounded body, proclaimed that Veuillot was a humbug who had some ambitious end in view, and would blossom out one morning as neophyte in orders striding with giant steps towards a bishopric. Never was man more squibbed at than the repentant sinner who began to publish tracts, religious poems, and controversial pam- phlets. His old comrades mistrusted him, and the clergy even did not feel quite sure of their proselyte, who, although he had certainly knelt at the feet of Gregory XVI., and received a second confirmation from that Pontiff's own hands, showed so little of the meekness which sits well on a convert. One need not follow Veuillot's life now step by step. He accepted a sinecure at the igS MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Home Office, which afforded him a competency whilst starting upon his new literary path ; he accompanied Marshal Bugeaud as Secretary to Algeria for a few months, and he wrote on his return a clerico-political book, " Les Fran9ais en Algdrie." But he did not come fairly before the public again until 1843, when he was en- rolled as chief writer on the Univers Religieux, just founded under the editorship of M. de Coux. This paper flourished untU 1861, when it was suppressed by Ministerial edict ; it was revived in 1867, and it continues its exploits to this day, having been since the hour of its birth the brazen-voiced organ of all those ultra-Catholics who would check the tide of human progress by holding up Papal bulls in the Avay. Yet probably is there nowhere such Catholicism as M. Veuillot's Catholicism. It is more Papist than the Pope's ; more autocratical than Father Beck's ; more epis- copal than that of the entire Episcopal Sanhedrim, not excepting that of the terrible Monseigneur Pie, Bishop of Poictiers. It is too much even for Monseigneur Dupanloup, who, on two occasions (1852 and 1868), interdicted the Univers to the M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. 199 priests and faithful of his diocese, and launched public letters of rebuke against M. Veuillot, saying : " Vous cherchez a jouer auprfes du clerg^, Monsieur, un role qui devient intolerable." The fact is, M. Veuillot's self-appointed role is that of censor, supervisor, and canonical exponent, to the clergy. The priests of France walk in terror of him and his argus-eyed newspaper. He exhorts the timid, fi'owns at the weak, holds up the wavering to scorn and contumely. Nor do his labours rest here, for he finds time to write articles, notes, and occasionally books (" Parfum de Kome,'' 1865; " Odeurs de Paris," 1866) on all the minor topics of the day, and on all the men, however second- rate, who seem to him to be exercising an influ- ence contrary to his idea of Catholicism. More- over, he writes in a style which, be it admitted in all candour, seems to grow every day stronger, more picturesque, and finer. The Court of Rome cannot afford (so at least it thinks) to do without such a servant. Indefatigable as a controversialist, above suspicion now as a behever, devoid of any personal ambition save that of being accounted the most sturdy living deniolisher of Liberal ideas, he 200 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. — a simple scribe — played at the last Qjlcunienical Council a part scarcely inferior to Antonelli's. He was and is a power ; and he may hold his head high when speaking to the proudest Car- dinal-Archbishop in France, for on every occasion when he has ^appealed from episcopal censure to Vatican justice sentence has been given in his favour. Now, what shall one say to sum up about Louis Veuillot ? Perhaps it is as well to say nothing. Liberal principles have little to fear from clerical Quixotes who tilt against them in the name of doctrines eaten with rust long years ago, and which sit on the bearer even as the poor Knight of La Mancha's corroded helmet sat upon him. There is not a Republican but can afford to smile at the diatribes which M. Veuillot levels every day at modem thought in general, and at the French Republic in particular ; hoping (as Quixote hoped about the windmills) to stop the revolving might of the former, and to damage the latter by ren- dering it ridiculous. Yes, one can smile both at M. Veuillot's doctrines and — not without some pity for his misguided genius — at him. One word, M. LOUIS VEUILLOT. however, wliicli perhaps may reach M. Veuillot's ear, and, if so, will be worth his reflection : The religion he advocates may be Catholicism, it may be Papism, or it may be Veuillotism, but it is not Christianism. THE DUG D'AUMALE. A EECENT and cruel bereavement led many to suppose that the Due d'Aumale would retire from political life. The expectation was unfounded ; and as the Duke may exercise a considerable in- fluence in any crisis of French policies, he becomes a fair subject for impartial notice. The fourth of Louis Philippe's sons, the Due d'Aumale was generally accounted, after his eldest brother's death, the most briUiant of the family. He was less popular, in the political sense, than the Due d' Orleans and the Prince de Joinville ; less of a prince than the Due de Nemours ; less thoughtful and seriously regarded than the Due de Mont- pensier ; but he was of a gentle, amiable disposi- tion, and generous and brave. The army adored him, his countrywomen admired him for his gallant looks, and he was highly thought of by M. Cuvil- lier-Fleury, his tutor, ivho prophesied that he THE DUC D'AUMALE. 203 would come to great things, and is probably of the same opinion to this hour. Everybody has read of how the Orleans princes were sent to the College Henri IV. to receive a public education ; how it was enjoined that they should rough it like the rest ; how the cost of their brealdast was fixed by royal orders at one franc and a half a head, that of their dinner at two francs ; and how in due course they carried off prizes in fair contests without favour. There was some exaggeration in the enthusiasm which these cir- cumstances excited, and in the deduction which the aged Talleyrand sought to draw from them when he said, " Ce sont des jeunes gens comme on n'en voit gufere, et des princes comme on n'en voit pas ; " but there is no doubt that, thanks partly to their education, but chiefly to the home-training of their excellent mother, Queen Marie Am^lie, the young princes became men of sense, and were not more impressed than seems inevitable in the case of princes with their superiority over the rest of mankind. It should be added that King Louis Philippe's sons were educated at a time when instruction was treated as a necessity. By-and-by, 204 ^lEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. when the Empire flourished, Frenchmen, judging by the example of their rulers, concluded that a little good luck and a great deal of unscrupulous- ness were the main requisites for success in life ; but under the Restoration and the July Monarchy the recollections of the great cataclysm of 1793 were still too fresh for such theories. Men were living who, ruined by the revolution, had been forced to earn their bread in exile ; Louis Philippe himself had been for a time a tutor in Switzerland ; and among field-marshals, peers, judges, and Cabinet ministers, there was many a man who had been born (and must have continued to live) in poverty under the old regime, and who stood as an alluring illustration of what could be done by labour, patience, and personal merit under the new. Besides, towards the close of Charles X.'s reign and the beginning of Louis Philippe's, that great ferment of Liberal ideas, which, after pro- ducing in politics the Revolution of July, generated in literature the mighty cohort of writers which counted Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, Musset, and Beranger in its ranks — that ferment turned even small boys' brains, making THE DUC D'AUMALE. 205 them more industrious and ambitious of knowledge than their latter-day descendants — so that, in point of fact, the Orleans princes, although Avell taught, were only educated up to the level of their contemporaries, not above it. They were in no way prodigies. Henri-Eugene-Philippe-Louis d' Orleans, Due d'Aumale, born at Paris January 16, 1822, had attained his eighth year when his father ascended the throne, and was just seventeen when he entered the army. Of course, his promotion was rapid. A captain in the 4th Regiment of the Line, after a few months' home service he was sent to Algeria, in 1840, as aide-de-camp to his brother, the Due d' Orleans, and in less than a year returned to France with his lieutenant-colonelcy and the cross of the Legion of Honour. He had distinguished himself greatly at the raids upon Aifroun and the Pass of Mauzaia — that is, he had fearlessly risked his life many times over ; and on one occasion, when shivering under an attack of fever, had refused to dismount and be carried to an ambulance, saying it would be time enough to physic himself when the fighting Avas over. After wintering in Paris to recruit his health, he went 2o6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. back to Algeria, fouglit again three montlis under Bugeaud and Baraguay d'Hilliers, and obtained the colonelcy of the 1 7th Regiment. Then he brought his men over to France, and as official newspapers, court hyperbolists, and loyal despatches from head- quarters had swelled his achievements to the pro- portions of matchless feats, his march through France was one triumphal procession. People cheered in him the modern rival of Gaston de Foix, and a revolutionist, jealous of so much honour shown to a soldier of nineteen, fired a pistol at him, happily without effect, as he was riding at the head of his regiment up the Rue St. Antoine, in Paris. Naturally, this attempt served only to heighten the public enthusiasm ; and Chauvinists thanked Heaven that a young captain was at last born them who might some day make things un- pleasant for the Duke of Wellington, the foreigner who weighed most heavily on the national mind just then. It must be said in candour to the Due d'Aumale that everything conspired about this time to spoil him, and that, had he developed into the most arrogant and self-satisfied of princes, the fault THE DUC D'AUMALE. 207 would have been none of his. For not only was he acclaimed as a hero by the most martial of peoples, and dubbed a rising Alexander by old generals who had fought at Austerlitz, and whose testimony might be held conclusive, but he occu- pied an exceptional position even amongst his own relatives by reason of the colossal fortune he had inherited from the Due de Bourbon. There is no need to recall the circumstances under which this fortune was bequeathed, nor the popular legends that were current on the subject — the less so as nothing one could say would apply personally to the Due d'Aumale, who was a child when the estates devolved upon him. But it was a heavy load to bear this great fortune concerning which such a multitude of mysterious stories were afloat ; and it argues good qualities in the soldier that he should have used it in a way to make people admit it could scarcely have fallen into better hands. He did an immense deal of good at Chantilly, the old manor of the Cond^s ; was always ready to promote charities or scientific enterprises, and doubled the value of all his gifts by his perfect modesty and good grace in bestow- 2o8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. ing tliem. But the bulk of his liberalities was lavished upon the army, and in Louis Philippe's scheme of government he became the link between the soldiery and the throne, just as the Prince de Joinville was to be the loyaliser of the navy. He was sent back to Algeria (1842) ; served as general of brigade ; captured with great cleverness and not a little rashness the smalah of Abd-el- Kader; was promoted to lieutenant-general's rank ; and commanded the successful Biskara expedi- tion. On the 25th of November, 1844, he married Princess Marie - Caroline - Augusta de Bourbon, daughter of Prince Leopold de Salerne ; and in 1847, being then five-and-twenty years old, was appointed Governor-General of Algeria. At this period he stood at the pinnacle of his fame as a young soldier, and of his popularity as a captain. His name had a real weight in the kingdom, and there is not a question that, had he and his brother Joinville thought fit to defy the Provi- sional Government of 1848, after their father's unexpected fall, they might have retained posses- sion of Algeria for at least a few months, and occasioned the Second Republic no little trouble. THE DUC D'AUMALE. 209' They took the more patriotic course of resigning their commands to the RepubHcan authorities and embarking at once for England. A few weeks later, despite the general feeling of the country, which was adverse to this impolitic proceeding, the Constituent Assembly included them in the sentences of perpetual banishment enacted against their family. Exile may be supported without any serious inconvenience when one has not poverty for a travelling companion ; and M. Ferdinand Barrot, one of Napoleon's envoys, having ventured to in- quu-e if the Due d'Aumale was quite well, re- ceived for answer, " Yes, thanks ; I believe my health was not confiscated." So his highness hastened to make himself as comfortable as possi- ble, and bought a villa of Lord Kilmorey, who had a taste for dabbling in eligible house property. It might not have suited an Opposition prince to show that he had too much ready money, and therefore the habitation he selected was by no means osten- tatious ; but it had formerly (1813 — 1815) been tenanted by Louis Philippe, and in the grounds were some trees which had been planted by p 2IO MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. the citizen king. The Duke added picture gal- leries and a commodious library to his purchase, and made an agreeable home of it. The rest of the French royal family who were so obliging as to take up their abode in perfidious Albion, formed a little colony in the neighbourhood, and lived almost within hail of each other. The Due d'Aumale, however, was the central figure of the group, and rather an unusual figure in the eyes of the boatmen and small tradespeople in the vicinity. He rose very early in the morning, and might be often seen shortly afterwards, apparently tied to a tall horse, pounding the hard road with the mien of a centaur. (" II a I'air d'un centaure ; lid a sa monture, il broie I'espace," •WTites a personal friend of H.R.H.) His highness had patriotic objections to be dressed by an English tailor, and sat very erect in his saddle in the full costume of hiS' country. His hair was clipped in the French military fashion, his moustache was abundant, and his beard seemed, to the astonished gaze of a cockney peasantry, to gi'ow only out of the middle of his mouth. His hat, which had a broader brim than is in favour with British equestrians, was THE DUC D'AUMALE. placed altogether on one side of his head ; more- over, he had spurs of vast length, carried his whip like a carving-knife, and kept a tight hand on his curb-rein ; all of which things were as marvels to the untravelled Anglo-Saxon. Nevertheless, it was a dark day for the Twicken- ham ratepayers when the Due d'Aumale went back to France. He was neighbourly and charita- ble, and visitors came to see him in crowds, which made it good for the flymen, whose branch of industry flourished exceedingly during this partial eclipse of a crown. The Due d'Aumale was generally popular in England, and played his part with some skill and much good-humour. He divided his time almost equally between sport and literature, and adopted many of our customs. He had a hunting-box at Woodnorton, in Worcestershire, and kept a pack of hounds. It was thought good form to ride with him ; he paid bouncing prices for his mounts and dogs, doing the whole thing with a spirit im- mortalised by jMr. Leech. No such self-satisfied Master of Hounds ever seen in England before or since. Then he belonged to " the club " which 212 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. counted Carlyle, Tennyson, and Grote among its members. It also numbered some subscribers of less reputation and more vanity, who were wont to pro- claim Tftdth a loud voice their intimacy with " the Orleans princes." But one ribald subscriber, who felt rather overpowered by this style of conversa- tion, dryly remarked that " he had previously heard more of Orleans plums than Orleans princes, and that, indeed, most of these gentlemen had got large estates." Still " the club " was well pleased with its distinguished guest, for it must be a morose or stupid personage who cannot make friends with a full pocket ; and the Duke, not being averse to cheerful company with his meals, acquired speedily a reputation for hospitality. His circumstances were easy, and he spent money freely on the amusement which he naturally felt from hearing brisk talk, and the latest news brought to him, in his own language, while residing abroad. When a nobleman has a larger income than may be judi- ciously applied to his personal use, he can hardly put out the surplus at better interest, or with a clearer view of his immediate advantage. A dis- position to please oneself by ordinary means need THE DUC D'AUMALE. 213 not be exalted into heroism, still less into martyr- dom. It shows merely a sensible practice of sharing good things with people one likes to see, and whose attendance cannot be secured on any other terms. Neither should it be a matter of surprise to the philosophic mind, that a villa where enter- tainment was to be had for nothing, which was delightfully situated on the banks of the Thames, at a convenient distance from town, and easily accessible by rail or omnibus, should have become the meeting-place of such French refugees as were inclined to give temporary approval to the tenets of constitutional monarchy, expounded by an ex- cellent cook They found at Orleans House every- thing which could recall a bright remembrance of their people and their fatherland. In one room were fair paintings by Watteau, tender canvases by Greuze, and airy coloured dreams of Prudhon. In another were masterpieces of Ingres, Vernet, Meissonnier, Delaroche, Rosa Bonheur, and Dela- croix. Even the bitter food which best suits discontent was not forgotten. On the walls were hung escutcheons bearing a sword suspended in the air, with the prudent device, " J'attendrai," 2r4 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. much in harmony with the tone of thought habitual to the emigrant mind, which is of the cautious sort, and careful when most resentful to avoid danger. The dining-room was of an awkward octagonal shape, and tradition averred that it had been made so ugly to receive George III. according to his Majesty's original ideas of the becoming ; but per- haps there was not a room in the kingdom which echoed more often to laughter, while capons of Normandy, stuffed with Perigord truffles, and served on the delicate china of Sevres, were floated over palates moistened by the best wines of Bor- deaux and Rheims. The Duke would never let his guests forget that he was the jolly prince who, marching past the famous vineyard of Clos Vougeot at the head of his regiment, had called a halt, and commanded his troops to present arms to " salute the joy of France." His frank and soldierly manners, his high spirits, and handsome presence, gave an infinite charm to his receptions, and many a careworn Gaul, with a sad heart and an empty pouch, must have been glad enough of an invita- tion to warm and cheer himself when nigh ready THE jDUC D'AUMALE. to perisli in the wilds of Bloomsbury or Camber- well. After dinner the Duke, who was his own librarian, busied himself by making an annotated catalogue of his books. He had many scarce his- torical works, many curious editions of the old French poets, and many rare comic songs, among his collection. He wrote while conversation was going on, unrestrained, and often smoked a pipe of " caporal," a species of tobacco largely consumed in the French army. It would have been difficult to discover a more genial or unaffected host than the banished heir of the Prince de Conde. From this time until the year 1871 the Due d'Aumale and the Prince de Joinville gradually assumed in Frenchmen's minds a position some- what akin to that of heroes in legendary romance. With the Dues de Nemours and de Montpensier the public were less concerned, for the latter was well married in Spain, and the former being a Legitimist and at least outwardly cold and re- served, had never been a people's man. But it was impossible not to remember with sympathy how uniformly genial, French-hearted, and brave the two young favourites of Army and Navy had 2i6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. been ; and when the Bonaparte Empire came to be definitively estabUshed, the thought of their exile pricked the consciences of average French- men with something like remorse. Sailors talked of how the Prince de Joinville had bombarded Tangiers and St. Juan d'UUoa, brought back the body of Napoleon from St. Helena, and sworn to blow up his ship if it were attacked by the Eng- lish. Soldiers related how the Due d'Aumale used to go about and chat with the men in his camp, ask them for tobacco to fill his pipe, and question them about their homes, always with a view to relieving some want. The bourgeoisie, who had ever liked the Orleans family, contrasted the domestic virtues of the princes and their freedom from all that was fast or in bad taste with the raffish tone of the new court. Then, reports came from Twickenham and Claremont of the esteem in which the princes were held there. Or an article would appear in the Uevue, des Deux Mondes on some military or naval question, and, though unsigned, be known as the work of one of the exiles, and excite a fortnight's interest. Or again, some pamphlet by one of them, or an entire THE DUG D'AUMALE. 217 book (" Histoire des Princes de Cond^," by tbe Due d'Aumale, 1861), would be seized at the printer's ; or it would be whispered among the initiated that the Due d'Aumale had paid an ineognito visit to Paris, had been recognised by the Imperial police, and been allowed forty-eight hours to pack up and leave ; or again the princes would appear openly at Baden, hold levies there, and receive the homage of distinguished Frenchmen who had never bowed the neck to despotism. They never conspired, they only waited upon events. " They do not exert themselves, yet they advance," said the Emperor, repeating the uneasy words of Louis XVIII. about their father. " This activity without movement disquiets me ; but how can one prevent men from walking who take no steps ? It is a difficult problem, and I would willingly spare the solution of it to my successor.'' In fact, though Napoleon III.'s Government could confis- cate the Orleans princes' property, prohibit the sale of their photographs, and send the printers and publishers of their pamphlets to prison, it could not stamp these much-respected exiles out of the public mind. Popular affection hallowed zi8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. them, popular pity magnified tlieir high deeds, their misfortunes, and their talents, until little by little, as faith in the Empire waned, people got to think of the Prince de Joinville and the Due d'Aumale as of a Castor-and-PoUux pair of brothers, who would be ready to run to France's rescue in case of need, and guide her armies or lead her fleet to new triumphs, whilst securing her social system against the onslaughts of anarchy. The brothers are back in France now, but doubtless they both feel that their prestige is a little shaken. The last war has thrown into the shade such performances as the bombardment of Tangiers or the expedition to Biskara ; and as for learned treatises on warfare, the nation has been taught by the ever-memorable example of General Trochu that good writing does not always imply sound strategy. The Duke d'Aumale was elected (in 1871) for the Department of the Oise, and took his seat in the National Assembly after a scuffle with M. Thiers. He has said something there about councils of war, about the tri-coloured flag, and about himself, in the ordinary royal ducal THE DUC D'AUMALE. 219 way. He will maintain commercial treaties ; he would like to pass the parliamentary session in Paris, but is too prudent to vote on important occasions. The Prince de Joinville, who sits for the Haute Marne, is almost equally discreet, though he recently gave one casting vote, and some of the Orleans properties have been therefore restored by the Republican Government. Frenchmen have not ceased to believe that Joinville would command a ship well, and d'Aumale lead an army gallantly, but their confidence on the subject does not exceed cool hmits. On the other hand, men who reason upon Government at all ask themselves whether these two elderly princes are quite as essential to the well-governing of France as many have thought, and as they themselves still appear convinced. What could Joinville or d'Aumale, acting as lion and unicorn to the Count of Paris, do for France more than France can do for her- self at less cost and with less danger ? In 1849- 50 there was a powerful party for electing Prince de Joinville President of the Republic ; in the present year there is another party bent upon trying the same experiment with the Due 220 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. d'Aumale, who has somewhat supplanted his brother in Orleanist predilections. It must be hoped, as much for the Duke's own sake as for France's, that this burlesque will never be carried out. It would lead to a revival of the mongrel royalty which collapsed in 1848; and that to a Communalist Revolution again at an early date. Now, the Orleans family are an amiable race of princes, but this is a reason why they deserve better than to enact the part of monarchical Aunt SaUies, set up only to be knocked down again. They have a much nobler and wiser part to play, if they will only play it — and that is to remain citizens. If they want a scope for their ambition, let them simply join with all other honest men in keeping out of France any disgraceful form of political brigandage. That will be good work enough for the present. M. EMILE DE GIEAEDIN. TT is something to be accounted the leading journalist in France, and to be credited with originating a new idea every day, even when that idea is not often a good one. This is the position of M. Emile de Girardin, who despite his seventy years, is still a power in the State, and feels it so well that he has not ceased to hope in his heart of hearts that he may yet be a Minister, and perhaps • — for who knows ? — have the guiding of France's destinies for a brief space all to himself. M. Ingres plumed himself upon being, not a great painter, but a great fiddler. M. Lamartine was persuaded that he could play the flute ; Rossini was prouder of his talent at mixing salads than of Guillaume Tell or II Barbiere. Similarly M. de Girardin, who is a journalist, a crack journalist, and nothing but a journalist, is filled with the conviction that nature cut him out for a states- 222 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. man, and had he been born in America he would have preceded the late Mr. Greeley as candidate for the Presidency, though, unlike Mr. Greeley, he would have retained the editorship of his paper during the electoral campaign, and trumpeted his own merits himself to the public every morning, and probably every afternoon, for he is not the man to count the cost of a special edition more or less. One must have known and talked often with Girardin to realise the amazing jumble of qualities and defects which it takes to make a founder of a successful French paper. Quick-ej'ed and pert of tongue, blessed with a confidence in himself which graces bombast, and is amusing in its naiveness, he talks crisply as if he had many of the cares of State on his mind, and had no time to waste in words ; but if you happen to be well versed in a subject of which he knows nothing, he will kindly give you hints on that subject, and set you right on the points where he conceives j^ou to be wrong. His articles are short, tight strings of little sentences, round and hard as bullets. He writes : — " Pitt was a great man. M. EillLE DE GIRARDIX. 223 Why ? Because lie tolerated liberty and maintained order. Order is liberty. Liberty is order. Without order, no liberty ; Without liberty, no order. Order and liberty are sisters who support and strensrthen each other. O They have a common crowTi, which is glory. Pitt jrave glory to his country. Pitt was a greater man than Monsieur X ." Tlii^-n the sio-nature, and after it more articles of the same value, dragging in other great personages of history, from Timour the Tartar to Brigham Youn^ (spelt Brihgam). You think ^I. de Girar- din knows all about Timour and Prophet Young. So he does. He has read up half a page of dic- tionary' about each of them before sitting down to write, and that is enough. They are not French- men, and cannot be expected to occupy his at- t'nition longer than the time requisite for taking then- peculiarities as examples or warnings to his own countr\Tnen. 224 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Ah ! if it were of France, for Frenchmen, Emile de Girardin were ■writing, it would be a different matter ; and from the prices of table-frogs per hundred in the fens of Sologne down to the antecedents of the youngest literary tyro who has begun to make his mark in the Paris press, he would give you information more exhaustive and shrewd than eA^er had been heard, besides wind- ing up with a prophecy ; for, like Dickens's Mr. Bunsby, he keeps an eye fixed upon the vanishing point of the horizon, and detects there things un- seen to other men. France is as well known to him as his own writing-desk. Frenchmen as the spots of ink thereon. He believes in the " mis- sion" of France — an enlightening, diverting, and thrashing mission : that is, France should hold up the torch of instruction and amusement to other nations, and thrash them occasionally for their good and her own. Thus she should have thrashed Prussia, but did not. Why ? Was it a visitation ? No, a lesson. Next time she will thrash Prussia more completely ; and meanwhile by all means let M. Thiers keep his place until somebody else gets into it. What are M. Girardin's politics ? As above M. EMILE DE G IRAK DIN. 225 said, he broaclies an idea a day. On Monday his idea is that M. Guizot is the man for France ; on Tuesday his idea is that he was mistaken yester- day ; on Wednesday he is ready to give the Ee- public a fan- trial ; on Thursday he concludes that the .only true government for France is the Empire ; Friday, having been imprisoned by the Empire, he withdraws his allegiance from it in a solemn leading article ; Saturday finds him agitat- ing with purse and pen for the plebiscite, and being couched on the list of promotions to the Senate, on Sunday, amid the blaze of the Com- mune, he remains valiantly in Paris conducting a new paper, La France Federale, and advocates the parcelling of his country into fifteen States, on the model of those of America, with himself probably as President of the lot. Little consistency between one idea and the other, but in the deductions from each separate idea logic of the most pyrotechnic and bewildering kind. He is all enthusiasm — a man in whose hands new brooms are sure to sweep clean to-day, and equally sure to be worthless to- morrow. With the brazen horn of Joshua he calls upon his countrymen to worship this fresh man or Q 226 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. that other — Louis Napoleon, Ollivier, Gambetta — to give their souls, lives, and fortunes to him, to let him take care of them, and to sink their wills in his. Next day he grows cool ; following day, sulky. On the fourth day he has turned his horn round the wrong way, and is blowing to all nations and languages — " Down with the man ! I've made an error. He's not what I took him for." Cavaignac imprisoned Girardin. Louis Napoleon, upon whom he turned as soon as ever he had, by means of the Fresse, secured his election, exiled him, then by- and-by had him fined. But Girardin is not the man to be damped by what he would pompously term martyrdom. He always comes back to the charge with new reserves of energy, prepared to champion new causes and give a kick to old ones. He has no friends, for there is not a Frenchman of mark with whom he has not first chummed and then quarrelled, then been reconciled to half-a- dozen times ; but he has a very host of acquaint- ances, admirers, and, worst of all to say, disciples. Like Napoleon the Great, whom in face he used to resemble, and whose abruptness, gestures, and atti- tudes he used largely to copy (barring his famous M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN. 227 eyeglass play, however, which is all his own) — like Napoleon, he patronises and believes in young men. Any literary aspirant is free to call upon him without introduction, and solicit employment on his paper. If he looks a likely man, he is enlisted on the spot, and remains one of the staff" until the day when he writes his second dull article, on which occasion he is dismissed without ceremony. Emile de Girardin has never edited a dull paper. M. de Girardin is famous for five things : his birth, his first marriage, his duel with Armand Carrel, his introduction of cheap newspapers into France, and the peremptory note he wrote to Louis Philippe on the 24th February, 1848, bidding that astonished monarch abdicate on the spot, and entrust the Regency to the Duchess of Orleans. Emile de Girardin was born in Switzerland (possi- bly on the 22nd of June, 1806 ; but according to another account in 1802, day not mentioned), and first went by the name of Delamothe. His parents were not married, and young Emile was some time discovering who his father was ; but as soon as he had learned, he adopted his name without asking 228 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. his leave, and stoutly maintained Ms right to do so, all laws and customs notwithstanding. With- in a week after he had taken this bold step he was appointed by some mysterious influence to a place in the household of Louis XVIII. , under M. de Genones, who held the sounding title of " Secretary of the King's Conomandments." But he was abruptly awakened from any dreams he may have had of official distinction, by the dismissal of his chief When turned out of his appointment under Government, he obtained a veiy humble employ- ment from M. Geoffroy, a stockbroker, and lost aU his savings in some absurd speculation. After that he wanted to enlist in a troop of hussars, but was refused by the surgeon of the regiment as too delicate for military service. By- and-by (1847), his father, General de Gii-ardin, formally adopted him. Emile de Girardin's mar- riage was one of the events of forty years ago, his wife being the gifted and beautiful Delphine Gay, one of the sweetest writers among the pleiad of 1830 — the best of wives, the most amiable and graceful of gentlewomen. The wedding did not take place without some difficulty, for it was M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN. 229 necessary to produce a register of the husband's birth, and there was no such document forthcom- ing. Six witnesses, however, declared that they had knoAvn M. de Girardin from 1822 to 1823, and that he then appeared about eighteen years old. This evidence was held to be suffcient for the purpose in view. The third great event of Girardin' s life, his killing of Armand Carrel in a duel, seemed likely at one time to cost him his own life, for the Liberal journalists of Paris met in conclave and vowed to avenge the death of their young and glorious champion by challenging Girar- din one after the other until he fell. Girardin had sworn, however, after the death of Carrel (it was his fourth duel), that he would never fight again, and a Court of Honour, to which he appealed, laid it do^vn that he was quite justified in this course. Of Girardin' s journalistic speculations, and of the enormous fortunes he made by starting with just a hundred francs capital, and a like sum in a part- ner's purse, first the Voleur and then the Presse, it is almost needless to speak, seeing that the Presse soon acquired a world-wide celebrity, and kept mankind tolerably well acquainted during five- 230 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. and-twenty years (18 3 6-1 85 6 — 1861-66) with its editor's doings, public and private, his quarrels with other newspaper promoters, and the actions he brought against brother penmen, who attacked him mercilessly as a charlatan, and assaulted him publicly, in hopes of inducing him to fight and be killed. When Girardin finally threw up his con- nection with the Presse, he started the Liberie, and again by selling his paper at less than the cost price until he had gathered a formidable radius of subscribers round him (when he raised it), drew down on himself the maledictions of competitors and the gratitude of the general public. Emile de Girardin is still occult editor of the Liberie now, but, being intimate with most of the statesmen at the head of the Government, he spends a great deal of his time giving them advice at his dinner- table or at theirs, and writes less than he used to do. Perhaps this is not a misfortune to be greatly de- plored, for Emile de Girardin, whilst familiarizing his countrymen with cheap papers, indoctrinated them at the same time with cheap and flashy thoughts — tinsel without, nothing within. He is one of the men who has most contributed to misguide M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN. 231 the drift of the public mind, to instjl into modern Frenchmen a blind tendency to hero-worship and to destroy their self-reliance. That he should now and then have advocated generous and liberal ideas, does not entitle him to rank as a Liberal. The Liberal party prefer soldiers who, if less brilliant, are steadier, less liable to be swayed by contrary winds, and, above all, less egotistical. The curtest summary of the events of M. de Girardin's busy life would fill volumes ; and there are so many different accounts of most of them, that it is difficult to select that which is most worthy of belief. He has written several books — " Emile ; Fragments sans Suite d'une Histoire sans Fin," " Bon Sens et Bonne Foi," " Journal d'un Journaliste au secret," " Questions administratives et financieres," " Les Cinquante deux," among others. The best known of his works is " Emile " (Paris, 1828), wherein he is said to have told his own story. It is not a good novel, being chiefly filled with incoherent reflections on himself, his lodgings, his sweethearts, and the moon. It is, therefore, only candid to add, that M. de Girardin did not rush into print till he was driven to do 232 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. SO by what appeared utter ruin ; but from that moment his fortunes brightened, and he began to make such a noise in the world that three pub- lishers disputed the copyright of his first work. M. Pothieu was the successful competitor in this unusual struggle ; and the book was so well reviewed, that it had the rare effect of restormg him to office. It obtained for him the sinecure appointment of Inspector of the Fine Arts from M. de Martignac ; and he employed his leisure in starting his first venture in joumaHsm, which con- sisted in reprinting the best articles in other papers, without going through the formality of paying his contributors. He sent out his adver- tisements under the Government seal, and for- warded one of them by post to every mayor and to every curate in France, taking their names and addresses from an almanack. He thus got 10,000 subscribers in a month, and was also shot in the shoulder by an angry author. The latter event disgusted him of editorship for the moment, but he preserved his interest in the practical enterprise he had launched, and soon created another journal, called La Mode,, under the patronage of the M. EMILE DE GIRARDIN. 233 Duchess de Berri, who was offering that sly sort of opposition to the court of Charles X. which kings have generally to expect from members of their own family. The Duchess, however, abandoned the concern in a fright, and M. de Girardin is said to have gained three thousand new subscribers by the loss of her royal highness's influence. The subsequent speculations of M. de Girardin in cheap journalism have been innumerable. They seemed very wonderful in France twenty years ago, but to a generation which has seen halfpenny papers established as an institution all over the world they have lost their novelty. At present, M. de Girardin is giving a qualified and uncertain support to the Republic. He ac- cepted a seat on the Commission of Inquiry into the organization and administration of the city of Paris ; and was one of the syndics of the press who were deputed to plead before the legislative commission for the abolition of the stamp tax on newspapers. An unpublished decree, counter- signed by M. Emile Ollivier, dated on the 27th of July, 1870, and found among the papers at the Tuilleries after the revolution of the 4 th of Sep- 234- MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. tember, raised M. de Girai-din to the dignity of senator, " in consideration of the services he had (also) rendered to the Imperial Government as a journalist." Indeed, he was perhaps the principal writer who excited that bellicose spirit among Frenchmen which brought about the Franco-Ger- man war ; and one of his ideas was to confide the conduct of it to M. Haussmann. M. de Girardin's latest speculation in journalism has been the pur- chase of the ofiicial French newspaper ; the latest event of his life, kno^\Ti to the public, is his legal separation from his second wife, the Countess de Tieffenbach. FATHEE HYACINTHE. nnHREE years ago, when Father Hyacinthe wrote to the General of the Carmehtes, and with- drew from an Order which he said had become "a prison of the soul" to him, many good people who were more sanguine than perspicuous foretold that this monk would be a French Luther, and head a grand schism which should divide France into Galileans and Infallibhsts. What might have happened had the Empire lasted in peace there is no surmising ; but it was akeady easy to perceive, in 1869, that France was hurrying towards a crisis which would confine her attention during many years to topics wholly political, and under such circumstances Father Hyacinthe might be said to have been born at the wrong moment ; all he could aspire to play was the part, not of Luther, but of Savonarola. Now he has married, and the news of this event has caused a violent 236 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. commotion throughout the country, making him for the moment the most prominent man in France. The excitement will abate, however, and resolve itself into a nine days' wonder. Vilified by many, lukewarmly defended by a few, blamed by the majority even among the non-clerical public, he shares to-day the fate of all men who have ever attempted to war single- handed against abuses too strong for them. To- morrow he will be half forgotten. The public mind is unfortunately not in a mood for discuss- ing the questions he has raised, and though his doctrines and his courageous example "vvill fall like good seed and fructify, he himself will in all like- lihood not live to see the harvest. This is to be deplored, for Charles Loyson is both a righteous and a great man. It is impossible to look into those honest eyes of his, or to hear the sound of a voice which has the ring of Christian earnestness in it, without feeling that here is a preacher who might be trusted to guide men anywhere. His is not the Christianity of conclaves or episcopal courts ; it is the teaching drawn from the fountain- head — from Clirist's own doctrine, taught for the FATHER HYACINTHE. 237 comfort and enlightenment of men, not, as the Papal See contends, for the enslavement of their minds under the yoke of priestly bondage. Charles Loyson was born at Orleans in the sum- mer of 1827. The precise date of his birthday is not recorded. He was educated at the Academy of Pau, where his father was rector ; and became a schoolboy poet. He wrote verses of rare excel- lence — imaginative, sweet, and idyllic ; and he is said to have aspired to a literary career, though on the refusal of a comedy of his at the Paris Gymnase he supposed modestly that he had overrated his abilities, and turned his thoughts towards the Church. In 1845, therefore, he was entered at the seminary of St. Sulpice ; and after passing four years in theological study, he was ordained a priest. There was a great deal in the quiet life of the priest to tempt the mind of the poet. Loyson thought of one of those retired French vicarages by the sea, or in some wild district of the Vosges or Pyrenees, where a pastor can study nature, teach his flock, and die unknown to Fame, yet remembered by the humble parishioners who love him. His talents 238 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. debarred him from sucli a peaceful life. Imme- diately after his ordination he was sent to teach philosophy at the Seminary of Avignon, then theology in that of Nantes, and afterwards appointed Vicar of St. Sulpice. It was in these pursuits that the sense of his vocation awoke. The theology he propounded seemed to him at best but cumbrous vanity. Why so much dogma to swathe that simple commandment, " Love one another,'' which is the fullest com- mentary on and epitome of all Christian precepts ? Loyson felt called to reveal the truth untram- melled, and to denounce the abuses which made of the Catholic religion, not the Church of Christ, but the institution of an intolerant sect weighing by oppressive laws on the free development of human thought. He gave up his parish, and tried to join the Order of St. Dominic ; but, after a few months' probation, was dismissed by the master of the novices in consequence of some misunder- standing. He then (1860) entered the Carmelite convent at Lyons, " not without illusions," as he somewhat touchingly said in his farewell letter to his General, and after a two years' noviciate FATHER HYACINTHE. 239 ■was admitted to take those vows which he ceased to consider binding when it was sought to con- strue them into a surrender of moral indepen- dence. His pulpit career was begun at Lyons in 1862, and was continued at Bordeaux in 1863, at Perigueux in 1864, and at Paris in 1865-6-7. In the first three of these cities he had grown in reputation with every sermon, and by the time he reached Paris he was as famous as his Jesuit rival, Father Felix. Less polished in his eloquence than Dupanloup, less fiery than Eavignan, and less ecstatic than Lacordaire, Father Hyacinthe's was the voice that sinks deep into the heart and melts. No one who ever attended one of those Advent lectures at Notre Dame in 1867 will forget them. The text of the series was " Family Ethics," and the Friar's audience comprised as many of rich and poor, frivolous and philosophical, as would fill the vast cathedral. Humble workmen and powerful Ministers of State came there, bishops and mun- dane ladies, and the simple-mannered, rather burly monk preached to this Second Empire throng as they had never been spoken to before. He did not, like Father Felix, give them abstruse controversy 240 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. dashed with rose-water religion ; he tried to rally a moral circulation in hearts benumbed with the effects of sensuality, or palsied with mere idle fears of the devil. He was pitiless in exposing the shams of every-day life. He denounced hypocrisy, told his hearers that their consciences were truer guides to them than any priest, and combated that pernicious system which would in social matters set up the authority of the confessor against that of the husband and father, and substitute in edu- cational matters the mandate of the Church for the j udgment of the State or the private convictions of individuals. No wonder the Ultramontanists took alarm. Father Hyacinthe's teaching was tanta- mount to a declaration that the clergy were simple administrators of sacraments — " servants of the Church," to use the old term, instead of rulers over it. M. Louis Veuillot in the Univers at- tacked these doctrines and their propounder witli fury, and it was well^for Father Hyacinthe that his private life bore looking into, even with a thousand-power magnifying glass, for few men were ever overhauled as he was by the most trenchant of journaKsts and the most unscrupulous FATHER HY AC IN THE. 241 of newspapers. As it was, M. Veuillot's impeach- ment caused the stout-hearted friar to be sum- moned to Rome. He appeared as an accused man, defended himself in the Pope's presence, and went away almost absolved ; the truth being that, though the Papal Court detested his opinions, they saw in him a man too strong and dangerous to be quar- relled with. A few weeks after his return to France, however (1869), Father Hyacinthe, speaking at the International Congress of Peace, put the Jewish, Pi-otestant, and Catholic faiths on a footing of equality, as " the three great religions of civilised peoples ; " and hereupon sacerdotal patience gave way. Archbishop Darboy, his friend and patron, wrote nervously to tell him he was going too far. The General of his Order, a by no means intolerant man, who admired, and had therefore encouraged, him in every way, let himself be overawed by the Jesuit faction, and intimated to the monk that he must either speak according to canon law or hold his peace. It was then Father Hyacinthe wrote his famous letter of September 20, 1869, which, coming on the eve of the (Ecumenical Council, and indignantly assailing as it did the doctrine of Papal 242 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Infallibility, exploded like a shell in the Catholic ranks. Monseigneur. Dupanloup sent one of his chaplains to Father Hyacinthe, and, in great epis- copal flurry, entreated him to spare the Church the sight of a grievous scandal. Finding his chaplain had arrived too late to stop the pub- lication of the letter, he wrote and begged the Father to recant, to throw himself at the Pope's feet and solicit forgiveness. Father Hyacinthe answered, that he felt no need of pardon ; and, braving the major excommunication launched against him, he sailed for the United States, in order to withdraw himself for a few weeks from the ultra-orthodox annoyances that would have beset him in his own country. His recent marriage, which had been foreseen for some time by those personally acquainted with him, is but the logical sequence of the theories contained in his letter, and re-advocated in all his speeches and conversations on American soil. Now, Father Hyacinthe best knows by what means the cause he has at heart should be served ; but he must certainly be aware that there is not a country in Cliristendom where he would have so FATHER HYACINTHE. 243 little chance of success as in Fraiice. In Spain a man of his parts might have effected a schism ; in Italy he would have rallied a strong, or at least demonstrative, party round him ; in Germany he Avould have proved a valuable ally to Prince Bis- marck in that statesman's warfare against Jesuitism. But in France he could expect little sympathy and no support ; neither has he obtained any. For religious purposes the French may be roughly divided into two parties : the bigots, and those who do not believe anything — the latter being much the larger section, though subdivided into. the rampant school, who are outspokenly infidel ; and the deferential set, who profess to believe every- thing for peace and propriety's sake. None of these categories desu-e Church reform. The bigots ban the idea as blasphemy ; the free-thinkers dis- miss it as not worth their attention ; the 'poco- curante majority would much rather not hear ecclesiastical matters discussed at all. To these last the church is a necessary ornament ; they send their wives and children to it ; they them- selves are influenced neither politically nor socially by edicts ; and they deprecate almost savagely 244 ^lEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. any controversy tending to revive topics which they regard as settled long ago. Moreover — and Father Hyacinthe seems rather to have overlooked this fact — the Roman Catholic Church, as at pre- sent managed, is much more of a pohtical than of a religious body. It represents antagonism to all that men call progress. It is the enemy of science, fi-ee discussion, and human reason. By the instru- mentality of the confessional and by the enforced celibacy of priests (which is but the propping stone to the confessional), it finds it can exercise more prestige over weak minds than it could by liberal concessions. And so long as this is the case it will not abate a jot of its pretensions. No doubt the time will come when, thanks to the spread of education, men will take the sensible view of faith, and look upon it as a thing of the heart, not of outward observance. In that day there will be a majority of men who, rejecting the comfortless conclusions of atheism, will ask for a religion which will be in ritual simple, in dogmas tolerant, in charity universal. Then the Papal See, in order not to be left high and dry by the • flood of human enlightenment which has already FATHER HYACINTHE. 245 begun to roll ahead of it, may fling itself into the stream, throw off its encumbering superstitions, and once more take the lead it held when it fought the victorious fight against Paganism, and earned that proud title of Catholic which it has since ceased to merit. But many years and generations must elapse before that time ; and meanwhile those who, like Charles Loyson, endeavour to im- prove the Church without subverting it, must be prepared for harder treatment than the Church's worst enemies. Happily the efforts of Church Reformers are no longer sealed in blood ; now-a- days they need only be watered with tears. Let it, at all events, be a comfort to Father Hyacinthe to know that any tears wrung from him by the cruel aspersions which are being poured upon his head at this moment by all those of his country- men Avhom he had been training to love, will not be thrown away ; no affliction entailed by the conscientious advocacy of a worthy cause ever is. MM. EECKMANN-CHATEIAN. rpHE education of all peoples is more ©i- less con- ducted by novelists ; and during twenty years of the present century (1830-50) the French seemed to draw all their inspirations — political, religious, and social — from worlds of fiction. These were the palmy days when the feuilletonniste was the most important contributor to every daily j^aper. Eugene Sue wrote his " Mysteres de Paris," and was accounted so earnest a reformer that, on the mere strength of this novel, he was elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1848. Victor Hugo wrote " Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamn^," which very nearly effected the abolition of capital punish- ment, and " Notre Dame de Paris," which set men so crazy on the subject of mediaeval architecture that M. Kambuteau, Prefect of the Seine under Louis Philippe, could not demolish a house fifty years old without maldng all Paris shriek as at a MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 247 sacrilege. Lamartine produced " Les Girondins," ■whicli is credited witli having hastened the Revo- lution of 1848, and, at all events, secured for its author the chief seat in the Provisional Govern- ment ; and Alexandre Dumas, Balzac, and Frede- rick Souli^ laboured each in his special walk, and with -wonderful success, to develop that public taste for fast living and rowdy glory which paved the way for the Empire. Novel-writing is now on the decline in France, and this for a commer- cial reason. A novel being general^ published in a one-volume form and at three francs, it requires a book of real merit to ensure a sale large enough to cover expenses ; and publishers are conse- quently unable to offer any but exceptionally popular authors remunerative prices. M. Edmond About is an instance of a very successful novelist, who finds that it pays better to write half a dozen newspaper articles a week at a fixed salary of 60,000 francs per annum than to sell books which have cost him six months' labour at prices ranging from £200 to £500. Other ex-novelists, who, like MM. About, Jules Claretie, and Xavier Eyma, are not enlisted by newspaper proprietors, take. 248 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. like M. Dumas, to dramatic wi'iting, which also pays ; and in proportion as journalism gains ex- tension, and play-going becomes more universal, novel-writing must continue to diminish. Never- theless, there are still authors who persist in creating fiction, and it speaks hopefully for the improved tone of thought among the French work- ing classes, that no books should at the present moment be so popular as Erckmann-Cliatrian's. It is true that these gentlemen tower above their brother novelists by much more than a head and shoulders. MM. Emile Gaboriau, Eugene Cliavette, and Louis Noir, who are reckoned the leading feuilletonnistes of the day, are at best but tenth-rate writers, and have never put as much good sense in ten volumes as Erckmann- Chatrian put in a page. But the success of Erck- mann-Chatrian is greater than can be accounted for by mere superiority in talent and workmanship. It extends over all the towns of France, and is beginning to invade the hamlets. Go into what workshop or village you will in company with the colporteur, who strolls by on his rounds two or three times in a month, watch the man unstrap his MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 249 pack, and then see what are the books that will he demanded of him. For every volume of Dumas, Paul de Kock, or Ponson du Terrail — for every one of those flimsy periodicals which eke out mur- der by the page full, and should be stamped out like the cattle-plague, a dozen numbers are bought of those cheap serials headed "Romans Nationaux." And national novelists MM. Erckmann and Chat- rian indeed are. When you hear a French me- chanic talk knowingly of the Great Revolution and the causes which led to it, he has not often got his information from Thiers, Michelet, or Louis Blanc ; he has obtained it from that admirably- \mtten " Histoire d'un Paysan ;" and if at Chisel- hurst the Emperor Napoleon is truthfully told now and then that peasant adherents are fast falling away from him, he need look no further for the reason than " L' Histoire du Plebiscite." M. Emile Erckmann was born at Phalsbourg, in the Department of the Meurthe, on the 20th of May, 1822. M. Alexandre Chatrian was born at the little hamJet of Soldatenthal, near Abresch- willer, on the 18th of December, 1826. The joint fame of M. Emile Erckmann and M. 250 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Alexandre Chatrian only began about a dozen years ago, with the publication of a rather fantastic story, "L'lUustre Docteur Math^us." M. Erck- mann was then thirty-eight years old, and M. Chatrian thirty-four ; and they had been working together since 1847 without being able to make a hit. M. Erckmann is the son of a bookseller, and was destined for the bar. M. Chatrian's family were glassfounders, who, being ruined, were greatly pleased at securing for their son a well-paid clerk- ship, with prospects of becoming partner in a glass foundry of Belgium, and immensely disgusted when he threw up this good position to devote himself to literature. Literature had, in truth, a bad name then in country districts, and especially in Alsace, where the friends were both bom. It was in Alsace that M. Victor Hugo, being invited, whilst in the zenith of his reputation, to dine with some honest folk of his acquaintance, found him- self an object of suspicious attention on the part of the servant. This unliterary domestic set him down as a Bohemian, kept an eye on his move- ments, and when the time came for pouring out the champagne, asked aloud, and with great reluc- MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 251 tance, " Shall I give any to the man of letters ? " M. Erckmann, who, like M. Chatrian, could not be brought to apply himself to the career his friends wished, was also the victim of hearty family repro- bation ; and it was this that first contributed to establish a hnk between the young men. They were introduced to each other by a professor of the College of Phalsbourg, where M. Chatrian had obtained an ushership pending the time when his pen should support him, and at once they became friends, and put their brains as well as their purses in common. Literary aspirants who are discouraged when they do not clear the steep which leads to fame at one bound, might draw a lesson from the sturdy perseverance shown by the two Alsatians under the painful bad luck which for a long time beset them. They toiled twelve years without success or profit. They wrote short tales which were not appreciated, novelettes which were rejected or laid upon shelves to be printed only many years after, and dramas which were either refused, or, as happened once with a too patriotic play of theirs called Alsace in 1814, banished from the stage by prefectoral edict at the 252 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. second performance. One of the circumstances against tliem was, that they began at a time when poUtics left men too little leisure to think of literature ; and later, when the total cessation of home politics under the Empire brought novels into demand again, it was not novels of the kind they could write. People wanted the patchouli- scented productions of M. Arsene Houssaye, or the strongly-spiced lucubrations of MM. Gustave Flaubert and Ernest Feydeau. MM. Erckmann and Chatrian were too honest, too naively moral, for an enslaved generation who wished to forget that freedom and public integrity had ever existed. After writing themselves down to a state of indi- gence bordering on pennilessness, the pair of friends were on the point of giving up the struggle. M. Chatrian, who had abandoned his ushership, soli- cited a railway clerkship at £60 a year, and M. Erckmann started for Paris to continue the legal studies he had begun just sixteen years before. It was then (that is, at the time of the Italian campaign) that the public in one of its capricious moods took a fancy to their " Docteur Math^us," bought three editions of it, and gave MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 253 the authors that " name" which is to the dispirited tyro what a horse and gig are to a jaded wayfarer. Nobody suspected, however, that the double appellative " Erckmann-Chatrian " included two writers ; and it may interest some readers to know how a couple of men can write in concert, being now and then, as was the case with MM. Erckmann and Chatrian, many miles apart. M. Chatrian is the more imaginative of the two. The first out- lines of the plots are generally his, as also the love scenes, and all the descriptions of Phalsbourg and the country around. M. Erckmann puts in the political reflections, furnishes the soldier types, and elaborates those plain speeches which fit so quaintly, but well, into the mouths of his honest peasants, sergeants, watchmakers, and schoolmasters. A clever critic remarked that Erckmann-Chatrian' s characters are always hungry and eating. The blame, if any, must lie on M. Chatrian's shoulders, to whose fancy belong the steaming tureens of. soup, the dishes of browned sausages and savuer kraut, the mounds of floury potatoes bursting plethorically through their skins. All that M. Erckmann adds to the vienu is the black coffee, of 254 j7/£-yV OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Avhich he insists, with some energy, on being a connoisseur. Habitually the co-authors meet to sketch out their plots, and talk them over amid much tobacco-smoking. Then, when the story has taken clear shape in their minds, one or other of the pair writes the first chapter, leaving blanks for the dialogues or descriptions which are best suited to the competency of the other. Every chapter thus passes through both writers' hands, is revised, recopied, and, as occasion requires, either shortened or lengthened in the process. When the whole book is written, both authors revise it again, and always with a view to curtail- ment. Novelists who dash off six volumes of diluted fiction in a year, and affect to think nought of the feat, would grow pensive at seeing the labour bestowed by MM. Erckmann and Chatrian on the least of their works, as well as their patient research in assuring themselves that their historical episodes are cori-ect, and their descriptions of existing localities true to nature. But this careful industry will have its reward, for the novels of MM. Erckmami and Cliatrian will live. The signs of vitality were discovered in them as soon as the MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. 255 two authors, nerved by their first success, settled down and produced one tale after another, all too slowly for the public demand. " The Story of a Conscript," " Waterloo," " The History of the Man of the People," and above all, " The History of a Peasant," were read with wonder as well as interest. This sober, graphic, unsensational writing did not read hke fiction. It might have been the real composition of one of those simple folk in whose mouths the authors generally put their narratives, were it not that the vigour of style, the terse, manly French, argued a degree of culture unfortu- nately not yet attained by the peasants and small tradesmen of our day. And here one must allude to the patriotic principle MM. Erckmann and Chatrian have constantly served, in advocating through all the chapters of their books the re- claiming of the people from ignorance and super- stition. They are not liked by the Catholic clergy, and are no great favourites with the routinists of the Public Instruction Ministry, whose system of educating, or rather of not educating, the masses they have repeatedly and indignantly denounced. But they are regarded as warm and valuable allies 256 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. by all the Liberals who are seeking to found the Republic, by enlightening the nation on the dis- graces and miseries which ignorance entails on peoples as well as individuals, and their works deserve to be read, not in France alone, but in every land where the population is bowed down under the yoke of antiquated tyi-annies and pre- judices. As to the Chauvinist tone the two authors have adopted in their last work, in which they preach the "revanche"' against Germany, that may be forgiven them. Englishmen must think how any British novelist would write if his native Kent were in the hands of foreigners — and fo- reigners, too, whose praises he had always sung. M. HENEI EOCHEFOET. TN despite of the line adopted by Henri Eoche- fort during the Commune, none but Bona- partists could help feeling sympathy for him when he was condemned to transportation for life. People were secretly pleased at the clemency of M. Thiers when he permitted him to remain in a French prison ; and now that the news of the unfortunate journalist's health has been growing worse and worse, one may expect that the generosity of French nature will suggest even to M. Kochefort's enemies that their once bitter antagonist has suffered enough. Those who were acquainted with M. Rochefort can, indeed, affirm that captivity must have been to him a far more cruel thing than to ordinary men. That nervous, soft-hearted, feminine character was not meant for confinement, especially for confinement aggravated by remorse. Rochefort has been described as a s 25 8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. gamin, and the temi fits him well ; but he is also a gentleman. He has no judgment, but he has heart, wit, and a sense of delicacy which has been at times obscured, but never destroyed. Under the Commune he allowed himself to be carried away. His popularity and the detestable counsels of a very bad set of men, into whose hands he had fallen, crazed him ; but those who watched him at his trial, and heard his almost inaudible confession that on one or two occasions he had gone too far, and now regretted it, must have seen that these words were the expression of a remorse much greater than the prisoner cared to reveal. The fact is, he was almost heartbroken. When the fumes of his intoxication cleared away, and he could measure the extent of what he had done, he got to talking loud and defiantly, but this was hysteric bravado, and his eyes grew haggard. After his condemnation, the feeling that M. Thiers, whom he had so wantonly maligned, was acting as his best friend, and trying to obtain his pardon from the Grace Committee, gnawed him at every hour of the day. He said a few weeks ago to an acquaintance who went to visit him, " Well, is M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 259 Thiers going to bring us back the Orleans family ? " and there was a feverishness in his tone as if at all costs he must get rid of some of the load of obligation that was crushing him. On being assured that M. Thiers was doing his best to found the Republic, he exclaimed, " Nobody- means a tenth of what he says, but I wish I had been taken by Gallifet and shot." He is indeed a man to be pitied more than blamed, for he was made to play a part quite unsuited to him. Victor Henri de I!,ochefort-Lu9ay was born at Paris on the 30th of January, 1830, and was educated at the college of St. Louis, where he obtained distinction for the excellence of his verses. It is a curious fact in literary history, that his first published writing was composed for the Floral games at Toulouse, and is a hymn in honour of the Virgin Mary. But his circum- stances and home were unfavourable to the growth of orthodox opinions. The son of a Legitimist nobleman, the Marquis de Rochefort-Lu9ay (who, under the name of Edmond Rochefort, had acquired considerable reputation as a playwright), and of a virile-minded 26o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. motlier, who was a Eepublican, his boyhood was distracted by a jumble of precepts calculated to paralyse the judgment of any youth. His father taught him to worship the Pope and the Bourbons ; his mother counselled him to study the lives of great Republicans, and to mould his actions upon them. As he had no fortune to expect, both parents warned him not to do like his father, and ^vrite comedies, but to adopt some serious pro- fession ; and they suggested that he should become a physician or a schoolmaster. Henri Rochefort, however, felt no taste for a medical career, and still less for the labours of professor- ship. He studied medicine for a whUe, then gave Latin lessons ; but he ended by obtaining a clerk- ship at the Hotel de Ville, and as the work in this post was not heavy, he employed most of his business hours in playing cards or in writing, first for the " Dictionnaire de la Conversation," and then for comic newspapers. Some articles of art and dramatic criticism which he con- tributed to the Charivari attracted the atten- tion of Baron Haussmann. They were funny articles, quaint and sarcastic ; but Rochefort, who M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 261 spent a great deal of his leisure time haunting picture sales, showed that he was a connoisseur in painting, and the Baron recommended him for a sub-inspectorship of Fine Arts. He soon grew tired of this post, which, though better paid, was less of a sinecure than his clerkship, and in 1861, being then thirty-one years old, he abandoned it to devote himself wholly to journalism. He had already earned a name among the Boulevard wits by a one-act comedy or two, and a clever book he published in 1862 on the trickeries of auctioneering (" Petits Mysteres de I'Hotel des Ventes ") classed him as a rising man in the light brigade of litera- ture. This means that Rochefort was always to be seen on the Boulevards from five to six ; that he attended the first performances at theatres ; criticised the Government whilst sipping absinthe, and was welcome to insert his squibs in all papers that were not political. The only points that distinguished him from other literary men of his clique were that he never smoked, and even railed with some irony at those who did ; he also dressed with more care than was usual with 'petiis jour- nalistes. Let it here be recalled that a fetit 262 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. journaliste belonged to a category quite distinct from the joui-nalist proper. There were, until 1868, when the old press law was repealed, only about a dozen daily papers licensed to discuss politics. They paid 60,000 francs caution money at starting, and were subjected to a tax of six centimes on each copy ; but to found such a paper requu'ed a special Ministerial authorisation, which was not often granted ; and as a consequence the contributors to these large journals held their heads high, and affected to despise the gentlemen Avho were on the staffs of the non-political sheets, which anybody was free to establish. On their side the petits journalistes, who kept a sort of afternoon club, first at the Cafd des Variet^s, and by-and-by at the Caf^ de Madrid, treated their graver compeers as fogies, and Henri Rochefort was perhaps the readiest to launch his shafts at those of his press colleagues who, like the writers on the Dihats, Temps, and Steele, sought to debate the affairs of the country seriously. He should have exercised to all time this gay profession into which he had so snugly ensconsed himself, for it fitted him perfectly. He read capital little lessons M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 263 to peccant actors ; lashed just on the righf. spot the young debauchees of high hfe who made themselves ridiculous ; and had not his match for inditing on the Phrynes of the Bois de Boulogne one of those stinging articles which would bring the victim or her protector down to the publishing office with shrieking threats of duel or action at law. Then there were his comedies and farces, Avhich were most drolly immoral. On the whole, he meant no harm, and doubtless here and there did good by chastising social abuses. But he was not an earnest reformer, nor even a Liberal. He was simply a laughing cynic, and the mere fact that he should have suddenly towered into the position of champion to the Liberal and Kepublican parties speaks to the curious moral plight into which France had been brought by the men of the Empire. The thing began in the usual way. A sillj' Minister, taking alarm at a few bold witticisms, sought to gag the small journalist, and so swelled him into a half-martyr. Kochefort had been writing in the Soleil and the Evenement. Allien the latter paper was suppressed, the Figaro, trans- 264 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. formed from a bi-weekly into a daily paper, took its place, and Kocliefort became leading chroni- queur at a salary of eighty pounds a month, at which price his services were purchased, after a spirited competition between M. de Villemessant and the banker Millaud, proprietor of the Soleil. He had just begun then to fly at higher game than actors and spendthrifts. He made covert allusions to politics, and his editor lived in daily dread lest he should overshoot the line and entail the suppression of the paper. This even- tually happened. Rochefort having commented too transparently on some legislative measure, M. de Lavalette, the Home Minister, sent for M. de Villemessant, and told him that unless Eochefort were dismissed the staff, the Figaro should be prosecuted for printing unlicensed politics, and sup- pressed. M. de Villemessant being, however, un- willing to part with Rochefort, submitted that if the Figaro were suffered to become a political paper Rochefort should be attached to it only as a literary contributor. This compromise was effected, and Rochefort, whose value in the market had become strangely magnified by this State negotia- M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 265 tion about himself, was engaged at a salary of £1,200 a year to write on all subjects " save those relating to this, that, or to anything else." It was at this juncture that the Emperor issued his manifesto of the 19th January, 1867, stating that he was prepared to grant the nation more liberties, including that of starting poUtical papers. Roche- fort hereupon applied for a specimen of this last liberty ; but it was refused him, on the ground that the Legislature (which meant in this instance M. Rouher) had not yet ratified his Majesty's decision. From this moment Rochefort gave him- self out as an intractable oppositionist, and lost no occasion of publishing that, as soon as he had a paper of his own, he would handle the Empire as it had never been handled before. And he kept his word ; for when the new press law left him free to bring out his Lanterne, the event assumed proportions which have now become matter of history. The Imperial Government, if it had acted wisely, would have let Rochefort alone. No doubt his bitter jeers, and fearless denunciation of official abuses, were hard to bear ; but, after all, the majority in every country wiU support an 266 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. established Government sooner than risk revolu- tion, and, by the end of a few months' time, the Lanter'iie, if allowed to flame away as it listed, would have burned itself out. This must have happened the more surely, as Rochefort, though clever and humorous, was ignorant, and soon lost all command over himself A writer who M'ants to be of use to any liberal cause must fence with his pen, not slash with it ; he must, further, ad- vocate one object at a time, and wait till he has succeeded in the first attempt before going on to the next, progress being a thing of degrees, not of leaps and bounds. If a writer, taking up the cudgels for reform, is good-natured enough and weak enough to hearken to all the persons who come to him with grievances, and if he makes those grievances his, he arrays all society against himself, and is a lost man. At the first number of the Lanterne, Rochefort had nine-tenths of in- telligent France behind him ; after the eleventh, when he was driven to fly to Belgium by three sentences of imprisonment, aggregating twenty-nine months, his only adherents were the extreme men. Some of these followed him to Brussels, M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 267 lived at his expense, toadied him, and ended by turning his head. They persuaded him that he was a great man, and a Radical Republican ; they drove him to sneer at Jules Favre as too moderate, and to oppose him at the general election of 1869 as " an incumbrance to the Liberal party." They made him so completely their puppet that when the poor fellow took his seat in the Corps L^gis- latif after the elections of November, 1869, he was as an Ishmael, having no programme in common with his colleagues, no programme of his own even — only the ludicrous pledge of being able to solve the social question " in five minutes." Of Rochefort's short stay in the Chamber, of his violent article on the death of Victor Noir, of his imprisonment, liberation by the people, and of the office he held for a few weeks under the Govern- ment of the National Defence, it is needless to speak at much length. After his lantern went out, he founded two newspapers, the Marseillaise and the Mot d'Ordre. They had but a turbulent and short existence. They made a great noise, but effected no good to any cause. During the siege of Paris he was made President of the Commission 268 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. of Barricades, and did .his duty so energetically, that he was placed on the Republican list, and, at the election of the 8th of February, 1871, was chosen representative for the Department of the Seine, being the sixth out of forty-three candi- dates ; and 165,670 votes were recorded in his favour. At Bordeaux he sat with the members of the Extreme Left, voted against the preliminaries of peace, and then abruptly resigned his seat in the Assembly. He supported the revolution of the 18th of March with all the strength of his paper staff, but refused to take office under the Commune, on the plea of ill -health. He is accused of having instigated the destruction of M. Thiers' s house, and charged with the responsi- bility of having encouraged the desperate armed resistance encountered by the troops of Versailles in their march to Paris. He was arrested at Meaux on the 20 th of May, interrogated while suffering from brain fever, condemned as guilty of nine crimes or dereUctions of duty by the third Council of War, and sentenced to imprisonment in a fortress. M. Victor Hugo made a pressing appeal to M. Thiers for a commutation of this M. HENRI ROCHEFORT. 269 punishment, but without result. M. Rocliefort was first confined at Fort Boyard, and in the month of June last (1872) he was transferred to the Citadel of St. Martin de R^. A few days' liberty was, however, granted to him in the autumn, in order that he might legitimatise his children, and marry their mother, who had retired to a convent in Paris, and was said to be dying. The cere- mony over, he was sent back to jail ; and perhaps no more melancholy wedding was ever witnessed. M. Eochefort upon this occasion formally pro- fessed his belief in the Roman Catholic faith, and denied that he had ever been a heretic at heart. Rochefort's instincts were always good, and his behaviour invariably weak. "When left to himself he acted well ; under the bad advice of interested wire-pullers he frequently conducted him- self like a madman. There is no excusing his unparalleled violence during the Commune, except by supposing that his hatred of the Empire had culminated into a monomania ; and that he re- garded every man who did not share his views to the full as a conspirator plotting the return of that execrated regime. But once again, for these 270 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. excited terrors and for the deplorable conduct which resulted from them, Eochefort's few dis- reputable intimates are more to blame than him- self. As a general rule it must be laid down that the chiefs of an insurrection should be punished, and the lowlier rebels, when possible, spared. But Rochefort is one of those few insurrectionary leaders who have never led anybody, but have always followed the commands of their subordi- nates. His crimes are, to have been too feeble, too good-hearted, and too vain. Surely, however, these offences have been expiated. M. EDMOND ABOUT. lir EDMOND ABOUT, whom the Germans arrested at Saverne, is the most tho- roughly French amongst all French novelists, the most biting of French pamphleteers, the most un- lucky of deserving dramatic authors, the most restless of newspaper editors, and in politics the most disappointed man in France. In his own words, " he has been offered everything, he has accepted everything, and he has got nothing." Edmond Fran9ois Valentin About was born at Dieuze, a little town of Lorraine, on the 14th of February, 1828 ; and when sent five-and- thirty years ago to a seminary at Pont-a- Mousson, in his native Lorraine, he already gave promise of being a clever man ; but he was emphatically a sad boy, who had imbibed some- where a contempt for the sacred writers, and spoke of them with such precocious levity that the 272 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. reverend fathers, his teachers, first tried what cuffing on the head would do, and then expelled him. Young Edmond's family, however, though a poor one, had friends, and these procured the boy an exhibition at the Lyc^e Charlemagne in Paris. Religious instruction being no part of the programme here. About got on very well ; but he was not an amiable character out of school hours, and fought more than one shin-and-claw battle with sensitive comrades whom his bitter sayings and pert demeanour humiliated. At the Concours G^n^ral (general competitive examination of public schools), in 1848, About carried off the grand prize for the Latin essay (" Prix d'Honneur de Philosophic"), Pr^vost-Paradol being that same year winner of the French essay prize. These are the supreme honours to which French schoolboys can aspire, and their value was heightened in this instance by the speech which M. Carnot, the Republican Minister of Public Instruction, made to the pair of young scholars as he handed them their laurel crowns and prize books, and told them that the Second Republic relied for its support on rising generations of men such as they. M. Carnot' s M. EDMOND ABOUT. 273 encouragements would appear to have touched Edmond About, for on entering the Ecole Normale he was a very detemiined Republican indeed, though, for that matter, he stood in no contrast to his brilliant college friends who were as far from dreaming then that a Bonaparte would ever come to gag them, as they were from suspecting that some of their number would turn courtly advocates of the gag. MM. Taine, Weiss, Libert, Pr^vost-Paradol, and Francisque Sarcey are some of the names which figured beside About's at the Normal School. It Avas a most hopeful pleiad ; patriots like M. Carnot might well draw favourable auguries from it, and the only wonder is how a generation which produced such offshoots should have sub- mitted so long and so tamely to be kept under foot. On leaving the Ecole Normale, Edmond About proceeded to the French School at Athens, which was a sort of finishing college for aspiring professors, and for awhile he gave himself up to archaeological studies. But this was not the natural bent of his mind. At five-and-twenty he was an accomplished scholar, teeming with wit, malice, and scepticism. He had studied Voltaire T 274 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. as more pious people do their Bible ; he carried volumes of the philosopher's works about with him, soaked his fancies in them, and had ended by so impregnating himself with the Voltairean spirit that when he began to write he unconsciously did so in a style as bright and firm as his great master's own, and with a humour every whit as diabolical. " La Grfece Contemporaine," which was his first regular work, proved an immediate success ; but it raised a great clamour both at Athens and among the Greeks of Paris, who taxed M. About with having repaid the hospitalities ex- tended to him by satires of the most ungrateful and exaggerated description. To this it may be answered that people who receive wits into their houses must be jirepared for the consequences. M. About had been allowed the free run of Athenian di'awing-rooms ; he had seen a great deal, been amused at much, and, once home, had noted his impressions with that pitiless French raillery which spares nothing. People have since accused the author of always turning round upon former hosts and benefactors, and an esteemed critic has written, " Cliacun des hvres de M. About M. EDMOND ABOUT. 275 est un chef d'oeuvre et une mauvaise action." But if the truth could be known, M. About has pro- bably made up his mind that in accepting hospi- talities he is conferring an obligation, not receiving one ; nor is he quite wrong. His manners are proverbially delightful, and none the less so for the spice of self-assertion which flavours them.. People love to get him within a drawing-room circle of ladies, and to set him pulling men or women of the day to pieces in the quick, cool, and dry fashion which is his characteristic. There are few things finer in the way of intellectual treats. Only, those who have enjoyed this instructive pleasure for an evening may as well take it kindly if the wit makes them in their turn serve the pur- poses of entertainment before other audiences. Edmond About was twenty-seven when he brought out his first work, and M. Buloz lost no time in ordering a novel of him for the Revue, des Deux Mondes. M. About contributed " Tolla," a sort of autobiography, of which he drew the idea from an Italian novel published a few years previ- ously, but little read. He candidly admitted the imitation, but this did not save him from virulent 276 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. accusations of plagiarism, and the storm raised by this event had not yet lulled when the Theatre Frangais produced his three-act comedy, Ouillery, which a cabal (swelled, it is said, by the entire Greek colony of Paris, and by contingents from London and Marseilles) killed in two nights. Acute M. de Villemessant, always on the look-out for writers with a little spleen to vent, engaged the furious author to write chroniques in the new Figaro under a pseudonym, and M. About' s detractors were soon brought to book in a style they had not reckoned on. One must recall the political stagnation of France at that time to realise the interest which literary quarrels excited. Parisians pounced upon newspapers containing a good slashing lampoon by one writer upon another as on butter in siege time, and the readers of the Figaro had no reason to complain that Vallentin de Qu^villy (M, About's nam, de plume) stinted them either as to the amount or the quality of the invectives he lavished. The writer's connection with the Figaro, however, terminated in an abrupt and singular way. The Emperor having been shot at, M. About wrote lightly : — " The only M. EDMOND ABOUT. 277 weapon to be relied on in trying to assassinate a sovereign is the dagger." These imprudent words very nearly dragged M. de Villemessant and his contributor before the Assizes under an indictment for inciting to murder ; as it was, the Figaro was only saved from extinction by M. de Qu^villy's instant dismissal. At that moment M. About was contributing novels and art criticisms to the Moniteur, as well as chroniques to the Figaro, and the public naturally expected that his repudiation by the latter print would have been followed by his departure from the official sheet. But M. About made his peace with the Tuileries through the interposition of Prince Napoleon. That free- thinking pseudo-liberal highness, who loved to play (on an economical scale) the part of Mecaenas, patronised About, assured the Emperor that he was a man to be courted, not quarrelled with, and secured his stay on the Moniteur. M. About wrote there some of the most charming things in the French language. Within four years he con- tributed " Les Manages de Paris," a series of novelettes ; " Le Roi des Montagues," a new satire on Greece, which acquired double force from the 278 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. journal which published it, and again brought down Hellenes innumerable about the author's ears; " Germaine," " Les Echasses de Maitre Pierre," and that most laughable of stories, " Trente et Quarante." It is impossible to speak too highly of these delightful books. The style of them is perfect, the humour inexhaustible, and the morality always pure. In this respect M. About is an example and a reproach to the class of French writers who contend that there is no being amusing ' without dipping into licence. Edmond About's novels are those of a gentleman, and he deserves to be classed honourably apart with MM. Erckmann-Chatrian, among the fiction writers of the Second Empire. One would be glad to say as much for the author's politics as for his books ; but the smiles of society had soon thawed the Republicanism he brought with him from the Ecole Normale. He was the Empress's favourite author, and knew it. No ofiicial rout was complete without him. He shunned many of his old friends ; then, finding himself cut by them in return, he began to sprinkle the vials of his bitterest ridicule on the M. EDMOND ABOUT. 279 men and principles of the Liberal party. This was not a very brave performance towards a body of men who were being exiled and thrown into gaol ; and though M. About has since returned to his first faith, Liberals can never quite forgive him for his cruel treatment of them at a time when it would have been at least gracious to be silent. In 1858 M. About received the Cross of the Legion of Honour, and shortly afterwards was sent, at Government expense, to report on the condition of Rome. He had never, though a Bonapartist, recanted his Positivist tenets. He was purely a Csesarist, of the same mood as Caesar himself at that moment ; and in sending him to Rome, the Emperor well knew what kind of report to expect. M. About, on his return, published " La Question Romaine," a pamphlet which stirred a commotion from one end of Europe to the other. It was bold, powerful, and full of the most im- placable logic, but its chief importance was derived from its being supposed to echo the Emperor's own views on the Italian question, and if the Emperor had any clear views at that time, no doubt the pamphlet did represent thenK' From 28o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. tliat moment M. About was generally regarded iu France as one of the future Ministers of the Empire, and he himself had full confidence in his shining destiny. He contributed to Prince Na- poleon's organ, JJ Opinion Kationale, a series of anti-Papal articles ; published two more political pamphlets, " La Nouvelle Carte d'Europe " and " La Prusse en 1860 ;" brought out a pendant to his first Greek book — "Eome Contemporaine ;" and accepted a standing engagement as leader writer on the semi-official Constitutionnel. Then, aspir- ing to consecrate his reputation by a theatrical success, he wrote a drama — Gaetana — incautiously wrote, for the fine coalition of enemies he had arrayed against himself were only waiting for some such opportunity to pay off old scores ; and pay they did. Gaetana was brought out at the Odeon on the 2nd of January, 1862. All the author's foes, religious, pohtical, and hterary, seemed to have gathered there, and from the moment the curtain rose until the going down thereof the tumult of yells and hisses was inconceivable. At the close of the performance the Latin Quarter students, who had attended in a body to damn M. EDMOND ABOUT. the piece, marclied processionally to the office of the Gonstitutionnel in the Rue de Valois, and gave three groans for that newspaper ; then they wended their way to the Passage Saulnier, where M. About resided, and favoured him with a charivari which lasted half an hour. Gaetana — a drama of un- doubted merit, by the way — had to be withdrawn on the fourth night, nor was it ever able to attain a longer run in the provinces. During a couple of months the departmental cities where the piece was mounted became the scenes of turbulent demonstrations as in Paris, the clergy, in more than one instance, encouraging their flocks to go and hiss. It should be mentioned that the Figaro, where M. About had originally written, had be- come by this time foremost among his tormentors, the chief reason being that M. About had declined- to return to the staff of that journal when solicited by M. de Villemessant. The Figaro described the persecution of Gaetana as " an act of justice sug- gested by outraged public conscience." Ten years have elapsed since this time, and Ed- mond About has somehow retreated to a secondary place in public estimation. He has long ceased 282 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. to be thought a rising statesman. Not long after his marriage with Mademoiselle Guillerville, of Roncherolles, near Rouen (1864), he was invited to Compifegne, where the Emperor sounded him, and presumably found him wanting, for the rumours that arose as to a prefecturate being offered him proved unfounded. About was not indeed a man to take Napoleon's fancy. He is both too original in mind and too independent in action ; he would have given any Home Minister under whom he had served, or any Cabinet of which he was a member, a world of trouble. Besides his allegiance to Cassarism was necessarily dashed, in a man so able, with a large dose of precipitate liberalism which needed only a good shaking to be brought to the top. Once About was rid of his cer- tainty that the Empire intended rewarding him, he turned sour, flagellated despotism in society, threw up the place he had kept tliroughout on the Moniteur, and became one of the founders of the Gaulois, then (1868) a Liberal paper. The pre- text he gave for this change of camp M'as the policy of the Empire in the Roman question ; but M. EDMOND ABOUT. 283 his conversion seemed, even to Parisians, astonish- ingly complete, for he attacked the Government with so much vehemence that the sale of the Gaulois was interdicted in the streets. For a few weeks at the commencement of the Ollivier Minis- try he adopted a soothing tone again ; but then it was known that he expected being appointed to a diplomatic post. WTien the post was not forth- coming, mainly owing to the influence of the Empress, who was offended at the tergiversations of her pet author, he proceeded anew to great lengths in liberalism, the Soir being the paper which he selected as his vehicle. It was as war correspondent to this journal that he witnessed the Campaign of 1870, and wrote the graphic, but sensational letters for which the Germans probably wanted to punish him. M. About was the first Bonapartist writer to turn round and ad- vocate the dethronement of the Emperor ; he is now editor of the XlXme SUcle, an organ which professes to be Repubhcan, but is in reality Aboutist, positivist, and Prussophobian. One cannot but sympathise with M. About in his antipathy to the Germans, who have conquered the soil on which 284 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. he was born ; but one must remark that the in- sensate war he has of late waged against them by tongue and pen goes some way to prove that if he be the best of writers he would make but an in- different statesman. This in degi'ee justifies the Emperor, who hesitated to make him a Prefect ; and M. Tliiers, who a year ago asked time to con- sider before appointing him Minister at Lisbon. M. CASIMIE PEEIEE. TT is not every one who, being the intimate friend of princes, has the courage to proclaim himself a Republican, and M. Casimir P^rier has in this respect set a bold precedent. And yet, after all, why bold ? M. P^rier receives the Count of Paris at his house, and soon after his guest has left him writes a letter, declaring that his private attach- ments do not influence his political convictions. If M. P^rier had received the Chinese Ambassadors, and stated afterwards that he still preferred the Christian faith to that of Confucius, nobody would have felt much surprised ; it is only, then, part of the unmanly idolisation of everything related to anj^body who has ever worn a crown, which has led people to bestow either praise or witticism on an act which was merely natural and conscientious. In France a few millions of persons, shrewd in 286 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. their way, and logical, awake every morning and say : " Under what Government shall we be living this day month ? Supposing M. Thiers were to die, what then ? The Bourbons misgoverned us long, and we got rid of them in 1830. The Orleans family did very little good, and we ex- pelled them too. As for the Bonapartes, they have twice drained our pockets dry, and flooded our country with invaders." And now for the conclusion : ■' Seeing, then, how great a failure Monarchy has proved, what a truly merciful thing it would be if one of the cashiered families could be set over us again ! " In a witty, sagacious, and liberty-loving nation such as France, it is, oddly enough, a rarity when a man steps forward and argues : — " Seeing how great a failure Monarchy has always proved, I am of opinion that we try something else." M. Pdrier having liad the sense to say this. Frenchmen are divided as to whether he can be in earnest, or whether, being in earnest, he is not angling for the Vice-Presidency of the Republic. The larger section incline to a medley of both notions, and accordingly M. Pdrier passes amid the quidnuncs of politics for a states- il. CASIMIR PERIER. 287 man of the designing sort who looks upon words merely as a bait to catch place. This comes in a degree of having had an emi- nent but autocratical father. M. Auguste-Casimir- Victor-Laurent P^rier, born at Paris on the 20th of August, 1811, is eldest son of a celebrated Minister who died in 1832. M. Casimir' P^rier the elder was, after M. Thiers and the Emperor Napoleon, the ruler who in the present century has best understood Frenchmen, and governed them with the firmest hand. A French Whig in politics, he had hesitated about overturning Charles X., and after having helped to do so had repented of it, and endeavoured to atone by trying to conduct Louis Philippe's Government on high Tory principles. He was patriotic, just, averse from tyranny, but not over-fond of any but theo- retical liberty ; as addicted to military enterprises as most Frenchmen, and a consummate party leader. Above all, he was honester than leading politicians always were in his day ; and the present M. Casimir Pc^rier, who was tvrenty at the time of his father's Premiership, can have drawn from his career none but satisfactory lessons. The immense 288 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. regret felt in France at the death of the great Prime Minister threw a kind of halo over his son. The inheritance of a famous name is at all times difficult to bear, but never more so, perhaps, than when the name is one rendered illustrious by statesmanship. Young P4'ier was early pushed into the official groove, and entered the diplo- matic service before he was out of his teens. He was appointed attache in London, then secretary of embassy at Brussels, and afterwards at the Hague ; and, by rapid promotion, soon found himself charg^ d'affaires at Naples, whence he was sent in the same capacity to St. Petersburg, and finally went as Minister Pleni- potentiary to Hanover. By this time, having attained his thirty-fifth year, he turned his thoughts to home politics, and in 1846 was elected member for the First Circumscription of Paris as a Moderate Liberal, giving an independent support to M. Guizot. Men fancied then that the throne of Louis Philippe was as secure as Napoleon's seemed after the plebiscitum. The question of the Spanish marriages had just been settled ; the Republicans were growing dispirited at the repeated M. CASIMIR PERIER. 289 collapse of their insurrectionary attempts ; and the subject of electoral reform, that was looming ahead, seemed one rather of parliamentary than of national interest. M. Casimir P^rier favoured the extension of the suffrage, and the " adjonction des capacit^s," which was to give a vote to professional men, without reference to the amount of taxes they paid ; he took a prominent part in many of the debates ; grew more and more Thiersist as M. Guizot became more obstinate ; and in public opinion Avas booked for an Under-Secretaryship of State under the first coalition Cabinet, which should be led by some such man as M. Odillon Barrot. The revolution of 1848 nipped all his hopes short, and M. P^rier lived for some time in retirement, amusing himself with farming ; for though elected (second out of five candidates, for the Department of the Aube, where his estates are situated) to the Legislative Assembly in 1849, he had not yet become a convert to Republicanism, and his Orleanist proclivities debarred him from accepting any post under a democratical Government. He voted, however, with the majority, was a member of the "Commission de Permanence," and generally 290 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. supported the policy of the Elys^e, till the forma- tion of the Ministry which preceded the cowp diktat, against which he protested, and was imprisoned several days at Mont Valerian in consequence. Approving of despotism no more than of anarchy, he remained in retirement during the Empire. True to his convictions, he. was coquetted with by successive prefects, and declining to perceive the advantages of Bonapartist government, was opposed by official candidates at all the elections. He succeeded, however, in getting himself returned Councillor-General in 1864 ; and in 1869 obtained over 15,000 votes in his native department, the Aube, which had elected him in 1849. But these were poor triumphs for a man who must have counted on becoming Prime Minister some day, like his father ; and Liberal Frenchmen owe a debt of gratitude to M. P^rier for having, along with other patriots, declined to hold any terms with the meretricious r(^gime which spared no brilliant promises to win him. During the Franco-German war, M. P^rier continued to live quietly on his property at Pont-sur-Seine, but sent his son to join the defenders of Paris. Neverthe- M. CASIMIR PERIER. 291 less, he was arrested by the Germans on a false charge, shut up in the prison of Troyes, and transferred to Rheims to be tried by a court- martial. He was liberated, however, under the terms of the armistice as a candidate for the National Assembly ; and on the elections of the 8th of February, 1871, was chosen representative for Isere (Bouches du Rhone), by 47,776 votes, and also for the Department of the Aube, by 38,548 votes out of 56,484 voters. He now sits for the Department of the Aube, and his skill as a financier caused him to be selected as Reporter of the Exceptional Budget of 1871, which imposed 500,000,000 francs of new taxes on the French people. On the accession to power of M. Thiers, it was natural that M. P^rier should receive his reward, if reward it be to be appointed Cabinet Minister at a time when all parties are up in arms against each other. His short stay at the Home Office was marked by an admixture of vigour and conciliation. He was much liked by his prefects, who found in him a resolute but never meddling chief; and on his retirement from the Cabinet, owing principally to 292 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. his financial antagonism with M. Thiers, the general hope among all Government employes was that he would soon come back again. Since then M. Casimir P^rier has been men- tioned in connection with a possible Triumvirate, to include Marshal MacMahon and M. Gr^vy, and to succeed M. Thiers in the event of the latter' s abrupt resignation. Those who broached this curious scheme must know as little of M. P^rier as of the two other statesmen. A thoughtful, scholarly politician, with a dash of the diplomatist, and some acid humour in his composition, M. P^rier would not be the man to act pleasantly in an}^ political combination where his part was not clearly defined. He would work well as subaltern, better still as chief, but he would soon break up a Trium- virate where there were two colleagues holding a rank and aspiring to wield an influence equal to his o-ivn. M. Casimir P^rier has the bluff, blue- eyed, whiskered face of the Anglo-Saxon race. When these traits appear in Frenchmen, they prognosticate a spirit of enterprise and an obsti- nacy which nothing can bend. M. P^rier has declared himself a Republican, but this does not Af. CASIMIR PERIER. 293 mean that lie is a Eadical. His convictions have indeed not altered a jot since 1846, except in the one point which concerns an elective instead of an hereditary Chief of the Executive. He sits among the deputies of the Right Centre, and has voted in favour of the preliminaries of peace, the municipal law, the abrogation of the laws of exile, the valida- tion of the elections of the royal princes, and the maintenance of treaties of commerce, but against the Government on the question of the temporal power. He is no friend to M. Gam- betta, and would not co-operate with him. He would not sanction any scheme which should revolutionise the French judicial system (the most needed of all reforms), or go too great lengths in decentralisation. If he were President he would not diminish the standing army by a single man, nor (other much -needed reform) retrench on the navy estimates ; nor, again, would he be very friendly to Victor Emmanuel. But the press would have an easy time of it under him, for one of his standing complaints whilst Minister was that M. Dufaure and General Ladmirault drove him to take measures against newspapers 294 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. ■which were quite foreign to his instincts, and ^vhich he deemed quite useless. Again, if M. Casimir P^rier were President, he would be a devoted friend to England, which he admires with all his heart and soul. But it is to be feared he will never be President. The next French Presi- dent will, if there be a next, be a Eepublican in the pure Radical sense of the term, probably not a simple Constitutionalist. M. JULES SIMON. A MAN who has succeeded in politics rather by the exercise of perseverance than by a display of brilliant qualities, must always expect that other men who have not succeeded will accuse him of being a schemer. Thus, M. Jules Simon having been Minister of Public Instruction during two years of trouble, it is part of the cant current among caf^ politicians, to joke about his long tenure of office, as doing honour rather to his suppleness of mind than to his stoutness of principle. Perhaps they who thus joke would be well employed in considering whether a man who retains a trying post two years under circum- stances unusually difficult does not from this very fact show his fitness to hold it. But the truth is, M. Simon has done more than retain his place. He has brought his adversaries to own that no Minister could have discharged his func- 296 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. tions with more tact, and less party spirit. He has been active without fussiness, bold at inno- vating where occasion required it, but very tem- perate in asserting his authority, and especially sedulous not to subvert old customs for the mere pleasure of changing. Moreover, having to deal with that most irritable section of mankind, artists and literary men, he has made himself rather a favourite with these gentlemen. The only one among the men of the 4th September who has remained in office, he was favoured eighteen months ago with more than his fair share of the unpopularity so freely lavished upon liis col- leagues. At present the great difficulty would be to find him a successor who would prove half so acceptable to both sides of the Assembly — to Monarchists as well as Republicans. M. Jules Frangois Simon (whose original name was Suisse) was born on the 31st of December, 1814, at L' Orient, in Brittany. He looks much younger than his age, being strongly built and, as the French say, " bien conserve ; " he has also the prosperous mien, erect gait, and polished manners which are more often found in Govern- M. JULES SIMON. 297 ment dignitaries of long standing and in general officers than in men whose life has been given to scholarship and philosophy. This only proves, however, what deception there may be in appearances. M: Jules Simon is nothing if not a man of letters. At school he passed for an inveterate bookworm, and yet it is on record that having been dubbed with this title by a school- fellow, since become a distinguished general, he entered into a combat with him, which turned out better than that of Wellington with Bobus Smith. Soon after finishing his studies at the colleges of L' Orient and Vannes, he was appointed assist- ant professor at the college of R^nnes ; was ad- mitted to the Ecole Normale (1833), and made such good use of his two years' stay there that he was only suffered to remain a year in a secondary post at the Lyc^e of Caen, and was then transferred to Versailles. This system of moving intelligent professors about the country, hke chessmen, has not many advantages. The inducement it offers to ambitious young scholars to give sensational lectures instead of sober instruction is often irre- sistible ; and M. Simon was taxed by more than 298 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. one bourgeois father with having lectured above the heads of his pupils in the hope of attracting the attention of the Minister of Public Instruction. However this might be, M. Simon was as bril- liantly successful at Versailles as he had been in Normandy. The best of Victor Cousin's pupils, he was a more facile and more colloquial orator than his master ; and though of course a philo- sopher of inferior calibre, had the talent to persuade not a few that he would some day outshine him. Recalled to Paris (1838), he was promoted to an assistant -professorship at the Ecole Normale ; and in 1839, being then but five-and-twenty years old, supplemented M. Cousin in his chair of philosophy at the Sor- bonne. This lectureship, which M. Simon held for twelve years, established his reputation, but also confined it within its due liniits. It became apparent that Jules Simon was a clever, well-read, and very liberal-minded man, but that he was not deep enough to found a new school of philosophy of his OAvn, or even to add much strength to that of which he was a disciple ; but that he had a taste and an aptitude for politics. He thought a jl/. JULES SIMON. 299 good deal of economical reforms ; touclied in his lectures on the condition of the worldng classes ; and broached views which seemed very bold thirty- years ago on the relation between labour and capital. He was besides a diligent contributor to the Revue des Deux Mondes, and published learned and not too abstruse treatises on Plato, Aristotle, and the School of Alexandria. In 1845, the name he had acquired as a public educator counselled the Government to reward him with the Legion of Honour; and in 1846, feeling strong enough to fly on his own wings, he offered himself to the electors of the Cotes du Nord as a moderate and constitutional oppositionist of the Thiers order. But here he failed, for he had the clergy against him. The Breton priests vowed it was singular impudence in an " Infidel" to come and solicit the suffrages of their Catholic flocks, and they organised against him demonstrations which ex- cited a good deal of talk at the time, but which somehow — such are the variations of human nature — did not prevent him from being returned enthusiastically in 1848 by the very electors who, in 1846, would have been ready to 300 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. bum him under a church porch. In the Con- stituent Assembly M. Simon became an authority on educational matters, and by-and-by was elected a Councillor of State by the National Assembly. His votes as a deputy had been always with the Left Centre, and his speeches advocated moderate Liberalism. During the civil warfare of June he risked his life with the most praiseworthy courage in facing the insurrectionary barricades, and pene- trating into the rebel quarters to play the part of conciUator ; and it is related that he made a really noble answer to the revolutionist Barth^emy, who, having caught him roughly by the arm, was shout- ing, " Supposing we were to serve you Hke the traitor Br^a ? " "I wish you would," answered Simon quietly, " if only you would cease firing afterwards." Up to the time of the cowp d'itat, Jules Simon's politics had been rather eclectic than Republican, and he might easily have embraced the plea adopted by many who are now his detractors, and have done homage to the new Empire under pre- tence of its having been sanctioned by the people. Had he taken this course his career would probably M. JULES SIMON. 301 have been like M. Duruy's. He would have been appointed Minister of Public Instruction and Sena- tor, witb this difference, however, that his talent for ingratiating himself even with adversaries would have given him a securer hold upon his seals than the shallow minister and historian of the Second Empire ever had. But M. Simon — the "schemer" — was not so much of a man of business as to prefer his personal interests to the promptings of his conscience. He uttered a most fearless and dignified protest in the Sorbonne against the outrage upon liberty which had been consummated, and his lectures were suppressed by a special decree in consequence. M. Simon had no private fortune, and his political honesty com- pelled him to begin the battle of life over again. He did so bravely and unrepiningly. He went back to his desk, plunged deeper than he had done before into the study of political economy, and produced a series of books of which "L'Ouvrifere" in particular achieved a rapid popularity, and is almost as much read now as it was on its first appearance. Then, finding all lecture rooms in France closed to him, he started in 1855 on a 302 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. round of "conferences" in Belgium, and every where — at Liege, Gand, Bruges, and Brussels — was listened to with the deepest interest. A hint con- veyed by the French Ministers to the Belgian Cabinet put a stop to these successes, which the Imperial Government considered, and with reason, as intended affronts upon itself M. Simon came back to France again, and in 1861 caused a new stir by some lectures at St. Quentin and Verviers, intended to promote the creation of " citds ouv- rieres" (model lodging-houses). The Prefect of Police conveyed to him, through the medium of a common friend, that the Government could not allow any movement for the improvement of the working classes to be undertaken, unless the name of Napoleon was mentioned eulogistically in con- nection with it. M. Simon answered that 60,000 francs had been raised in one city and 240,000 francs in another on behalf of the model lodging- house movement without the co-operation of Napo- leon's name, and that he really could not see what that name had to do with the matter. He was told in replj^ that he had better take care of him- self, and that the eye of the Rue de Jerusalem M. JULES SIMON. 303 would be upon him. From this moment friends who had a foot in both camps, Liberal and Ceesa- rian — MM. Duruy, Caro, and others — began to play the pumps of cajolery on Jules Simon. They tried to win him over. The Empire wanted a man of tact, sense, and spirit to undertake the Education Department, in which the square-headed M. Rou- land was floundering knee deep. "A salary of £4,000 a year," said one. "House rent free, patronage and perquisites," insinuated another. " The chance of doing good," put in a third tempter. " And the friendship of the Empress, who reads all your books and admires them," said a fourth. M. Jules Simon was lodging in a fifth floor, Place de la Madeleine. The lodgings were not large nor the furniture sumptuous. He retorted with a quiet smile, " I attach little importance to forms. I am an advocate of simple freedom. Bring me liberty in any form, with the Orleans princes, with the Republic, or even with Napoleon, and I am ready to serve you. But I am not a footman, and the Ministership you would give me under a regime such as this would be a menial office, and nothing more." At the general elections of 1869 304 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. the name of Jules Simon was one of the most popular in the country. He was proposed as a candidate for a great number of departments, and no less than 100,000 votes were recorded in his favour. He was chosen for the Gironde by 17,530 votes out of 29,845 voters, and for Paris by 30,305 votes out of 39,701 voters, as against 8,742 votes given to the Government candidate. After the plebis- citum of the 8th of May, 1870, he made a bold and eloquent protest against the manner in which the Hsts of free and independent voters had been cooked. He offered an energetic opposition to the declaration of war against Prussia, and on the revolution of the 4th of September following was proclaimed, together with all the representatives of Paris, a member of the Government of National Defence installed at the Hotel de Ville. On the following day, September 5th, he was appointed Minister of Public Instruction, Worship, and Fine Arts. One of the first acts of his administration was the abolition of the theatrical censorship (since re-established), and the suppression of sub- ventions to the ex-imperial houses. He opened the library of the Senate to the public, and M. yULES SIMON. 305 granted the free use of the Luxembourg Palace for the meetings of learned societies ; gave the names of Corneille, Descartes, and Condorcet to the prin- cipal educational establishments in Paris, thereby instituting literary and scientific recollections for dynastic titles. He restored to the faculty of medicine in Paris the right of assembling, on the simple convocation of the dean, to deliberate upon all questions interesting to the progress of their studies ; and submitted to the vote of a majority the granting of exhibitions in the public schools. Taken jirisoner during the insurrection on the night of the 31st of October, he was rescued by the National Guard ; and on the Slst of January, 1871, within a few days after the capitulation of Paris, he set out for Bordeaux, with full powers, for the possible case of M. Gambetta refusing to subscribe to the conditions of surrender. Under these difficult circumstances he displayed a good deal of firmness and tact. He annulled the decree which had declared official candidates and persons who had been employed under the Empire ineligible for re-election ; and, in spite of the noisy partisanship of the south, so circumvented JI. X 306 AIEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Gambetta, that the Dictator resigned all authority, and the elections of the 8th of February were con- ducted with as much regularity as possible. M. Simon was not chosen again for Paris, but was elected deputy for the Marne, fifth on a list of eight candidates, and obtained 34,727 votes. M. Thiers then appointed him Minister of Public Instruction in the " Conciliation " Cabinet of the 1 9 th of February. During the Commune, M. Simon addressed a circular letter to the rectors of uni- versities, enjoining them to forbid their professors to write articles in the Eadical newspapers, and he was passionately attacked in consequence. He proposed and carried the law for rebuilding the Napoleon Column in the Place Vendome, and for repairing the Expiatory Chapel (for Louis XVI.) ; and as Minister of Worship he ordered the public prayers decreed by the National Assembly on the 16th of Maj^ He has voted for the abrogation of the laws of exile, the customs treaty, and the return of the National Assembly to Paris. Four Ministers have since the Revolution engraved their names deep on the records of M. JULES SIMON. 307 the Education Department — MM. Guizot, Cousin, de Salvandy, and Duruy. The last named, though a Ca3sarist and an egotist, meant well, but he did harm. It was his boast that at any moment in the daj^ when he drew out his watch every schoolboy in France was repeating the same lesson. 1 Thus no allowance for individuality, for backward provinces, or for districts that seemed more enlightened — one obdurate rule, hard, co- gent, and absurd. M. Jules Simon has come just in time to save France from being crushed down under the force of a system which was making of education a common routine, and a tyi-anny in- stead of a blessing. When elected to the Coi-ps L^gislatif, M. Simon said in his pro- gramme : — " Education should be the instruc- tion of children in the pleasantest and most thorough way possible." A rural schoolmaster being asked not more than a month ago what he thought of M. Simon's governance as compared to M. Duruy' s, replied, " Well, he sends us Erckmann- Chatrian's tales instead of ' Tel^maque,' and tells us to mind ■ our pupils more and politics less. (Schoolmasters used to be the prime electoral 3o8 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. agents under the Empire.) He is not such a Minister as the others — in fact, rather a mild one all over, I fancy." This verdict might be com- mended to the shrewd diviners who picture M. Simon as being patiently engaged in setting crafty nets for catching — the vacated shoes of M. Thiers. M. YICTOEIEN SAEDOU. npHE portraits of the First Napoleon at the time when he was only General Bonaparte, and had not yet won at Marengo, show a lanky young man with sunken cheeks, and hair falling to within an inch of his shoulders. M. Victorien Sardou might be taken for a copy of that picture, and he has this further point of resemblance with his proto- type — that he has succeeded quite as rapidly in his profession as the great captain did in his, and by victories not less startling and unexpected. M. Sardou Avas born at Paris, September 7th, 1831, and he already stands chief among French playwrights ; for though there are plenty who distance him in merit, yet he is the founder of a school whose adejDts are constantly on the increase, and it is an unquestionable fact that several amongst his brother dramatists who have been loudest in denouncing his productions 310 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. as a desecration of art, have also been the first to undergo his influence. M. Emile Augier is one of these, though probably he would be much shocked to hear it. M. Dumas held good for a time, but one of his last pieces, La Princesse George, evinces a conversion to many of M. Sardou's methods. MM. Halevy, Meilhac, Cadol, and the whole generation of rising playwrights, are Sardouists purely and simply. It takes patience, study, and unhurried labour, not to mention natural gifts, to make a first-class writer ; it needs but a sense of humour and an in- tuitive perception into the foibles of the age to make a successful one. M. Sardou, however, mioht have been both a good and a successful writer if he had pleased ; for, contrary to the rule that obtains among most French playwrights, he is a man of considerable erudition. His favourite study is history ; he is well read in archaeology ; and a twelvemonth ago, when Le Roi Caroite was being rehearsed at the Gait^, the manager of that theatre was not a little surprised to hear him give directions as to classic scenery and costume that were too minute and accurate to have been read M. VICTORIEN SARDOU. 311 up for the occasion. Let it be added that the surprise was the greater as M. Sardou had just been showing that he knew all about insects. The butterfly and beetle pageant in the burlesque is all his own. He sends his manuscripts to managers with scenic and decorative instructions so precise as to leave little margin for the imagination of painters or costumiers. These artists often grumble, and aver that other authors are not so dictatorial. But M. Sardou takes pattern by no man ; he drills his actors and actresses as Napoleon did his armies, and it has a curious effect upon any one who has watched him draw a learned treatise on inscriptions from his pocket during a rehearsal, to see him bound of a sudden before the footlights, and trounce an indolent actress in the very roundest of vernaculars. M. Sardou served a very rough apprenticeship before becoming what he is. The son of a professor, he was destined for the medical profession ; but lacking taste for that career, and, above all, money to perfect his studies in it, he turned tutor, gave lessons in history, philosophy, and mathematics, and eked out his gains by contri- buting historical or archfeological essays to ency- 312 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. clopsedias and second-rate reviews. He also did a little dramatic criticism for obscure newspapers, but Ms earnings were miserable, and there were few Latin-Quartier students at tbat time so out at elbows as himself. In 1853 he wrote a drama. La Taverne des Etudiants, and offered it to the Od^on. It was accepted and performed the follow- ing year, but it failed, and the young author, con- vinced that he had no vocation for stage work, went back to his pupils and his garret, making no effort to retrieve his first mischance for the next five years. ,In the interval he married Mademoiselle de Br^court, under very romantic circumstances. His wife was an actress, who, lodging in the same house as himself, and hearing that there was a young man on the sixth floor lying ill from scarlet fever, and utterly destitute, nursed him from pure charity. On recovering M. Sardou offered her his hand, and the pair began life on nothing. It happened, how- ever, that Madame Sardou was a friend of Mdlle. D^jazet, who had recently (1858) obtained licence to open a theatre, and she advised her not very sanguine husband to try his hand at a new piece, and submit it to the manageress. M. Sardou M. VICTOR TEN SARDOU. 313 ■\\'rote the farce of CandMe, and took it in person to Mdlle. Ddjazet's country-house, where, it seems, his intelhgent face, rather than the letter of recom- mendation he brought, secured him a welcome. Mdlle. D^jazet never refused help to struggling talent. She read Sardou's piece with him there and then in her garden, and accepted it at once, pre'dicting that, though hurriedly written and full of episodes that were not very new, it would be a success from its liveliness. This prophecy was realised. M. Sardou's hasty feat of writing had stood -him in good stead, for it had made him pro- duce a play where the incidents succeeded each other at an unhalting pace. There were few re- flections and no long soliloquies ; the dialogue was sharp and precipitate ; no dull spectator (and the dull are generally a majority in every audience) would go to sleep during such a piece. Seeing how thoroughly he had succeeded by the slovenliness which should have ensured his failure, M. Sardou from that moment devoted himself to the writing of plays, headlong. Unlike M. Dumas, who medi- tates upon all his works until they bear an almost painful evidence of condensed thought, M. Sardou 314 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. sits down and gives his pen tlie rein. No play of liis, with the single exception of Patrie, has ever taken him more than six weeks to write ; and as Patrie is perhaps the best of his works, it was hoped by his admirers that, having amassed a large fortune by writing hurriedly, he would now take to writing more slowly and carefully for fame's sake. But M. Sardou contends that the public chiefly desire to be amused, and that the only way to amuse them, and by so doing to retain one's jDojDularity (which he seems to class above fame), is to supply them with sensation. His unbroken series of triumphs certainly go some way to justify this supposition. After Candide his other pieces fol- lowed rapidly. He wrote for the Theatre D^jazet, the Palais Royal, the Vaudeville, and the Gymnase. Not a single play failed ; all were applauded en- thusiastically ; and a few — iYos Irdimes, Pattes de Mouches, La FarnilU Betioiton, and Nos Bons Vil- lageois amongst others — were run after in a manner almost unprecedented in French dramatic annals. When one analyses a play of M. Sardou's, one is astonished at the flimsy and worn-out materials of which it is composed. The f)lots are all old ones J/. VICrORIEN SARDOU. 315 tinkered up, and often not so much as varnished anew. The " situations " have all been made to do service before by other authors, and the dialogue is generally a mere rechauffe of the jests and banter that have ajjpeared in light-headed news- papers. M. Sardou has been accused over and over again of plagiarism, and occasionally proofs positive have been furnished by his indicters ; but proofs were superfluous, for he has never denied the charge, asserting that an author has as much right as the bee to suck flowers right and left in order to make honey. What no one can deny is, that M. Sardou has an incomparable faculty for weavins; out of his old materials comedies which beguile one into listening till the fall of the cur- tain. The well-read critic may shrug his shoulders as he goes home, and wonder how he can have sat patiently to hear things so often heard before ; but he has been amused, and therefore cannot help feeling towards M. Sardou as towards a clever con- juror. Another thing to be said for M. Sardou is that his works have never been redolent of the cynicism and bjrutal contempt for morality which M. Dumas affects. They are very French plays, 3i6 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. marked by episodes which are sometimes in bad taste, and now and then downrightly coarse (e.g., Nos Intimes, Act 3), but they are not immoral. M. Sardou has never, under a pretence of being a psychological anatomist, gloated over the social sores which public decency requires should be kept covered. It was thought, some months back, that after being the introducer of sensation- alism into French comedy, M. Sardou would have the honour of restoring politics to the stage. But the recent interdict of M. Halt's Madame Frainex, which was a counterpart of Eabagas, shows that the Government is not very anxious to repeat the experiment which in the case of M. Sardou's play led to such noisy results. This is, perhaps, a pity ; for after having had the charlatanry of Republican adventurers displayed before them, the play-going public should have been allowed a glimpse of royalty's seamy side. It is even doubtful whether, if he had been given the chance, M. Sardou would not himself have written some such play as Madame Fvainex, in order to undeceive those who, on the strength of Eabagas, have taxed him too hastily with being a Bona- M. VICTORIEN SARDOU. 317 partist. M. Sardou has no political flag. He is shrewd enough to detect the failings of most systems elaborated for the governance of men, and humour enough to turn the same to good account in his comedies. But he is the first to repudiate all pretension of being a political reformer. Deco- rated by the Emperor, possessed of a large fortune, residing in a truly princely villa at Marly, and lately married for the second time, he is not one of those men who can afford to be revolutionists. On the other hand, the recollection of his early years of penury inspires him with a keen sympathy for the unfortunates who are driven by hunger and ignorance into following the mountebanks — royal or popular — who trade on the needs and credulity of the masses. M. Sardou is a man whose brain is worthy of better things than it has ever been set to perform. It is a powerful mill that has been made to grind only chaff. If his career were to close now, it would leave a sincere regret in the minds of those who knew him and would wish to see him produce a work that should take a permanent place in French literature. But he is young, and may amend. ADMIEAL POTHUAr. TF the French could only be cured of the notion that there must some day be a war with Eng- land, they might i-educe their fleet by half, and considerably lighten their budget without much diminishing their effective strength, their nav}' being rather a costly ornament than a useful defence. On the other hand, the navy is so popular, its officers and men form so brave and respected a part of the nation, that it may be doubted whether the French taxpayer, who is never a very stingy person, would not rather see his dues increased than consent to any reduction in a service which is even dearer to him than his army. Frenchmen look upon their sailors with a pride which is not of recent growth, and which has stood the test of all reverses. Sailors have never been made to play a part in politics — that may be one of the reasons for their popularity. ADMIRAL POTHUAU. 319 They have been defeated, but always with honour. Then, in the last war, wherever they appeared, it was to set the example of all the qualities in which the land forces seemed deficient. The men were well disciplined, cool, hardy, and did their work without bragging ; the officers were able, chival- rous gentlemen. It cannot be said that the jealousy cherished by military men towards the sister service was much allayed by a campaign in which their own defects came out so conspicuously beside the merits of their rivals. But the favour- able impression which the French navy produced upon the nation at large will be ineffaceable. No better man could have been selected for the task of governing and reorganising the naval forces at this moment than Vice-Admiral Louis Pierre Alexis Pothuau. It has always been a moot point whether a civilian or a sailor should be at the head of the Navy Department, and the obstructive spirits of many of the admiral-ministers has led re- formers to prefer civilians. But Admiral Pothuau, whom shrewd M. Thiers singled out the moment he came into power, has all the liberal-mindedness of a clever civilian allied to professional activity and 320 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. experience. There is a story of a French Minister of Marine who, being asked on his retirement what he had done during four years' tenure of office, answered with some solemnity : " I left everything as I found it, and work enough too, considering the number of innovators who were always pester- ing me ! " Another — but this was a Danish Minister — being similarly interrogated, replied : " Well, I gave the fleet new uniforms and the ships new guns ; I built new frigates ; I have put new men in command, and introduced new rules into every branch of the service." Each of these statesmen might have done better, and they illustrate the two rocks from which naval admi- nistrators have to steer clear. The man who wants to do too much — who comes into his department with the idea of changing the very thole-pins in the ships' gigs, — that man soon runs athwart his colleague in the Finance Department, renders all the officers in the service sulky, and is popular only with contractors. Contrariwise, the Minister who shuts his ear to inventors, will havfe nothing to say to good advisers, and snubs with routinely haughtiness all legislators Avho examine ADMIRAL POTHUAU. 321 his estimates, — that Minister — too well known a type unfortunately — acts as corrodingly upon his department as mildew. Admiral Pothuau has just the sort of collected mind necessary to keep him from both extremes. Born at Paris on the 30th of October, 1815, he entered the Naval School in 1830, being then fifteen, and four years later had aheady so distinguished himself that his captain wrote of him — " M. Pothuau is a young officer of the greatest promise ; full of honour ; zealous and punctual in his duties." Superlatives being rather charily bestowed by superior officers upon subalterns, this might count for an enviable certificate, and young Pothuau's promotion from the rank of second-class to first-class " aspirant," and then to his lieutenancy, followed rapidly. By the time he got his epaulette he had sailed over most of the seas of the world. There was no fighting to speak of then, but the introduction of steam into the navy had given a great stimulus to voyages of exploration, and it was Pothuau's luck to be sent on several of these. In 1840 he was appointed aide-de-camp to his uncle, Admiral Y 322 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. Duperr^, then Naval Minister, and held this post for a year, and a most eventful year, for it was during that twelvemonth that Napoleon's ashes were brought from St. Helena, and that Prince de Joinville made the crew of the Bdle Poide swear to let him blow up the ship should the English attack it. The English had no thought of attack- O O ing it, but rumours of war were rife, thanks to the firm policy of Lord Palmerston and to the excited bewilderment of 51. Thiers, and Lieutenant Pothuau had all the advantage of being initiated into the preparations for a great struggle. He profited by the departmental lessons he learned, as he had benefited before by his studies on board ship during long cruises, and was accounted so bril- liant an officer that in 1843, when but twenty- eight, he was proposed for the Cross of the Legion of Honour — a distinction less lavished then than it has been since. A peculiarity about Lieutenant Pothuau was that he displayed much less Anglo- phobia than the average French naval officers of that day. That he looked forward with confidence to avenging Trafalgar in case of war is a matter of course, but his defiance of " Albion " never went ADMIRAL POTHUAU. 323 the spitfire lengths of the Prince de Joinville's, who used to talk at mess as if he could fight the British fleet single-handed, and indoctrinated not a few brother sailors -with that way of thinking Pothuau's good sense and modesty did not stand him in bad stead, however, with the spoilt child of the French navy. The Prince liked him well, and in 1846 obtained for him the command of the Roval yacht Heine Amelie — an honour which would have been the prelude to a speedy cap- taincy, and to an unbroken succession of pro- motions thereafter, had the Orleans Monarchy lasted, but which, as it was, served Pothuau but poorly, when the Repubhc of 1848 came, and relieved him of his ship. He did not obtain his captaincy — and only then after he had been re- peatedly passed over — until December, 1856 ; and as the Empire systematically kept down those who had been favoured by the Orleans dynasty, and declined noisily to revile their benefactors afterwards, means might possibly have been foimd for making him leave the service altogether, had not his gallant conduct during the Crimean war opportunely atoned for his ha\'ing been an Or- 324 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. leanist. He commanded a sloop of war, the Gaton, at the bombardment of Odessa, and was then sent to serve in the naval land batteries that were besieging Sebastopol. Here he was promoted from frigate to ship captaincy, and on his return to France was appointed assistant member to the Naval Board of Works. From this moment his career was smooth enough. He commanded the iron-clad Bretagne in the Italian Avar, obtained his rank of rear-admiral in 1864, and was twice (1861-2 and 1869-70) deputed to serve as member of the Admiralty Council. His services during these years, however, were not of a kind to bring him prominently before the public, and it was only at the siege of Paris that the opportunity was afforded him of giving scope to his abilities. As commander of Forts Issy, Bicetre, Montrouge, and Ivry, and by-and-by as General Commanding the 7th Division of the Third Army Corps, he showed qualities which would have been invaluable aids to a general with more dash in him than Trochu. His energy was indefatigable, and his buoyancy of mind quite contagious. Parisians wondered to see his sailors working under him ADMIRAL POTHUAU. 325 with such will and spirits, as if victory were always assured ; and at the armistice elections, on the 8th of February, 1871, the city elected him along with Admiral Saisset to be one of the deputies of the Seine. He had then just been gazetted Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour and Vice- Admiral ; and it was a common saying in Paris that if La Eonciere le Nourry, Saisset, and Pothuau had been the commanding triumvirate instead of Trochu, Yinoy, and Ducrot, the siege might not have ended as it did. Vice-Admiral Pothuau was chosen deputy for the Seine, thirteenth of forty-three candi- dates, by 139,280 votes out of 328,940 voters. The 19th of the same month he was appointed Minister of the Navy and the Colonies, on the formation of M. Thiers' s first Cabinet. He sig- nalised the few earliest months of his administra- tion by considerable reductions in the expense of his department ; but in June, 1872, an official announcement was made that the building of iron- clads, armed with new steel guns, was going on as usual. The Admiral has spoken several times in the National Assembly with much sailorly frank- 326 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. ness and sense, but only on questions relating to his department. He voted in favour of the preliminaries of peace, the abrogation of the laws of exile, the validation of the election of the Orleans princes, the customs treaty, and the return of the Parliament to Paris. Voted against the Government on the temporal power question. Although the more autocratic of the two ser- vices, the French navy has always been more liberal in politics than the army. This comes of naval officers being a better read and more thought- ful body of men ; and also from the fact that Courts have never acted so generously by sailors as by soldiers : whence bitterness, and a tendency amongst naval officers to side preferably with the popular feeling in the nation. It should be said, too, that political questions necessarily fail to ex- cite much interest in the minds of men who spend two-thirds of their lives on distant seas. Whilst far from home, sailors think much of their country, very little of its government ; and as they are seldom called upon to quell a rebellion, or to aid in assist- ing this or that adventurer to climb into power, they live tolerably exempt from party jiassions, ADMIRAL POTHUAU. 327 and never entertain that spiteful hatred for de- mocracy which is one of the most hopelessly in- eradicable prejudices in the army. More than one young midshipman bred in Catholicism and Legiti- mist principles, comes back to his not very edified family with an ill-concealed admiration for the principles of '89. He is not less Catholic, for sailors are never free-thinkers ; but he prefers Trance herself to all the dynasties in the world, and has the bluff courage to say so. Admiral Pothuau is a politician of this sort. He was an Orleanist from gratitude ; he served the Empire without liking that regime any more than the rest of the navy did ; but his politics are above all French, and if there were many members in the Assembly professing the same stolid un- canting patriotism as he, France might sail confi- dently ahead without needing to fear rocks. It is another instance, by the way, of that singular and irrational disbelief in the competency of naval men to fill any but nautical posts, that Admiral Pothuau' s name should never have been mentioned in con- nection TOth either the Presidency or Vice-Presi- dency. Yet if MacMahon, Faidherbe, or d'Aumale 328 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. are considered eligible candidates, then why not Pothuau, who is the intellectual superior of at least two of these gentlemen, and the equal in statesmanship, science, and courage of all three. The objections that militate against a soldier- Presiden^ would not apply to a sailor, for sailors have never been notorious for coups dJitat. At all events, as he does not aspire to the Presi- dential chair. Admiral Pothuau would make as suitable a Vice-President as any whose names have been put forward. M. LOUIS BLANC. 4 SUPPOSING a Parisian bourgeois to have gone to sleep in 1848 and to awake now, he would certainly ask to go to sleep again on learning tliat M. Louis Blanc was accounted a moderate Repub- lican. It would sound very hideous to such a man to hear that there were a class of Repub- licans more immoderate than M. Louis Blanc. " For what could any proletarian ask," might he say, " that this enthusiastic paradoxist was not prepared to grant ? He was for turning all society upside down ; nay, for shaving it away clean. He wanted to sink individualism — to give each work- man as much as another ; that is, to give clever A. no more than unskilful B. He installed a herd of ragamuffins on the scarlet benches of the Luxembourg Palace, where the Noailles, Broglies, and Montalemberts had sat, and over which Chan- cellor Pasquier had presided augustly, and ho 330 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. dubbed these persons ' the peers of labour ! ' A Httle man, forsooth, whom 200,000 vagabonds in blouses and tatters had set out to acclaim, one 17th of March, to the consternation of all householding folk. Paris was within an ace of having him for Dictator, and Paris means France. Louis Blanc holding the sceptre of Saint-Louis, and perhaps calling himself Louis XIX., just to show peaceful men that a Kepublican has as much right as a Bourbon to tack a numeral to his name ! What next ? And you call him a moderate Eepub- lican ! " So might a typical bourgeois of 1848 express himself. M. Louis Blanc is perhaps the only man in the world to think that he has not changed, and possibly he is in the right. It is not unlikely that he may be at heart the same enthusiast as he always was. If in power, he might try again to do what he nearly did in 1848 ; assuredly he has never recanted an opinion once advocated. Only mankind, which judges by externals, will set him down as a moderate - Republican, because his hair has greyed, because he has a coating of English varnish on him, and because, though first on the M. LOUIS BLANC. 331 list of members for Paris, lie talks as urbanely and academically as if he were member for Orleans. For that matter, though, his talk never smacked of the gutter. He was none of your rasping orators, who could jump on a kerbstone and bawl gammon to the million ; encircling a lamp-post with one arm, and sawing the air with the other. He weighed his words as if they cost him two sous apiece, but distributed them liberally nevertheless, being generous with his money. A singular man at best, for he loved Robespierre, who would not have loved him. Then he loved Eousseau ; but Rousseau would have thought it odd that a man who objected to individualism should pay five francs every day in 1848 for his individual dinner, and print the fact as a proof of his abstemiousness. But here M. Blanc might answer with some astonishment that one does net dine well for five francs. Yes ; but what of those workmen who were to live in common fraternally : Avould they be able to afford five francs ? " But those Avere toilers with the hand," would urge M. Loui^ Blanc, " whereas I am a worker with the brain : " " Un travailleur de la pensde." Yes ; but how 332 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. draw the line, and why draw it at all ? Is not one member as worthy as another ? Why per- petuate the degrading distinction which would subject the hands to the head ? There should be no aristocracies, least of all an anatomical aris- tocracy, in a free Republic. If an incapable work- man for making bad tables is entitled to earn as much as a clever workman for making good ones, then obviously a stupid author writing dull books may claim as much as an illustrious writer pubUsh- ing master works. And the same rule is applicable universally. To do M. Blanc justice, he would not have been the man to recede from the conse- quences of his theories as applied to himself ; but it would have greatly shocked him to see MM. Thiers, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo walking to some national pay office, and being remunerated for their labours on the same scale as the poets who indite puff advertisements. This inconsistency paints the man. He is a thinker — sometimes a dreamer, but no man of action. Jean Joseph Louis Blanc was born at Madrid in or about the year 1811. His father was Inspector General of Finance to King Joseph Bonaparte, M. LOUIS BLANC. 333 and a gentleman of fair descent, whose ancestors had settled at Rouergue. His grandfather had been imprisoned and guillotined during the Reign of Terror. His mother was a lady of the noble house of Pozzo di Borgo. Brought to France at the fall of the Empire, he studied at the College of Rodez, and in 1830, when he had finished his education, was an accomplished scholar. Of high birth, and having nothing but a small allowance from his uncle, M. Ferri Pisani, he was forced by the straitened circumstances of his parents to earn his living first as a mathematical tutor, and then as a lawyer's clerk. MeanwhUe, however, M. de Flaugergue, an ex-President of the Chamber of Deputies and a friend of his family, began to teach him politics ; and there is a tradition that he was nearly lost in the diplo- matic service, but saved himself by a sharp answer to the Duchess de Dino, who, thinking him a child from his extreme smallness, had laughingly advised him to cut his teeth before applying to Talleyrand for an attacheship. In 1832 M. Louis Blanc accepted the place of private tutor to the son of M. Hallette, a manufacturer of Arras ; and. 334 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. having passed two years of his life in that modest capacity, awoke semi-famous one morn- ing after winning a prize for two poems and an essay from the Academy of Arras. He was then about twenty-three, and came to Paris to try his fortunes in journaUsm. A sound knowledge of history, an inkling of philosophy, and a style free from all vulgarisms, were his chief merits as a writer, and he was, of course, as ardent in the cause of reform as most young journalists of that time who had to fight their way in the world. An incident occurred in 1839 which crowned the reputation he had acquired in the course of five years' unremitting press labour. Having pub- lished, on the 15th of August (Fete Napoleon), in the Hevue. du Progres, of which he was editor, an eulogistic review of the " Idfes Napoleoniennes," he was waylaid at night, as he was returning to his lodgings in the Rue Louis-le-Grand, brutally beaten, and left for dead on the pavement. This dastardly assault, the results of which kept M. Blanc several weeks in bed, was attributed to the police. It was said that Government wished to get rid of a writer who was becoming highly M. LOUIS BLANC. 335 obnoxious ; and M. Blanc benefited greatly by the halo of martyrdom which this disagreeable episode threw over him. He now set to work to pro- pound, in his Revue, all the socialist theories which were subsequently advanced in his book, " L'Organisation du Travail." On many points he was overtly communistical, and his whole doctrine was based on the generous but chimerical supposi- tion that men could be got to sink the promptings of individual interest, and to labour unselfishly one for another. He would never admit that by suppressing individualism he would be removing all inducements to self-perfection. Men are not angels. They require to be stimulated to action by the prospects of personal advantage ; and, although the sentiment lying at the root of this egotism may have been in its origin a poor one, it has become ennobled now that emulation has confessedly produced all that is great, good, and worth having in life. The State is bound to see that every child is educated, fed suflaciently, and kept as far as possible from the contagion of bad example ; and it is bound to provide for those who are disabled by sickness from earning their 336 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. bread ; but more than this cannot be expected. It is good that life should remain a contest in which toil and energy carry off the prizes ; and it is good that sluggards should pay for their indo- lence by a sacrifice of comforts which are the reward of hard work. M. Louis Blanc was almost equally visionary in his views of history, as in those he entertained of political economy. He published in 1841, "L'Histoire de Dix Ans," and in 1847, "L'Histoire de la Edvolution Fran^aise," both of which enjoyed a wonderful success, and are unimpeachable as Uterary produc- tions. As histories, however, they are not alto- gether trustworthy, for M. Louis Blanc can see things only through his own glasses. The first of the two books — " Histoire de Dix Ans " — was a violent attack on the first ten years of Louis Philippe's reign ; but as the author gave the monarchy of July no credit for the good it actu- ally did, he cannot be accepted as a competent judge of the good it left undone. It is not fair to judge statesmen only by their failures, and to take no account of their intentions. The last six j'ears of the Orleans monarchy passed miserably, because M. LOUIS BLANC. 337 of M. Guizot's obstinacy in running counter to national impulses, and of his infatuation in think- ing himself a necessary man, and endeavouring to retain his hold of power by packing the Legislature with members holding Government appointments, and, consequently, not independent. But the period from 1830 to 1842 was marked by a sincere attempt to found constitutional govern- ment, and the men who strove to this end were neither feeble nor unpatriotic. No doubt blunders were committed, and Louis Philippe's reign, re- viewed in the aggregate, was not a success ; but ]\I. Louis Blanc was not justified in assuming that the men of July were withholding from France Repubhcan institutions for which all the nation was sighing. The popularity, however, of M. Louis Blanc among the working classes was so great, that he was named a member of the Pro- visional Government immediately after the revo- lution of 1848. It was upon his motion that capital punishment was abohshed for political offences, and he ventilated many noble fancies, but he was not on very easy terms with his colleagues. On the 17th of March, a mob of two hundred z 338 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. thousand Socialists clamoured to give him authority over them ; and many millions of Frenchmen were almost seated out of their wits at the prospect of his elevation. Less than two months afterwards (May 15 th), he was nearly trampled to death in a riot, and afterwards nar- rowly escaped heing killed by some National Guards, from whose fury he was rescued with the opportune help of M. de Larochejaquelein and M. Francis Arago, given at considerable peril to themselves. Hunted down by the very Revolution he had helped so much to bring about, it is pleasant to reflect that M. Louis Blanc, when flying before his enemies during a night of terrible danger to him (August 25-26), was concealed in the house of M. D'Aragon, a political adversary, who enabled him to gain the frontiers of Belgium, whence he passed to England and safety. Of M. Blanc's residence in England there is no need to speak. No foreigner has ever received a warmer welcome, or deserved it more. On the 25th of October, 1865, he was married at Brighton to Miss Christina Groh. While M. Louis Blanc lived among us, the French nation had AL LOUIS BLANC, 339 not yet sufficiently recovered from the memories of '93 to be anxious for a Eepublic ; and it must be said that both by his writings and his speeches M. Louis Blanc is chargeable with not a little of the bourgeois terror which prevented Republican ideas from taking root in 1848. That he has made amends by his high-principled attitude through- out his long exile during the Empire none will deny ; but the fact remains that an unwise friend is often more injurious to the cause he serves than an open foe. M. Louis Blanc has not taken so prominent a part as might have been expected in the politics of the Third Republic. He returned to Paris only on the 8th of September, 1870, when public opinion still hoped something from the inter- vention of the neutral Powers. He was then pressed by many of his old friends to go back to London as ambassador, in order that his fluent tongue, and the esteem in which he was held by the Liberal party in England, might create some active sympathy in the minds of Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues ; and a little more than a fort- night after his arrival in France, this delicate 340 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. mission was officially offered to him by the Government of National Defence. The complete investment of Paris by the Germans, however, and the refusal of the Prussian staff to grant him a safe conduct, put an end to a project which would hardly have been attended by success. M. Louis Blanc refused to take any part in the insurrec- tionary movement of the 31st of October, although his name was placed, without his consent, on the list of the " Committee of Public Safety." On the 8th of February, 1872, he was elected representa- tive of the Seine (first out of forty-three candi- dates), by 216,471 votes. He voted for the con- tinuance of the war a oiitrance when such a policy would have been suicide. His utterances on the outbreak of the Commune were slightly ambiguous, and he noAv supports M. Thiers from fear of the Monarchists, though he is understood to favour a Federalisation of France on the Swiss system, and to object to the Presidential office altogether. He is deservedly respected in his party, for he is a believer in what has been jocu- larly termed the Kepublic by Divine Right ; and during the Empire refused to compound with his M. LOUIS BLANC. 341 conscience by swearing the oath of allegiance, required before he could sit in the Chamber. His most famous declaration of principles on this sub- ject (" Letter to a Committee of the Eighth Circumscription of the Seine, September 12th, 1869") may be cited as an illustration of the virtues which distinguish the Republican section to which he belongs, and of the defects which hinder this section from developing useful states- men. In their blind attachment to the outward sjmibols of Republicanism, M. Louis Blanc and his friends wiU not see that Government can only be carried on by a large amount of practical conces- sion, which need not imply surrender of principle. They are imbued with theories which they believe to be sound ; they have honest intentions, and are convinced that if their system could have fair play, universal happiness would be the result. But they do not make allowance fot those human prejudices which bind men to old traditions, and which disincline them to be made happy against their wiU ; and they evince a rather childisli objection to seeing happiness conferred by agencies other than their own. In debate they often 342 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. allude with envy to the freedom of England ; but it is in vain for them to adduce England's example if they continue to reject her experience. England is free because her reformers have never, in their hour of triumph, dissociated party inte- rests from those of the nation — taking the nation, not in its restricted sense of a numerical majority, but as meaning the whole community, antagonists as well as friends. One could not wish to any country a more conscientious body of politicians than those of whom M. Louis Blanc is a type. They are upright and good men, who have testified to the sincerity of their convictions in the most simple and grandest way — that is, by suffering for them. But so long as they regard themselves as apostles of a system which men must be forced to endure instead of taught to love, they will lend a point to the witticism that a Republic will only be possible in France when there are no Republicans left. M. VICTOR HUGO. GOON after the restoration of Louis XVIII., a very young French nobleman, of good descent, began to distinguish himself in the world of letters. He was handsome, graceful, loyal, im- passioned ; and he soon became the favourite Court poet. He compared the talkative, dinner- loving king, and his commonplace kinsfolk to all the host of heaven, in language of such strong music that it moves the hearts of thousands to this day. He created that sacred and beautiful myth which transfigured the dull spectre of Bour- bon royalty in its latter days, and revived and sanctified it. Louis treated him with something less than the common ingratitude of princes ; and gave the poet, who had raised him in the eyes of his subjects from a kitchen to Olympus, a pension something larger than the wages of his scullion, something less than those of his cook. The 344 J^IEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. amount of Victor Hugo's pension, for having lifted up a throne to human hearts, was two pounds six shillings and one penny a week. The childhood of the gifted and stately boy, thus taught the bounties of a crown so early, had been romantic, and was passed in wandering. His education had been desultory, and often inter- rupted. He was a son of extremely incongruous parents. His father was a poor gentleman of Lorraine, whose parchments of nobility were dated in 1531, and who had acquired personal distinction in the wars of the First Empire. He joined the armies of Napoleon as a volunteer ; entered the service of Joseph Bonaparte, and rose, as brave men did rise in those days, to the rank of general ; and held high commands in Spain and Italy. He was one of those thoughtless persons who are called free-thinkers in religion, a rough-and-ready man, of such light vanities that even the heavy hand of Time could not steady them ; and having perhaps known a parson who displeased him, the old war- rior, who would not have gone into a guard-room without saluting, left directions that the customary prayer should not be read over his grave. Victor M. VICTOR HUGO. 345 Hugo's mother was a heroine of La Vendue, a friend of Madame Bonchamp and Madame de la Rochejaquelein, in whose inspiriting company she had been hunted through the Bocage. He was born on the 26th of February, 1802, at Besan9on, formerly the capital of Franche Comt^ ; and those who care to follow the sparkling stream of fancy to its source may read the history of that old frontier fortress not unprofitably. The writings of Victor Hugo are often influenced by the traditions of his birthplace, and by those conflicting opinions which he derived from a de- vout Royalist mother and a successful soldier of the great revolution, who saw no benefit in clergy. His cosmopolitan sympathies may be traced to travels and circumstances of his boyhood. He had been carried half over Europe before he was eight years old, and his ears must have been opened in the first dawn of consciousness to kind words in many dialects. He passed the third and fourth years of his life in Paris ; and was then taken to Avellino, in Calabria, where his father was governor, and engaged in the dramatic business of pursuing the famous brigand Fra Diavolo, who was in full 346 MEN OF THE THUtD REPUBLIC. exercise of a profession considered honourable beyond the Alps. Thence he was conveyed to Florence, Kome, Naples, and back to Paris in 1809. His studies began at the old convent of the Feuillan tines, under private directions from the proscribed general Lahorie. He spent his holidays with his mother and Mademoiselle Fou- cher, a young lady whom he afterwards married, and who loved him all her long life through. He had already learnt to read Tacitus when his tutor was betrayed, imprisoned, and put to death by the Imperial Government ; and the feelings natural to an ardent, generous lad, at the judicial murder of this gallant officer, possibly inspired him with that fervour for the Koyalist cause which flamed out in a birthday ode for Henry of Bordeaux. At nine years of age he was removed to Spain, where General Hugo commanded an important dis- trict ; and he passed a year at the seminary of nobles under a southern sun. But education in Spain was then worse, if it possibly could be, than it is now. The professors who set him les- sons probably taught a little dog-Latin, which they could hardly construe themselves, and instructed M. VICTOR HUGO. 347 liim in the art of eating garlic with peas and bacon. They knew nothing more ; the students, once renowned throughout the world, had sunk into utter sloth and worthlessness ever since science and scholarship had departed with the alchymists of Granada. So, as Victor Hugo be- gan to write verses of promise at the age of ten, his father forwarded him again to Paris ; and for a short while he returned to the convent of the Feuillantines. But stormy times were approach- ing. Napoleon fell, and rose again for a hundred days, during which General Hugo, who held Thionville against the alhes, abruptly determined that his son should be prepared to enter at the Polytechnic School, and learn to handle a sword, as the most useful implement yet known in this world. His father might as well have tried to change a nightingale into a hawk. The boy could do nothing so well as poetry, which came to him from Nature, as a voice comes to the song-bird instead of a hooked beak and strong claws. At fourteen he wrote the tragedy of Irtamine, and two lyrics, " Riche et Pauvre" and " La Cana- 348 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. dienne." The tragedy is not fine, the lyrics are not pretty. He was tuning his harp, and the first notes were discordant. In 1817 he contended for the annual prize of the Academy ; and astonished that dignified body by an " Essay on the Advantages of Study," so superior to the papers of all other competitors that they peremptorily refused to believe it could have been composed by a lad of fifteen, and withheld from him the reward he had won. He brought his baptismal register to bear on their understand- ings with the usual effect. The dignified body declined to be convinced. From 1819 to 1822 he competed at the floral games of Toulouse, and was thrice proclaimed Master of the Revels. His prize odes were " Les Vierges de Verdun," " Le Retablissement de la Statue de Henri IV.," and " Moise sur le Nil." They are as well written as some other prize odes, which is not saying a great deal for them, and more would be too much. They contain immature or borrowed thoughts in lines which do not flow smoothly, and are often redundant ; but that por- tion of the public which judges rather from success M. VICTOR HUGO. 349 than merit was eager to praise if not to read them. The sacred fire was really lit in his mind by the "Meditations" of Lamar tine, and in 1822 ap- peared the first volume of his " Odes et Ballades." They were so orthodox and monarghieal, yet so charming, that princesses of the blood, prompted by classical confessors, compared him to Orpheus and Apollo. Chateaubriand called him " the sub- lime child ;" and he obtained his pension by an act of generosity that might have been thought alone sufficient to ruin his rising fortune. He wrote a letter offering an asylum in his lodgings to an enemy of the Government. His lodgings must have been small. Therefore, when the letter was intercepted and laid before the King in the routine way, his Majesty, a man of large size, astonished at the inconvenience to which the poet had exposed himself, unexpectedly observed, "Voici un noble jeune homme ! Je lui donne la premiere pension vacante." Means and reputation being thus assured to him, he was permitted to get married when just out of his teens. His wife was five years younger. They were modest means ; but envy has found 3S0 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. something to cavil at in the source of an income which has been likened to alms. It has been said with well-feigned scorn that Victor Hugo, having received part of a sum allotted by the State for the encouragement of letters, which are the light and joy of every age, thereby forfeited his right of free authorship, and tacitly renounced his duty as a Frenchman. It has been gravely argued that he had henceforth no hberty to move tongue or pen against the madness of tyranny, however shocking, or the corruption of courtiers, however base. There will always be persons quick to show their own folly, and who are full of words without reason. The dull taunt flung at Victor Hugo has often been chronicled in the sad records of litera- ture, and it might be well for those who repeat it to consider whether public salaries are a just pay- ment for labour done, or whether they are only given as hush-money, which binds their receiver, however worthy of his hire, to be a safe accom- plice in all kinds of official iniquity rather than an upright citizen. If this is the theory of State rewards for public service, the less honest men have to do with them the better, for they cannot M. VICTOR HUGO. 351 be touched without infamy. The prevaiHng im- pression in England and other constitutional countries is that a public servant who has earned any share of public money in return for his labour should never declare himself personally opposed to the minister through whose hands it passed to him in the ordinary course of business. It is a mischievous notion, which degrades the market price of toil into a bribe ; and upon this principle a general who had saved his nation might be called upon to resign a Blenheim or a Strathfieldsaye, unless he connived at its invasion and conquest. The errors of Charles X., his narrow-minded bigotry, his dreary obstinacy, and complete want of common sense, brought Liberalism into fashion ; and the impressionable mind of Victor Hugo was carried away by the strength of ideas which had seized upon all the intellect of France. Indeed, when the gorgeous phantoms of youth had been dispersed beneath the daylight of experience — when the fond recollection of his mother's dreams was fading from his mind, a ihan of Victor Hugo's clear intelligence could have seen little to revere iu Charles or his predecessor. Divine right was 352 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. loudly arrogated for them by their more unthink- ing adherents, but their title to it was by no means indisputable ; for two equal rights, the one nullifying the other, cannot exist together. Henry IV., the first Bourbon, had been anointed King of France in 1589, and his descendants could only claim the throne as his successors. But Napoleon had been consecrated by the Pope himself in 1804 ; and if the sacred oil with which the Supreme Pontiff had sanctified the power of that rebel captain could confer divine right upon his family, what became of the divine right of the Bourbons ? It was evident that they only held the same position towards the heirs of Napoleon as Ahaziah and Jehoram occupied towards the heirs of Jehu, the Bonapartes having all the advantages of a later consecration. Charles possessed none of those qualities of mind or of person which set such doubts at rest. He was a pedant in his knowledge of ceremonials, heraldry, and cosmetics, but he had studied nothing else ; his appearance and gait were not unlike those of a goose. In earlier times he would have been driven out of the way by some strong-mlled M. VICTOR HUGO. 353 mayor of the palace, who would have governed under his name while he hunted and told his breviary, a prisoner at large ; for he was a sove- reign whom no information could teach the right way, and no remonstrance turn from the \vrong one. He reminded a close observer of nothing better than a rusty weathercock on a church steeple, which cannot obey the winds ; a guide high placed, but useless, to which none looked for counsel. There was a mocking popu- lace beneath, who saw the antiquated thing in that fierce glare which beats on all which is exalted. They saw it, read of it, found out that it was of worthless metal, and that even the gild- ing which had once deceived them as to its value was chipped and tarnished. It had, perhaps, they thought, never been anything better than the lacquered resemblance of a barn-door fowl, and now the lacquer was worn off it was less than that. First they laughed at it, then they scoffed at it, then they grew angry with it. " Is this the fit ruler of a mighty nation, thou poet leader of our thought ? Can he ride to battle with us, our captain and our chief? What has he ever said of A A 354 J/CyV OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. wise, or done of good ? Wliat is there of great- ness or of worth in him ? He has passed his youth in feasting, now he fasts and shoots tame hirds hy turns ! He hath put out our glory, silenced our orators, banished learning, forbidden speech, and fettered liberty. His hand, which looks so frail and wrinkled, is red with blood ; within it is a terrible sceptre too heavy for him to wield : now it topples over on this side, now on that, and smiteS us with heavy blows, while the old man nods upon his tottering throne. Make no more hymns for him, we cannot sing them." Two pounds six and a penny a week could find no answer to this appeal. The largest mind in France changed very slowly, and it was some time before Victor Hugo was seen to waver in his allegiance to his mother's creed. The mental struggle through which he passed may be easily imagined. The Bourbon King, though silly, was not unkind, and had offered to double his pension. Many chivalrous men and beautiful ladies, devoted by the accident of birth to the royal cause, had been among his earliest friends and admirers. Still he M. VICTOR HUGO. 355 glided gradually, perhaps involuntarily, into the ranks of opposition. He gave up classical meta- phors for romance ; wrote two novels, " Hans D'Islande," and " Bug-Jargal" (1823), and a second volume of "Odes et Ballades" (1826), Avhicli were bought up as fast as they could be printed. He founded the Cenacle Club, of which St. Beuve, Boulanger, and the two Deschamps were members. " They propounded," says the critic Moreau, " the doctrine that nobody should be respected who was more than eighteen years of age," and they started a newspaper called La Muse Fran^aise, con- ducted by Victor Hugo, to support their opinions. None but those who lived in the Parisian literary world half a century since could now understand the bitterness with which discussion raged between old and young authors at this time. In 1827 Victor Hugo published his drama of Croviwell, written in open contempt of Aristotle and Eacine ; and in an elaborate preface to this work he main- tained that everything in nature is also in art ; that dramatic writing should exhibit the sublime and the grotesque side by side, and give expression to the living spirit of the period it illustrates. 356 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. The play was not meant for tlie stage, and was not performed ; but as a new experiment in dra- matic writing it was enthusiastically praised and fanatically condemned. In 1828 appeared " Les Orientales," a collection of odes rich in colour and imagery, poor in thought; in 1829, " Le Dernier Jour d'un Condamn^," a powerful tale, remarkable for its subtle analysis of passion. Up to this time Victor Hugo was still a Royalist, though possibly rather of sentiment than conviction. He composed an ode on the death of the Duke de Berri, and condoled with Cliateau- briand on his fall from power. His works, ever since the gloomy romance of " Hans D'Islande " had captivated the imagination of French youth, sold with such rapidity, that rival publishers con- tended for them ; and Victor Hugo lived in a charming house,* surrounded by trees and gardens, the centre of a brilliant society, which included Dumas, Alfred de Vigny, Mignet, Armand Carel, and M. Thiers. Madame Hugo was a delightful * 49, Eue Notre Dame des Champs. He did not remove to his better known residence at No. 6, Place Royale, where he lived in • princely state, till 1830. M. VICTOR HUGO. 357 hostess. Her company spent their winter evenings in conversation and reading poetry, or drawing, Victor Hugo being an accomplished artist. In summer they went gipsying towards Montrouge, and over the plains of Vanvres, very merrily. The interest excited by Croinwell induced Victor Hugo to prepare a play for the stage, and it occa- sioned his first serious breach with authority. He wrote Marion de I'Orme, and the censorship immediately forbade its representation. Victor Hugo appealed to the King, but his Majesty only smiled, and said, " poet ! " which meant that the interests against the piece were too strong for either of them. Marion de I'Orme was followed by Hernani, and the Academy made its wail heard at the Tuileries to suppress that work also ; but Charles X., who was inclined to amusement, answered that " he shotild claim no right but a place in the pit to see it performed." Ministerial opposition was not, however, the only difficulty which stood menacingly in the way of its representation. Mademoiselle Mars, then queen of the French stage, pronounced an adverse criticism upon it, and attempted to overawe the young 358 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC- dramatist, who looked shy and timid when he came to read his piece at the foyer of the theatre. As soon, therefore, as he came to the verse in the third act, which is spoken by Dona Sol — " Moi, je snis fille noWe, et de sang jalouse Trop pour la concubine, et tiop peu pour I'epouse," — a voice interrupted him with the word "favorite." Victor Hugo raised his head and looked towards the actress, who was munching sweetmeats, and kept her eyes fixed on the ceihng. Thinking his ears had deceived him, he began to read the lines a second time, — " Trop pour la concubine — " "Favorite," cried the same voice. Again he repeated the word, and again Made- moiselle Mars corrected him. " Is it you, madame," said Victor Hugo, with a bow, " who are doing me the honour to interrupt me?" " Yes," replied the actress, coolly. "And you really think the word 'concubine' should be replaced by the word 'favorite?' " " / am sure of it ; such a word has never yet been spoken on the stage." M. VICTOR HUGO. 359 " Then," replied Victor Hugo, " it will be spoken now for the first time." She also objected to the word " lion," and wanted to change it for the word "lord;" but Victor Hugo made good his points, by threaten- ing to take the part away from her if she did not mend her manners ; and so, on the 2Gth of February (the poet's birthday), 1830, Hernani was played at the Theatre Fran^ais amidst a riot which surpassed all other theatrical riots before or since. Victor Hugo's friends beat down and out-shouted his opponents. In the following year Marion cle I'Orme was also performed, and, in spite or. because of its morality, obtained an immense success. In 1831 a brilliant romance called "Notre Dame" took the public by surprise and enchant- ment. The curious archseological knowledge dis- played in it ; the startling contrast of grace and ugliness, simplicity and cunning ; the original cha- racters of Claude Frollo, Quasimodo, and Esmeralda; the seductive defects of style in which a complicated plot is developed, made it one of the most fascinat- ing prose narratives in existence. It was eagerly 36o MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. read, translated, and pirated wherever books are sold. The admiration it excited had not time to cool before it was succeeded by some exquisite lyrics entitled " Les Feuilles d'Automne," which are full of sweet dreams and wondrous harmonies. But the censorship had not yet done with Victor Hugo. Le Hoi s' amuse came out on the 22nd November, 1832, and was removed from the play bills next day by Ministerial order. This arbitrary act had the usual effect of arbitrary acts on thoughtful men. It induced Victor Hugo to ques- tion the authority by which it had been done. He denied the Minister's right to suppress a work of imagination without valid cause. He brought a lawsuit against him, and appealed that his deci- sion was null and void as a violation of the con- stitution. He pleaded his own case in a speech which is a triumph of eloquence and logic ; but he could not shake official conceit into admitting that an excellency had made a blunder. Year after year his lavish genius continued to pour forth its treasures, with only rare signs of momentary exhaustion. " Lucr^ce Borgia " and "Marie Stuart" (1833), "Etude sur Mirabeau," M. VICTOR HUGO. 361 " Literature et Philosophie," and " Le Rhin " (1834), " Les Chants du Crepuscule" and " An- gelo" (1835), "Les Voix IntMeures" (1837), "Ruy Bias" (1838), "Les Rayons et les Ombres" (1840), "Les Burgraves " (1843), bear witness- to the fertility of his resources and amazing industry. It has been often said that Victor Hugo has both used and abused the power of contrast ; that he shows us hostile passions in deadly struggle, and opposing feelings constantly at war, while the transition from pathos to mirth is too abrupt. If such objections are valid, they would apply equally to the tragedies of Shakspeare and the comedies of Moliere. How far an author may be justified for having distorted the facts of history is a ques- tion upon which critics are divided. It is enough for the drama to teach moral truths in an attrac- tive form ; it need not be concerned about vera- cious records. This is the elastic argument used by the defence. On the other side it may be sub- mitted that truth needs not to go masked ; and that if historical personages are mentioned, they should act as it is known they have acted. Imaginary characters will serve the purposes of a dramatist as 362 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. well as real ones. Perhaps we love to be deceived, and Victor Hugo would not have been so popular a story-teller had he been a more faithful chro- nicler. Yet it becomes great men rather to set good precedents than to folloAV bad ones. Dickens and Leech introduced pure wit into literature and art in England. Victor Hugo might have invented truthful historical plays. He was content to remain the chief of the romantic school. He made the very frippery of the Middle Ages fashionable. It passed from poetry to painting and decorative furniture, and thence into the ideas of the French people. He substituted liveliness and movement for the stiff classical plays which had received the solemn approval of court and clergy in ^7ig and gown. This revolt against the old dramatic rules has been carried to excess by his imitators. They have confounded in one common disdain the essential conditions of art with the arbiti-ary customs of a particular reign, and their hatred for convention- alities has led them to deny the pre-eminence of the beautiful, to rehabilitate ugliness, physical and moral, and to create monsters. The French drama has thus become materialised and demoralised ; but M. VICTOR HUGO. 363 Victor Hugo's school has marked a distinct literary- epoch, which has produced many masters of their craft and many bold delineators of the most hidden feelings of our nature. In 1841 the unrivalled fame of Victor Hugo at last forced open the doors of the Academy, and he took his place among those influential persons who call themselves the Forty Immortals. He made them rather a patronising speech on the occasion, and talked party pohtics to them, as things they could better understand than letters. M. de Salvandy replied, however, with more wit than could have been expected ; and the new academician, having attained the summit of literary ambition, set out upon his travels to revisit Spain, whence the tragic death of his daughter Leopoldine, Madame Vaquerie, suddenly recalled him. In 1845 he was made a peer of France by Louis Philippe, but his countrymen have refused to dis- figure an illustrious name by a title to which he might give honour, but from which he could derive none. The rare prize of political ascen- dancy won at the pen's point awaited him, when the revolution of 1848 gave a new course to his desires. 364 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. He seemed at first to fear the consequences of the change, and attached himself to that reaction- ary electoral committee which met in the Rue de Poictiers. He was returned to the Constituent Assembly as member for the city of Paris by the partial election of the 4th of June, which brought out pell-mell from the same urn the names of Proudhon, Changarnier, Goudchaux, Thiers, Caus- sidiere, Charles La Grange, and placed Victor Hugo himself between M. P. Leroux and Prince Louis Napoleon. His votes were at this time far more conservative than democratic. He twice declined to sanction proceedings against M. Louis Blanc and M. Caussidifere. He demanded that the penalty of death should be abolished. He refused to declare that General Cavaignac had deserved well of his country. He rejected the draft of a new constitu- tion ; and joined his voice on more than one occasion with that of the two extreme parties in the State. Acting with the Conservatives, he sup- ported the decree of the 28 th July against the clubs, and opposed the principles on which were based the droit die travail, progressive taxation, and the abolition of military substitutes. He M. VICTOR HUGO. 365 pronounced against M. Gravy's amendments by whicli the President might be revoked, and which required that the Constitution should be sanc- tioned by the people. After the election of the 1 0th of December, he voted uniformly with that fraction of the Chamber which named itself the Party of Order. His attitude in the Legislative Assembly was very different. He was elected tenth among twenty-eight candidates for the Department of the Seine ; and converted, as was supposed, by M. Emile de Girardin to the platform of the social and democratic Republicans, he became one of the chiefs and orators of the Left. The affairs of Rome, popular education, the newspaper stamp, and guarantee laws (1850), the limitation of universal suffrage, and the proposed revision of the Con- stitution (1851), supplied him with subjects for parliamentary oratory. He never spoke without effect, but he had not the coolness of temper necessary for prolonged debate. The passionate vehemence of his language ; his personal attacks and wordy duels with Montalembert, which lasted three whole years ; his awful denunciations of the 366 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. President, wliom he held up to contempt and abhorrence, drew on his fresh Kepubhcanism some cruel retorts from the majority. They quoted his writings against his speeches, as though an author was personally responsible for the sentiments which he puts into the mouth of the divers cha- racters in his fictions, and was bound at the same time to endorse the opinions of Hamlet and Othello, of Lear and Bottom, of Ariel and Caliban. His conversion was also regarded with some sus- picion by his new friends, and he found himself in the same position as St. Paul at Damascus. They were amazed and half afraid of him. But he increased the more in strength, and confounded his enemies with those of the revolution. In 1848 he had set up a daily paper called L Evhiement, which had faithfully followed him in all his vacil- lations. It had been prosecuted, condemned, sup- pressed, resuscitated (under the title of L'Avene- Qnent) in the customary manner ; and the Govern- ment continued still to look upon it with an attentive eye. Among the many attacks made upon this journal was one against his son, who had insisted on the abolition of capital punishment Jl/. VICTOR HUGO. 367 with a vehemence which arose from over-hot notions of filial duty, or a want of practice in writing leading articles under the watcliful inspec- tion of hostile censors. Victor Hugo defended his son in person, and his speech on the occasion enlisted all the better feelings of his countrymen. The coufp d'etat found him in determined oppo- sition to the Government all along the line. In Parliament, in society, in the press, he never ceased calling on men and gods for redress, and trying stoutly himself to get it. So mighty an antagonist could hardly expect to bide in peace ; for it is the first necessity of a Power which feels itself insecure to knock down or banish its opponents. Victor Hugo was at once proscribed and driven into exile. In vain he tried to rouse the easy sybarites of Paris and the mystified good folk of prosperous provinces into some effective form of resistance against a tyrant whom he compared to Nero and Tom Thumb. Finding that he only preached to the winds, he compressed his indig- nation into the more durable form of a satire called " Napoleon le Petit," and threw it into the usurper's camp like a bombshell. It was shot 368 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. from Brussels in 1852, but he was then too nervous and irritated to show how terrible a wea- pon he could wield from a distance ; and it was not till the following year, when he published a volume of poetry called " Les Chatiments," of which every line breathes living fire, that he branded his enemy with indelible disgrace. Both of these books were excluded from France by a lynx-eyed police, and were diligently perused by all Frenchmen. \\'Tien expelled from the Second Empire, Victor Hugo retired to Jersey, but got brief rest there, not finding the British dominions nearly so free as they had been described to him. He was forced to depart from that island in 1855, together with all those refugees who had signed a protest against the expulsion of three of their number. He then went to Guernsey, where he wrote and thought more calmly, submitting to the inevitable, as a rock submits to it when rent by the thunder. He continued, however, to find that consolation which always comes from interesting studies and constant employment undisturbed by sordid cares ; while his pleasant house on the seaside became a M. VICTOR HUGO. 369 place of pilgrimage for hero-worshippers of all nations, and the homage of his companions in exile was unfailing, sincere, and even ostentatious in its demonstrativeness. Among them were many- eminent persons, whose respect was no unworthy tribute ; and still he could send book after book to the press with undiminished prodigality. He had always been a quick writer. His first novel was written for a wager in a fortnight, and even " Notre Dame " was only the work of six months, being composed, with a single day's hoUday, in a study where large fires were always burning, and where the windows were kept constantly wide open. It was his boast that he never failed to keep time with a publisher, and the activity of his brain was still as great as ever. " Les Contem- plations," printed in Paris (1856), went through several editions, and conciliated all who could be touched by tenderness, sorrow, and misfor- tune. They read like the memoirs of a soul, and describe the recollections of a poet, the aspi- rations of a philosopher, under the title of " Autre- fois" and " Aujourdhui." The style is supple; there are few artifices of language in it ; and nofe- B B 370 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. withstanding the frequent recurrence to one domestic sorrow — his daughter's death — they will seldom be read without sympathy and approval. A grander poetical conception, called "La Legende des Siecles," formed the literary event of 1859. It is a collection of poems remarkable for brightness of thought and nervous diction, but wanting in melody. It had long been announced as the fragment of a trilogy to be completed in two other parts, named " Satan " and " Dieu." Victor Hugo dedicated this, the maturest fruit of his labour, to France, but refused to return thither when the Emperor proclaimed a general amnesty on the 15 th of August, immediately after its publication. Associating himself with MM. Edgar Quinet, Louis Blanc, and Charras, he replied to the imperial pardon by an indignant manifesto ; and none of those able men appear to have under- stood that by so doing they abandoned the country they loved so well to less worthy masters, and that while they were indulging their resentment, they deprived her of the services she had a right, to demand from them. A patriot whose life may be uselessly sacrificed, or who may be deprived of M. VICTOR HUGO. 371 liberty by a despot, can and ought to save himself by flight from a blind and stupid persecution. History will not deny him its esteem for having evinced prudence in time of danger. But wheu the peril is past, great men owe something more than the distant echo of their voices to the land of their birth. They should give to those who suffer from bad laws the protection of their presence, and help them with hand and arm to bear their burdens or to throw them off". Caution is good ; but a morose sulkiness, which palsies strength into inactivity, is not justifiable or even honest. However vexatious and tyrannical the Second Empire may have been, more than thirty millions of people were obliged to endure it, because they had no means of escape. The strongest- hearted of them all should have showed at least equal fortitude, and supported his part of the national suffering to make it lighter for the rest. Nothing but an error in judgment or want of civil courage can be pleaded in extenuation of this neglect of duty. All religions, all philosophies, have forbidden the demonstration of impotent anger, and declared that the patient endurance of evil whicli 372 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. has no present remedy is one of the highest virtues. Nearly everj' great man who has made himself heard against a prevailing faction has been banished from his country ; nearly every good man has returned to it at the first summons, if he could do so safely. The arrests and high-handed measures of 1851 could not have been repeated in 1859 ; both the. person and freedom of Victor Hugo were notoriously secure. When, therefore, Napoleon III. was ready to govern well, no French patriot should have been influenced by personal con- siderations to oppose good government. Victor Hugo could not at that time have overthrown the Emperor's authority without more bloodshed and public trouble than the result could be worth ; for the name of a ruler signifies little, and the only question worth a thought is the manner of his rule. It is certain that the presence of Victor Hugo and other illustrious men in Paris would have acted as a check on many evil things ; and they had no right to stand aloof when they were needed. It was something unworthy and ridicu- lous to sling accusations against Caesar from a. marine villa or a snug lodging abroad, and rail M. VICTOR HUGO. 373 at him for taking venal or stupid people into office, when all the worth and talent of their country refused to serve it. Had Victor Hugo stood forward, as he was morally bound to do, the fatal day of Sadowa might have never happened, the disastrous Ministry of M. Emile Ollivier would have been impossible, and France could have been spared the overwhelming ruin which fell upon her when absolutely abandoned to the counsels and government of the feeblest mediocrity. It can scarcely be remembered without regret, that when his country most needed his help Victor Hugo was more occupied with literature than with politics. Each of his works now represented a moderate fortune, and no wi'iter has ever received a more splendid acknowledgment of his labours. The publication of a book under the warranty of his name had become a European event ; and in 1862 his fine romance of " Les Miserables" appeared simultaneously at Paris, Brussels, London, New York, Madrid, Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Turin. A hundred and fifty thousand copies of it were sold in one year, and the profits realised from its sale must have been enormous. In 1865 appeared 374 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. " Les Chansons des Rues et des Bois," a collection of trifles in -which the gi'otesque predominates. Like a poetical Paganini, he seems to have been anxious to play on a single string of his lyre, and to perform a piece rather odd than melodious. In 1866 "Les Travailleurs de la Mer" came out. It is a picturesque idyll in which a meagre story is drowned in a phosphoric sea of fancies. In 1869 appeared " L'Homme qui Rit," which can hardly be pronounced anything but a failure, and is un- derstood to have occasioned the banltruptcy of its publishers. On the loth of August in the same year Victor Hugo again rejected, with still more haughtiness and unreason than before, the last amnesty it was in the power of Napoleon III. to offer him. Nor was this only the extent of his determination or obstinacy. His friend, M. Felix Pyat, pressed him earnestly to return, and offered to accompany him. He answered in the well-known line, " S'il n'en reste qu'un, je serai celui-la." He opposed the plebiscitum so passionate^, that he ■was again prosecuted by the law officers of the Empire for exciting hatred and contempt against the Govern- M. VICTOR HUGO. 375 ment ; and it was not till France had been ravaged by fire and sword that the best beloved of her sons came back to mourn over her ruins. Victor Hugo was received with enthusiasm by the Revolutionary Government of the 4th of September, 1870, and immediately issued a pro- clamation to the German nation, inviting them to declare a Republic and join hands with France. On the 10 th of October he pronounced against the municipal elections ; on the insurrectionary out- break in Paris, three weeks afterwards, his name appeared on the Committee of Public Safety, but the next day he protested it had been used with- out his authority ; and he refused to offer himself as a candidate at the general election of the mayors of Paris which took place on the 5 th of November. On the 8th of February, 1871, he was chosen deputy for the Department of the Seine in the National Assembly, by 214,169 votes, his name being second on a list of forty-three candidates. At the sitting of the 1st of March he spoke against the peace, and voted against any preliminary negotiations with the Germans ; and, after a stormy debate, resigned his seat on the 8th of the 376 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. same month. Within a brief space he lost his favourite son, who died suddenly, and brought his corpse to Paris on the same day (1 8th March) when the Communist revolt commenced. He remained in the capital during that sad period, endea- voured to save the column in the Place Vendome from destruction, and did his best to calm the madness of the rioters. When he saw that all his efforts were vain, he went to Belgium ; and having while there offered an asylum to the soldiers of the Commune, he was expelled by a royal warrant, and, after being nearly torn to pieces by a Brussels mob, he took refuge in London. As soon as the trial of the Communist chiefs was over he returned to Paris, and inter- ceded with M. Thiers for the pardon of Henri Rochefort, but without effect. Presented by the Radical press as candidate for the city of Paris at the election of the 7th of January, 1872, he refused to accept the " Mandat Imperatif" which his constituents desired to impose upon him, but offered to accept a "Mandat Contractuel," Avhich he defined very eloquently. Only 95,900 votes were recorded for him, and he was defeated. Most of M. VICTOR HUGO. 377 liis plays were revived in 1872, and brought large receipts to crowded theatres. He also published a volume of poetry, entitled " L'Ann^e Terrible," and founded a cheap democratic newspaper (16 th May, 1872), called Le Peuple Souverain. Victor Hugo occupies in France a position something like that of Mr. Carlyle in England. It has been said that he is rather a great child than a great man, and that he has the caprice, the generosity, and the rashness of a boy. It has been also the fashion of late to add that he should never have mingled in the ignoble strife of politics. He was, it is urged, infinitely above all Emperors, Presidents, and Ministers — a seer, not a deputy. Those who seriously maintain such an opinion must have a mean and false idea of the functions of government. If the wisest men of a nation refuse to serve it, they must leave the supreme control of its affairs to persons who are less capable of directing them. The fortune and happiness of millions may be ruined because no intelligence competent to save them will take part in the busi- ness of administration. This strange idea seems to have been propagated, and widely propagated, 378 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. by dull men, who knew of their diilness, and desired to find an excuse for remaining in autho- rity by asserting the astounding proposition that authority should be dull. That notion has always been a popular delusion in England, but it was never so in France, and those who entertain it any- where are only worth enough time and attention to give them a short answery Every one is bound to serve his countrymen who has the intellect to serve them well. The quality called patriotism is not much in favour with modern thinkers ; and a philosopher maj' feel as kindly towards the Japa- nese as towards his own people. But every society must have laws and a government suited to its peculiar state of civilization for the general tran- quillitjr and for the general good. It is a duty of the highest wisdom to administer and uphold those laws when they are beneficent ; to correct, or endea- vour to amend them, when they are not so. The idea of country, though not necessarily territorial, requires that men should give their consideration and their labours to .the society of which they form part, and should instruct their kind in the lan- guage which they can speak or write to the best M. VICTOR HUGO. 379 purpose. A Frenchman cannot make good laws for the Siamese. He cannot speak their tongue or inform them intelligibly. He knows little of their wants and nothing of their wishes. A French- man, therefore, if not bound to France, which is a mere geographical expression, is bound to the French people, whose requirements he understands, and whose very accent is impressed as deeply upon his heart as on his lips. He must render the service asked of him, if he is fit to do so ; and, when called to the Council, he cannot answer that it is so wise and great that he can only spin fictions and dream dreams. Whether Victor Hugo has employed his ten talents well is a more rational subject of inquiry. He was the laureate of the Bourbon restoration. He was a peer of the constitutional monarchy, which overthrew the power he had celebrated in the poems of his youth. He was then a moderate republican, then a democratic socialist. He says, " On m'appelle apostat ; je me croix apotre." An Englishman would not speak of himself in such words, but they may, nevertheless, be true words. The position of France has changed as well as he ; 3 So MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. and he may have held different opinions at dif- ferent times, not dishonestly, but as the natural result of thought informed by circumstance. " Toujours la meme tige avec une autre fleur," he says. Political consistency can be preserved only by that respectable stupidity which refuses to admit any evidence of changes, however clear to eye and ear. A sheet of paper may have beeu once white, and it was well to call it white ; but a sheet of paper blurred and blotted is not white, though consistency would fain have it so, because it is the same sheet of paper. Consistency in politics really means that a statesman shall take no account of current events. Revolution against an esta- blished monarchy is only to be advocated in an extreme case ; and loyalty was a proper sentiment in 1823, when the Duke of Bordeaux could not have been set aside without a civil war. A^Tien he had been formally deprived of the succession, in 1830, there was no reason why the government of Louis Philippe should not have been supported. It was based on a distinct expression of the national will. It was liberal in its professions, at least ; it had many claims on the support of any M. VICTOR HUGO. 381 man who was Avilling to accept the decision of the majority of his countrymen as to the form of government under which they purposed to Hve. But the manner in which Napoleon III. ascended the throne could not recommend itself to an up- right man ; and the way in which he exercised his authority, though showy and magnificent, was radically vicious. Victor Hugo said so, and he spoke truly. But, groans the scandal-monger and the eaves- dropper, " He is avaricious, grasping ; his life has not been always pure." Alas ! my friends, who among us is without sin ? We have stoned so many prophets, M'e had better venerate this one who is still among us. Let the reverent, almost idolizing love of his kindred and associates, the eye-witnesses of a noble and laborious life, be suffered to answer and set at rest malicious calumny. There is no magic in the name of wife or child or friend, to steal away one human heart ; and those who know us best must love or hate us most. It was no libertine who held one woman's soul in his imperial thraldom for eight-and-forty springs and winters. It was no miser, who suffered 382 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. little children by the scoi-e to come to him, and sat down in the midst of them, and fed and clothed and taught them, as Victor Hugo did while he was a proscribed and banished man. It was no niggard who opened wide his doors to all who were oppressed and exiled ; or, at any time between his courtly youth and thoughtful age, beneath the frown of power. He has done what he thought right and merciful to all men. When he invited the refugees of the Commune to his house in Belgium, he certainly paid a fine compliment to the established laws of that small and comfortable country. His act was misunderstood, or misinterpreted, but it was, nevertheless, a fine and noble act, which should have served as a protest against the blood- thirstiness of the dominant party at Versailles. It will ever remain a blot on the government of Belgium, that it suffered Victor Hugo's house to be surrounded, and permitted him to be hooted bv a mob drunk with "faro" and ignorance: but con- stitutional countries are seldom free from the indiscreet weakness of making haste to' alter those laws to which they owe their existence and free- J/. VICTOR HUGO. 383 dom, at the first panic excited by any company of sly persons. There remains little more to be said, and that little may be told briefly. After the fall of the Empire, Victor Hugo was again elected to take part in the councils of France, and again he has abandoned her to politicians who can in no sense be considered as his equals. Such conduct appears to lookers-on more capricious than reasonable, and although it is probable that there may be a satis- factory explanation of it, none has yet appeared. However, at the age of seventy-one, Victor Hugo is still a man in that robust health which may be preserved to the extreme limits of human existence by simple food, agreeable occupations, and the world's esteem. Poet, artist, novellist, dramatist, orator, statesman, letter-writer, essayist, editor, advocate, and song-maker ! He has done all forms of brain-work excellently well. Whatever worth and genius can accomplish is still possible to Victor Hugo, and he may yet take part in the regeneration of his country. If he has suffered something from the misrepresentation of fools, and something from the ingratitude of the people he 384 MEN OF THE THIRD REPUBLIC. has loved with such passionate fervour, he must find consolation in his o^vn gallant words, now echoing everywhere through the world like the notes of a clarion with a silver sound, " God suffers not the precious fruit of sorrow to grow upon a branch too weak to bear it." THE END. PRINTED BY VIETUK AND CO., CITY BOAD, LONDON. Neto aSooUs mti Ntto lEfttttons. The Library Edition of the Works of Alfred Tennyson, D.C.L., Poet-Laureate. Six vols. Post 8vo. 10s. Cd. each. An English Code ; its Difficulties, and the Modes of overcoming them ; a Practical Application of the Science of Jurisprudence. By Prof. Sheldon Amos. Demy 8vo. Walks in Florence. By Susan and Joanna Horner. With Illustrations. 2 vols, crown 8vo. Memorials of a Quiet Life. By Augustus J. C. Hare, Author of " Walks in Rome." With Two Steel- Portraits. Fourth Edition. 2 vols, crown Svo. 21s. Contemporary Essays in Theology. By the Rev. John Hunt, Author of "An Essay on Pan- theism," " Religious Thought in England," &c. Demy Svo. Our New Masters. By "The Journeyman ENGraEER." Post Svo. 9s. The True History of Joshua Davidson. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 5s. Field Fortification. By Major Knollys. With numerous Illustrations. Small Svo. 4s. Gd. Hindoo Tales ; or the Adventures of Ten Princes. Freely translated fi-om the Sanscrit of the Dasaku- maracharitam. By P. W. Jacob. Crown Svo. Gs. Wanderings in Spain. By Augustus J. C. Hake, Author of "Walks in Romi;." With Illustrations. Grown Svo. 10s. Gd. For Liberty's Sake. By John B. Marsh, Author of "The Story of Ilixrecourt.' Post Svo. 10s. Gd. STRAHAN & CO., 56, LUDGATE HILL. ifiEfo aSoofes anb iaetn lEtitttons. The Temptation of Our Lord. By the late Normax Macleod, D.D. Crown 8vo. 5s. The Red Flag, and other Poems. By the Hon. Eoden Noel. Small 8vo. Gs. Music and Morals. By the Rev. H. R. Haweis. Second Edition. Post 8vo. 1 2.s. Handbook of Social Economy ; or the Worker's A, B, G. Translated from the French of Edmonh About. Crown 8vo. 5s. Character Sketches. By Norman Macleod, D.D. With Illustrations. Post 8vo. 10s. 6d. Letters to the Scattered. By the late Eev. T. T. Lynch. Post 8'po. 9s. Eight Months on Duty. The Diary of a Young OfBcer in Chanzy's Army. With a Preface bj' C. J. Vaughan, D.D., Master of the Temple. Crown 8vo. 5s. Notes on England. By H. Taine, D.C.L., Oxon, &c. Translated by W. F. Eae, with an Introduction by the Translator. Keprinted, with Additions, from the " Daily News." Fourth Edition. Post Svo. 7s. Sd. The Days of Jezebel. An Historical Drama. By Peter Bayne, M.A. Crown 8vo. 6s. The Human Intellect. With an Introduction upon Psychology and the Soul. By Noah Porter, D.D., President of Yale College. Demy8vo. ICs. History of Eeligious Thought in England, from the Eeformation to the end of the Last Century. By the Rev. John Hunt, Author of "An Essay on Pantheism." 3 vols, demy Svo. 21s. each. STRAHAN k CO., 56, LUDGATE HILL.