remarkable still, at the height of his career he still held all the offices which a man is permitted to hold because one is not incompatible with the other. When by the vote of the National Assembly he was made chief of the commonwealth, he was still councilor-general for his department and mayor of Montélimar, offices which, owing to the trust reposed in him by the electors, he had held for a great many years, I think nearly twenty.

What was it that Émile Loubet did, then, to cause him to be so highly thought of by those who gave him their votes? If you should ask the general public or interrogate current opinion or the press, you would be answered with the commonplace which one hears so often in similar cases. "Oh," they would say to you, "he did n't do anything." At the famous Parisian tavern, the "Black Cat," where all the men of the day are touched off in popular ballads, the answer was somewhat different. The refrain of a political song that met with great success a year ago was this: "Loubet, ..oh, how much he loved his mother!" And from stanza to stanza we find the good people of Montélimar, and even the entire French people, represented as overcome by the affection which Émile Loubet showed for his mother, that most respectable peasant woman who lives in Montélimar.

The explanation of this song is an episode in the life of the President which redounds completely to his honor. On the day that he entered his native town for the first time as President of the Republic he saw his mother seated on one of the tribunes, watching the procession pass. At once he caused his carriage to be stopped, and, without the slightest regard for the pomp and officialdom with which he was surrounded, he got out of the carriage and ran over to kiss the old lady, being unwilling to wait to the end of the ceremonies.

Such a spontaneity of feeling as this, and such simplicity of manners, far from shocking, were sure to gain for him the hearts of Frenchmen. But by putting this little episode in relief the ballad-maker wished to impress his hearers with the idea that there was nothing in the political career of Émile Loubet which was more interesting to note than this family scene. Dear me! that is a fact-up to a certain point. There is nothing extraordinary or striking in his past

1 The National Assembly, which elects the presidents of the Republic, as readers may know, is a combination of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. VOL. LXII.-4.

career. But to conclude therefrom that he has " done nothing" is but a single step. And yet a person must be very stupid, or else understand human nature very poorly, who could suppose that a man can maintain himself during a quarter of a century in such elective offices by merely failing to act. Negative merit is never able to cause itself to be admired in such a consecutive and persistent way.

The truth is that, wherever he passed, Émile Loubet left behind him pleasing recollections. His intelligence, his power of work and reflection, his very sound education, his early experiences, and, above everything else, his uprightness and wisdom, never failed to render most excellent service in the successive offices to which he attained. Among all the ranks which he occupied in turn, perhaps the one for which he was least qualified was that of presiding over the council of ministers. Although in that sphere he spoke well and acted with intelligence, there was in him a lack of that combative nature, of that energy and brio, which are at the present day almost indispensable to a French premier in order to preserve his majority in Parliament. The deputies which are sent there by the democracy, being themselves far from wise men, are but little influenced by the wisdom of the chief of the cabinet.

The ministry headed by Loubet was remarkable owing to an incident which abundantly proves that loyal intentions are not sufficient to the task of government. A very troublesome strike was declared in Carmaux, the great center of the mining region, and the situation became very disquieting; whereupon some one evolved the idea that the miners should ask the Prime Minister to act as arbiter. The suggestion was followed; the Company of Mines agreed to the plan, and so Loubet was offered the position of umpire. There had never before been a case where the government of France had intervened in this fashion between employers and workmen. Still, the situation seemed an interesting one, and people were ready to applaud the chief of the cabinet for his courage. Unfortunately, his decision was not accepted by the workmen, who considered that they had not been treated with sufficient lenity. Émile Loubet had simply listened to the voice of his own conscience, and the verdict which he delivered was absolutely just; but the mere fact that it did not at once put an end to the strike caused his situation to be weakened and seriously diminished the prestige of his cabinet.

In the Senate, on the contrary, this lofty moral quality, this impartiality of his mind, was greatly admired by everybody, and there, at least, it did good work. Under the French constitution the Senate exerts a sort of moderating influence; it does not always succeed in being the temple of wisdom, but at any rate it attempts to reach that height. Before one can be senator one must have passed the age of forty, and so the turbulence of youth can have no place in that body, whither, as a general thing, only those men come whose career is already settled and whose ideas, therefore, are permanently fixed. In this more thoughtful chamber Émile Loubet did not fail to exert a great influence, even beyond the limits of his own party. People always found him ready to enter the field of conciliation, and often clever in discovering peaceful paths. His judgment was so sure that his fellow-senators fell into the habit of consulting him, and views expressed by him, in a form always clear and based upon an unchanging basis of good sense, had a predominant influence upon the minds of his colleagues.

The last two presidents of the Senate had been remarkable men: first, Jules Ferry, who was the most powerful statesman of modern France, and then Challemel-Lacour, member of the Academy, philosopher, and orator of high grade. Émile Loubet came into their heritage, but it was plain that he had neither the political genius of the former nor the literary quality of the latter; and yet he was better fitted than either of them to direct a large body of legislators. During the three years which he passed as Premier in the Palais du Luxembourg not a cloud formed between him and the body over which he presided. So well was he liked and so popular was he, that his popularity was not destroyed even by the Dreyfus case. Throughout this rising effervescence, which threw the shadow of its trouble over every public organization and even disturbed private families, not only did he know how to preserve his equilibrium, but he was able to keep a perfect balance between the two parties, and in a certain way to secure the respect of all the various shades of opinion. But at that time the Senate seemed to be the one place to which all that remained in France of good sense and tolerance had fled for refuge.

While this was going on, President Félix Faure suddenly died. Struck by apoplexy one evening, without warning, he died that very night, and the next morning France

heard in a kind of stupor that she was without a pilot in the midst of a tempest which was then rising to its most violent point. That very morning the newspapers which announced the death of the chief of the commonwealth were full of talk concerning the succession. One newspaper which enjoys a certain authority was the first to pronounce the name of Émile Loubet, and even before his candidature had been opened, this paper recommended him with great force. That afternoon, when Loubet entered the hall of the Senate to preside over the daily meeting, all the senators, with very few exceptions, rose from their seats, and, with three salvos of applause, saluted the future President. That was a manifestation of the sentiment which the senators entertained for him, as magnificent as it was spontaneous.

Loubet was profoundly moved and troubled by such an ovation, which was without precedent in the history of the French Parliament. Nothing had been further from his thought than the possibility of becoming President of the Republic; he had never even dreamed of it. Moreover, after the possibility had presented itself to his mind, he discovered that a very powerful disinclination had risen in him. He was almost at the point of refusing the honor, no matter what might be the insistence on the part of his friends. That was his position when he entered the hall of the Senate, but the manifestation which awaited him shook his resolution. After all, it is tremendously flattering to a man to be acclaimed in this fashion, and anybody might take a proper pride in it. Still, it appears that Loubet did not permit himself to give way to this idea; but he thought that he perceived in the applause of the Senate a confirmation of what his friends and a number of politicians had been repeating since the morning, namely, that his candidacy was the only one which would produce some kind of quiet in France, because he had been in no way compromised in the "case," having never taken openly the side either of the General Staff or of the writers who were grouped about Zola.

That is a fact without question. Whatever may have been his inner convictions, the President of the Senate had considered that it was befitting his duty as an impartial man to open his heart to no one. In consideration of his moderation and the wisdom of his mind, it is more than probable that in his inner thought he threw equal blame upon the wicked exaggerations of those who furiously attacked, some of them the army and

others the General Staff, but he concluded that it was more patriotic not to state his opinion. Therefore it was that people were right in believing that his candidacy would be one of peace. He shared that belief, and resigned himself to accept an honor for which he cared very little.

II.

JUST the contrary occurred. In order to understand how this came about, one must recall those turbulent days during which the press took pleasure in giving itself up with frenzy to the publication of news as sensational as it was untrue, when the public, having accepted this news and lost all power of discrimination, let itself loose at once and gave itself over to a fit of rage so intense that a person who remained calm must have found the situation indeed absurd.

The newspaper which, without in the slightest degree having been asked to do so, was the first to recommend the candidacy of Émile Loubet turned out to be one of the most ardent organs of the partizans of Dreyfus. What was uppermost in the minds of the politicians who directed its course was plainly the desire to checkmate M. Méline. They would have preferred to see one of their own circle President, but feared that a spoke would soon be put in the wheel if so sharply cut a plan were launched; so, in order not to play into the hands of their enemies, they thought it more wily to push to the front a respected name, one popular in the Senate, and therefore able to group about him votes belonging to the various parties. To their thinking that was the surest way of getting Méline out of the way.

But it was enough that a Dreyfusard paper should urge the name of Loubet. At once the anti-Dreyfus press started a violent opposition. The affair grew to really grotesque and impudent proportions when these same newspapers, not content with rejecting Loubet's candidacy, turned on the personality of the candidate and treated him as a Dreyfusard, a hypocrite, a bribe-taker, declaring that he had purchased the support of the entire Dreyfus party by promising to have the case revised, along with the certain acquittal of Dreyfus. Harking back into bygone days, they reproached Loubet with having been compromised in the Panama scandal and with having tried secretly to protect the chief authors of the scandal. It may be that calumny has been carried to greater lengths heretofore, but probably never have

people gone further on the path of folly. There was not even a shadow of truth in the whole accusation.

Nevertheless, such was the effervescence of public opinion at the moment that a legend which had been planted after this fashion took root. A vast majority of the Senate had voted for their President, and all the deputies who were friends of peace and liberal ideas had done the same. Upon his return from Versailles, when the new President of the Republic appeared in Paris, a few bands of noisy politicians hooted him. Three months later occurred the memorable incident at the race-track at Auteuil, where some of the Parisian upper circles of society dishonored themselves by applauding as a hero the author of an attack on the President which was as cowardly as it was idiotic.

Of a truth there was nothing in the first months of such a life at the Presidential palace to charm a man who, almost against his own struggles, had been forced by his friends to this high place. A daily campaign of shameless lies was opened against him, and grave political embarrassments rose on his path. Some of them were the natural outcome of the situation, others were cleverly introduced by personal enemies who may have hoped in this way to disgust him with his office and lead him to give in a sudden resignation, as Casimir-Périer had done.

But there we find one of Loubet's most valuable traits: he does not easily surrender a plan he has once begun. People still recall a statement of his: "I did not enter the Palace of the Élysées for my own pleasure; I shall not leave it to give pleasure to others." I do not vouch for this speech: he may not have said it: but, at any rate, I believe that it corresponds to his state of mind.

However irksome the first experiences of his life as the chief of the commonwealth may have been, he would have been ashamed of himself had he abandoned his post solely for the purpose of hiding himself from personal enmity. But he can leave with an entirely different spirit as soon as he believes that he is no longer able to comply effectively with the duties of his place. Should that day come, he will be only too glad to resign official duties which are very far from representing his own ideals. Then, returning to his farm like Cincinnatus, he will leave the Presidential chair to end his days peacefully in his native town.

For, as a matter of fact, this seventh President of the French Republic is a farmer, and

that quality in his nature permits one to distinguish exactly the extremely French aspect of his personality. Our ancient race, which has powerful springs of action in it, as well as varied charms, has at last come to the point of separating, as it were, into two branches, which grow at the present day one beside the other in a parallel line. It is, to be sure, the same tree; the two parts share equally in the life common to both, but they share separately. Undoubtedly our French race produces many different types, but, on the other hand, it has certain characters of combination, certain general characters which distinguish it from the other races. But to-day this division into two categories is more than ever distinct, and tends to fix itself. And this interesting fact placed before the face of the chief of the commonwealth, who so well personifies one of these categories, an antagonist and a candidate for the same post, Paul Deroulède, who is in no less degree the type of the other category.

Observe that when I make a parallel of this sort, which perhaps is unexpected, I propose to put to one side the exceptional men. One may, it is true, look for such portion of the French genius as they possessed in Jules Ferry, Gambetta, Victor Hugo, Gounod, Pasteur, and Renan. Unquestionably this genius will be found; but all those men were exceptional beings. On the other hand, neither Émile Loubet nor Paul Deroulède is an exceptional man. They typify the upper average, if I may term it so, of the French race. They are men of distinction,-eminent if you choose, but not exceptional, and being such, they typify and represent the two tendencies of which I have just spoken.

One of them seems to be the asylum of refuge for all the quixotisms of past generations that fiery energy, that imagination on horseback, that habit of throwing one's self upon an idea, upon a man or an institution, as the knight of La Mancha fell upon the windmills, without having made a preliminary examination and without knowing very well how they were made. The love of fuss and feathers, the fashion of using swelling phrases, generosity to one's foe in battle, inability to profit by a victory, carelessness or recklessness when success has been obtained-all these things, good heavens! all these things compose in a certain way the pleasant side of the Frenchman, make him a person to sympathize with, and cause him to be liked. For example, many

of these traits can be found in Napoleon III, who was really a true Frenchman, while his uncle was a pure Roman of old Rome. But if France could have availed herself of no other qualities save these, she would have been dead long ago. She has other traits which are equally antique and part of the past, such as clearness in reasoning, good sense, the instinct of orderliness, caution in calculations, constancy in times of strain and stress-a trait which Ronsard has summed up and expressed so well in the lines:

Your Frenchman 's like a verdant willow-tree: The more you cut and prune, the livelier he.

The line of demarcation between these characteristics, so entirely different in kind that at times they seem absolutely contradictory, was traced, so I believe, by King Henry IV. He appreciated very keenly splendid deeds; he admired yet more the excellent virtues of the townsman. The separation can be marked from his rank downward. According to their inclinations Frenchmen have arranged themselves of their own accord on one side or the other, and so these two types have gone on strengthening in their outlines, and have come to be what they are to-day, namely, the lover of epics and the disciple of Reason. The one is just as foolishly in love with his own object of worship as the other is passionately attached to his particular faith. In order to be strict and just, one must add that those epochs in which the epic triumphed were in general not those which were lucky for France, while those during which reason governed were sometimes by no means brilliant, but have ever been fruitful. For example, during the nineteenth century the two attempts at the epic have resulted in terrible disasters, while governments under which reason has been able to work freely have more than doubly replaced the wealth of the country, and have returned to it the peace and prosperity which it had lost.

III.

IN our age and generation Émile Loubet is one of the high priests of Reason-not, it is true, after the fashion of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who in pontifical fashion was wont to evoke that same Reason when it had nothing to say; but, on the contrary, after the fashion of a man who is well balanced, sound in brain and body, and has made it a habit to consult reason when confronted by each difficulty, listening to its