France in the Nineteenth Century

[Footnote 1: Les Coulisses du Boulangisme.]

After seeing the false document which was shown him, with great pretence of secrecy, by the police agent, the general hesitated no longer. On the evening of April 1, accompanied by Madame de Bonnemains, a lady to whom he was paying devoted attention, pending a divorce from his wife, he went to Brussels, followed by his friend Count Dillon, the go-between in financial matters between the Royalists and himself. The Cabinet of M. Carnot had learned the value of the saying, "If your enemy wishes to take flight, build him a bridge of gold."

The departure of the general threw consternation into the ranks of his followers. "It cannot be!" they cried. Then they consoled themselves with the reflection that he must soon return, as he had done once before under somewhat similar circumstances.

But he did not return. The Government had triumphed. Boulanger's power was broken; like a wave, it had toppled over when its crest was highest. The High Court of Justice condemned Deroulède the poet, Rochefort, and Dillon, to confinement for life in a French fortress. The sentence, however, was simply one of outlawry, for they were all with Boulanger.

The exiles did not stay long in Brussels. The Government of Belgium objected to their remaining so near the frontier of France,—for in Brussels a telephone connected them with Paris,—and they went over to London. There, at the general's request, he had an interview with the Comte de Paris. But their conversation was limited to useless compliments and military affairs. Boulanger's power as a political leader was at an end; the friends of the prince would advance him no more funds, and in the elections, which took place very quietly in France during the summer, he and his friends suffered total defeat.

The Government of France—strengthened not only by the success of the Exposition, by its great triumph at the elections, and by the discomfiture of its enemies, but also by the conviction forced upon parliamentary leaders that the country was weary of mere talk and discord, and demanded harmony and action—now became the strongest Government that France had enjoyed for a long time. The Republic had passed the point of danger, the eighteenth year, which had been the limit of every dynasty or form of government in France for over a century. It rallied to itself men from the ranks of all its former enemies, but its greatest victory was over the Monarchists. The wreck of their cause by the alliance with a military adventurer was a blunder in the eyes of one section of the Royalists; in the eyes of another, it was a dishonor that amounted almost to a crime.

Boulanger had rallied to himself the clerical party in France by the promise of a republic strong enough to protect the weak,—"a republic that would concern itself with the interests of the people, and be solicitous to preserve individual liberty in all its forms, especially liberty of conscience, that liberty the most to be valued of all,"[1] Such a republic it seems possible the Third Republic may now become, especially since it is on all hands conceded that there is a reaction in France in favor of religious liberty, for those who are religious as well as for those who are "philosophers."

[Footnote 1: Speech at Tours.]

President Carnot has been an eminently respectable president. He has committed no blunders, and if he has awakened little enthusiasm, he has called forth no animosities. The worst that can be said of him is embodied in caricatures, where he always appears ready to serve some useful purpose, as a jointed wooden figure that can be put to many a use.

The French army is now stronger and better disciplined, and more full of determination to conquer, than any French army has ever been before. But no ruler of France can be anxious to precipitate a war with Germany; and judging from the present state of feeling among the French, there appear to be no serious political breakers ahead. Of course in France the unexpected is always to be expected, and what a day may bring forth, nobody knows.

Sir Charles Dilke tells us that in 1887, when a friend of his was going to France, he asked him to ascertain for him if General Boulanger were a soldier, a mountebank, or an ass; and the answer brought back to him was, "He is a little of them all." The general, after his interview in London with the Comte de Paris, took up his residence in the island of Jersey. He cannot but have felt that his popularity had failed him, and that his enchanter's wand was broken. From time to time he made spasmodic efforts to bring himself again to the notice of the public. He offered repeatedly to return to France and stand his trial for conspiracy, provided that the trial might be conducted before a regular court of justice, and not before an especial committee appointed by the Chambers.

Meantime his domestic relations must have caused him poignant anxiety. His wife was his cousin,—a lady of the haute bourgeoisie in a provincial town. She appears to have felt herself unequal to what might be required of her as the wife of the national hero. She entertained apprehensions that her fate might be that of the Empress Josephine. When her husband became War Minister, she declined to preside over his receptions, and withdrew herself from his official residence, taking with her her two daughters, Hélène and Marcelle. Thus deserted, Boulanger became open to scandals and reports, some true, and some false, such as would inevitably be circulated in France concerning such a man's relations with women. It is quite certain, however, that at the height of his popularity he became infatuated with the divorced wife of a Baron de Bonnemains,—a lady well connected, and up to the time when Boulanger became her lover, of unstained reputation. She was also rich, having a fortune of 1,500,000 francs. She was not very beautiful, but was tender, gracious, and womanly. M. de Bonnemains had not made her a good husband, and her friends rejoiced when the law gave her a divorce. General Boulanger and his wife seem to have agreed to sever their marriage tie under the new French divorce law, which requires both parties to be examined by a judge, who is to try if possible to reconcile them; but at the last moment Madame Boulanger refused, upon religious grounds, her assent to a divorce, and the marriage of the general with Madame de Bonnemains became thenceforward impossible.

The story is not a pleasant one, but it is necessary to relate it, because of its results.

Madame de Bonnemains, whose constitution was consumptive, drooped and sickened in Jersey. She removed in the spring of 1891 to Brussels to try one of the new schemes for the cure of pulmonary trouble. The remedy seems to have hastened her death, which took place in July. General Boulanger never recovered from her loss. His friends and his funds had failed him, and the death of this woman, whom he had passionately loved, completely overwhelmed him. He spoke constantly of suicide, and in spite of precautions taken by his friends, he carried his purpose into effect upon her grave in the cemetery of Brussels, October 2, 1891.

Whatever General Boulanger's faults may have been in relation to other women, he was devoted to his mother. The latter, who was eighty-six years old at the time of his death, resided in Paris, and when he was in the city he never suffered a day to pass without visiting her. A lock of her white hair was on his breast when he was dressed for burial.

INDEX.