Part 40 (1/2)

He went into the Chamber as an Advanced Republican, and voted for the banishment of the Orleans family, for a republic without a president, and for other extreme measures. Before long he was elected vice-president of the Chamber.

Then came the Empire, and M. Grevy went back to his law-books.

He and his brother must have prospered at the Bar, for in 1851 they had houses in Paris, in which after the _coup d'etat_ Victor Hugo and his friends lay concealed.

When the emperor attempted const.i.tutional reforms, in 1869, Grevy was again elected deputy from the Jura. He acted with dignity and moderation, though he voted always with the advanced party. Gambetta he personally disliked, having an antipathy to his dictatorial ways. When the National a.s.sembly met at Bordeaux to decide the fate of France, Grevy was made its Speaker, or president; but when the _coup d'etat_ in favor of Henri V. was meditated, he was got rid of beforehand, after he had presided for two turbulent years over an a.s.sembly distracted and excited. Everyone respected M.

Grevy. There was very little of the typical Frenchman in his composition. He was of middle height, rather stout, with a large bald, well-shaped head. He was no lover of society, but was a diligent worker, and his favorite amus.e.m.e.nts were billiards and the humble game of dominoes. His wife was the good woman suited to such a husband; but his daughter, his only child, was considered by Parisian society pretentious and a blue-stocking. She married, after her father's elevation to the presidency, M. Daniel Wilson, a Frenchman, in spite of his English name. M. Grevy's Eli-like toleration of the sins of his daughter's husband caused his overthrow.

In Marshal MacMahon's time there were two points on which he as president insisted on having his own way; that is, anything relating to army affairs, or to the granting civilians the cross of the Legion of Honor. He did not object to the decoration of civilians, but he insisted upon knowing the antecedents of the gentlemen recommended for the distinction. Well would it have been for M. Grevy had he followed the example of his predecessor. The marshal would never give the cross to a man whom he knew to be a free-thinker. His reply to such applications always was: ”If he is not a Christian, what does he want with a cross?”

It is said that in 1877, when the marshal thought of resigning rather than accepting such an advanced Republican as M. Jules Simon as chief of his Cabinet, he sent for M. Grevy, and asked him point-blank: ”Do you want to become president of the Republic?” ”I am not in the least ambitious for that honor,” replied M. Grevy.

”If I were sure you would be elected in my place, I would resign,”

continued the marshal; ”but I do not know what would happen if I were to go.” ”My strong advice to you is not to resign,” said M.

Grevy; ”only bring this crisis to an end by choosing your ministers out of the Republican majority, and you will be pleased with yourself afterwards for having done your duty.”

”Well, you are an honest man, M. Grevy; I wish there were more like you,” said the marshal; and having shaken hands with M. Grevy, he dismissed him, though without promising to follow his advice.

He reflected on it that night, however, and adopted it the next morning. But when advised to take Gambetta for his minister, he replied: ”I do not expect my ministers to go to ma.s.s with me or to shoot with me; but they must be men with whom I can have some common ground of conversation, and I cannot talk with _ce monsieur-la_.”

Indeed, Gambetta was often shy and awkward in social intercourse, seldom giving the impression in private life of the powers of burning eloquence with which he could in public move friend or foe. Nor had M. Grevy been by any means always in accord with the fiery Southerner. At Tours he objected to Gambetta's measures as wholly unconst.i.tutional. ”You are one of those men,” retorted Gambetta, ”who expect to make omelettes without breaking the eggs.” ”You are not making omelettes, but a mess,” retorted M. Grevy.

Both the marshal and his successor were sportsmen and gave hunting-parties, those of the marshal being as much in royal style as possible. M. Grevy preferred republican simplicity. When he was allowed, as Speaker of the House, to live in Marie Antoinette's apartments in the Chateau of Versailles, he might have been seen any day sauntering about the streets with his hands in his pockets, or smoking his cigar at the door of a _cafe_. He had a brougham, but he rarely used it. His coachman grumbled at having to follow him at a foot-pace when he took long walks into the country. His servants did not, like the marshal's, wear gray and scarlet liveries, but his household arrangements were more dignified and liberal than those of M. Thiers. He had a curious way of receiving his friends _sans ceremonie_. Three mornings in the week his old intimate a.s.sociates,--artists, journalists, deputies, etc.,--entered the presidential palace unannounced, and went straight to an apartment fitted up for fencing. There, taking masks and foils, they amused themselves, till presently M. Grevy would come in, make the tour of the room, speak a few words to each, and invite one or two of them to breakfast with him.

Both M. Grevy and Marshal MacMahon held their Cabinet meetings in that _salle_ of the elysee which is hung round with the portraits of sovereigns. Opposite to M. Grevy's chair hung a portrait of Queen Victoria; and it was remarked that he always gazed at her while his ministers discoursed around him. But his happiness, poor man! was in his private apartments, where his daughter, her husband, M. Wilson, and his little grandchild made part of his household.

M. Greevy gave handsome dinners at the elysee, and Madame Grevy and Madame Wilson gave receptions, and occasionally handsome b.a.l.l.s.

Everything was done ”decently and in order,” much like an American president's housekeeping, but without show or brilliancy.

Having indulged in this gossip about the courts of the presidents (for much of which I am indebted to a writer in ”Temple Bar”), we will turn to graver history.

When M. Grevy became president, Gambetta succeeded to his place as president of the Chamber. He did not desire the post of prime minister. His new position made him the second man in France, and seemed to point him out as the future candidate for the presidency.

M. Defavre became chief of the Cabinet, and M. Waddington Minister for Foreign Affairs. But Gambetta, whether in or out of office, was the leader of his party, and a sense of the responsibilities of leaders.h.i.+p made him far more cautious and less fiery than he had been in former days. Yet even then he had said emphatically: ”No republic can last long in France that is not based on law, order, and respect for property.”

In August, 1880, however, eighteen months after M. Grevy's elevation to the presidency, Gambetta became prime minister. He flattered himself that he might do great things for France, for he believed that he could count on the support of every true Republican. He was mistaken. Three months after he accepted office, the Radicals and the Conservatives combined for his overthrow. He was defeated in the Chamber on a question of the _scrutin de liste_, and resigned.

Gambetta's disappointment was very great. He had counted on his popularity, and had hoped to accomplish great things. He was a man of loose morals and of declining health, for, unsuspected by himself, a disorder from which he could never have recovered, was undermining his strength; this made him irritable. On the 30th of August, 1882, he was visiting, at a country house near Paris, a lady of impaired reputation; there he was shot in the hand. The wound brought on an illness, of which he died in December. It has never been known whether the shot was fired by the woman, as was generally suspected, or whether his own pistol, as he a.s.serted, was accidentally discharged.

He was buried at Pere la Chaise, without religious services; but his coffin was followed by vast crowds, and all Frenchmen (even his enemies, and they were many) felt that his country had lost an honest patriot and a great man.

On the centennial anniversary of the opening act of the French Revolution, a statue of Gambetta was unveiled in the Place du Carrousel, the courtyard of French kings. No future king, if any such should be, will dare to displace it. Gambetta's life was a sad one, and his death was sadder still. With all his n.o.ble qualities,--and there are few things n.o.bler in history than the manner in which he effaced himself to give place to his rival,--how great he might have been, had he learned early to apply his power of self-restraint to lesser things!

Gambetta wanted Paris to remain the city of cities, the centre of art, fas.h.i.+on, and culture; and he took up the Emperor Napoleon's policy of beautifying and improving it by costly public works.

”Je veux ma republique belle, bien paree” (”I want my republic beautiful and well dressed”) was a sentence which brought him into trouble with the Radicals, who said he had no right to say ”my republic,” as if he were looking forward to being its dictator.

He voted for the return of the Communists from New Caledonia, and during the last two years of his life these returned exiles never ceased to thwart him and revile him. Some one had prophesied to him that this would be the case. ”Bah!” he answered, ”the poor wretches have suffered enough. I might have been transported myself, had matters turned out differently in 1870.”[1] Had he lived, it is probable that in 1886 he would have supplanted M. Grevy. ”Nor,”

says one of his friends, ”can it be doubted that, loving the Republic as he did, and having served it with so much devotion and honesty, he would have found in his love a power of self-restraint to keep him from courses that might have been hurtful to his own work.”

For the establishment of the Republic _was_ princ.i.p.ally ”his own work.” He proclaimed its birth, standing in a window of the Hotel de Ville in 1870; he gave it a baptism of some glory in the fiery, though hopeless, resistance he opposed to the German invasion; and he kept it standing at a time when it needed the support of a st.u.r.dy, vigilant champion. To the end it must be believed that he would, as far as in him lay, have preserved it from harm. Not long before his death, during a lull in his pain, which for a moment roused a hope of his recovery, he said to his doctor: ”I have made many mistakes, but people must not imagine I am not aware of them; I often think over my faults, and if things go well I shall try the patience of my friends less often. _On se corrige!_”

[Footnote 1: Cornhill Magazine, 1883.]

When Gambetta was dead, the man who stepped into his place was Jules Ferry. He was a lawyer, born in the Vosges in 1832. He had never been personally intimate with Gambetta, but he succeeded to his political inheritance, became chief of his party, secured the majority that Gambetta never could get in the Chamber, and did all that Gambetta had failed to do.

His attention when prime minister was largely devoted to the development of French industry in colonies. He began a war in Tonquin, he annexed Tunis, and commenced aggressions in Madagascar. All of these enterprises have proved difficult, unprofitable, and wasteful of life and money.