Among other hostesses I must say a word concerning the Duchesse de Gramont, a Jewess and the daughter of Baron Amschel de Rothschild of Frankfurt. She was one of the few really grandes dames of Paris. Clever, full of tact, and kind and good, as few women have been kind and good, she was essentially a great lady, and made for herself friends wherever she went. Her husband is now married to an Italian Princess, whom he took to his heart a few months after the death of the Duchesse Marguerite, but the latter is not forgotten by the world which she graced and adorned, and where her early death caused more sincere sorrow than is generally expressed in the circle to which she belonged.

Madame de Gramont had a sister who became the Princesse de Wagram, and who was also a favourite in Parisian society, where she won for herself a great position. Unfortunately she also died young, and with her disappeared one of the last great ladies in France.

Foreigners form an important contingent in Paris society. The gay town has always attracted wandering souls eager to find in strange places what they cannot get at home, and who have succumbed so well to its charms that they lack the courage to leave it. A numerous company of Americans and Russians met in society live in the new district about the Arc de Triomphe, and they visit all the houses where entertainments are going on. Polish emigrants and Polish aristocracy have found their headquarters in the Ile St. Louis at the Hotel Lambert, where Prince Ladislas Tsartoryski, the husband of Princess Marguerite of Orleans, opened the doors of his magnificent residence to them with unbounded hospitality.

Several members of the Radziwill family also settled by the Seine, after the marriage of one of them with the daughter of M. Blanc, the owner of the Monaco gambling house. He was the father of the present Duchesse de Doudeauville. The Counts Branicki and their connections bought themselves houses in the neighbourhood of the Rue de Penthièvre, where the chief of the race had settled. There hostility to the Russian Government was fanned by every possible device, and there hatred against Russia was preached with an energy worthy of a better cause.

The Russian colony was also an important one. It lacked, however, a rendezvous, and it had to submit to constant rebuffs on the part of its own Embassy and Consulate, where it is the fashion to repulse all the compatriots who call there unless they belong to the ultra-smart set which is in possession of influence in St. Petersburg official circles. Several Russian Grand Dukes, who had become constant inhabitants of the French capital, gave their colony an appearance of splendour which other foreign quarters lacked. Foremost among these scions of the Russian Imperial house was the Grand Duke Paul, who, after his marriage with the divorced wife of one of the officers of his own regiment, had left his fatherland and settled in Paris permanently. He goes about a great deal in society, where his wife, who has been created Countess of Hohenfelsen by the Prince Regent of Bavaria, is treated like a Grand Duchess, and in society given the precedence of one.

Life in smart Paris to-day is totally different from life as it was in the time of the Second Empire. Sport has entered into it, and is now one of its principal functions. Everyone who can, or who cannot, afford it possesses an automobile, and thinks himself obliged to make a show of it in the morning in the Bois de Boulogne, which is also invaded before lunch by a bevy of fair ladies who pretend they come there to do some walking, but who in reality want only to show themselves and to see others. It is there that all the gossip, which later on in the afternoon is spread at many tables, finds its origin, and where reputations are marred and lost. It is there that “accidental” meetings take place either at polo or at some exhibition, or at one of the numerous tea-houses that have sprung up on all sides lately, where the Parisienne comes to eat cakes, and not to drink tea, with which she is not yet sufficiently familiar. From ten to twelve o’clock everybody worth knowing is to be met in the Bois, where it is fashionable to be seen at that hour, and where no one would care to go later or earlier.

The afternoon offers other kinds of pleasures, and fashionable society, after a pause at the aforementioned tea-houses, repairs either to the races or to some exhibition, or more often in summer time to the polo ground at Bagatelle, where it likes to watch the game. The players belong to the most elegant men about town, and think that the fact of taking part in polo confers on them the reputation of being real sportsmen. The evenings are spent either at a ball or at a reception, but late hours are not now the custom in Paris, and midnight generally sees the fashionable birds in their beds.

There is no serious interest in that kind of existence, no conversations worthy of being so called, except now and then by the greatest of chances. The witty, clever French society, the salons which had such a universal reputation in olden times, have all disappeared with the snows of the many winters that have elapsed since the days when they ruled public opinion, and when their influence was felt everywhere, often in politics and always in literature, which had to conform more or less to their rules, and which would not have cared to offend their good taste. Parisian society has degenerated, it is impossible to deny it, degenerated on account of the many foreign elements that have invaded it, and also on account of the importance which money has acquired, an importance that has taken the place occupied formerly by intelligence, beauty, virtue—all the things which ought to be respected, but which we are apt, now, to forget when we find them associated with that money which is the only god whose supremacy is acknowledged in that Paris which thinks itself the capital of the world, but which is only the purveyor of most of its evil pleasures.

Not only in society as a whole is this laxity of demeanour and conduct discernible, but there is a perceptible loosening of the laws which used to govern legislators and officials. What men would formerly consider as impinging upon their honour is no longer looked at askance, and so things happen which leave an unpleasant memory. This has been observed in certain activities in the financial world.

In an earlier part of these reflections I have spoken of the Panama affair, and in the present chapter I have made some reference to the money-fever that pervades Paris to-day. It is therefore only necessary here to be very brief.

There was a great outcry and a wealth of righteous indignation at the Panama disclosures, but it is difficult to perceive any improvement. There have been scandals of recent date, the echoes of which reverberate even in 1914, and in which just as many people were implicated whose names and social position ought to have put them above sordid intrigues. Paris has always offered an excellent ground for financiers of doubtful moral standing. Every paper has advertisements offering to the innocent public every kind of facility to enable it to lose its money. With the help of a press willing to print anything provided it is paid for at a sufficiently high rate, shares not worth the paper they are printed upon are thrown upon the market, and are eagerly bought by credulous creatures who believe blindly in what their papers tell them, and who look forward to large benefits out of the promised rise of the said shares. That rise never comes, and then sometimes an angry dupe inquires of the police, generally without success, as to the reason why no redress can be obtained. The man in the street holds and expresses emphatic opinions, which if people believed were true would mean that the corruption of Republican government surpasses everything of the kind that ever flourished at the time of the Second Empire, about the venality of which so much has been written and spoken.

Whatever may be said of present-day finance, it is enough to remind the reader of the gigantic frauds which Madame Humbert was able to perpetrate for so many years, of the ease with which Cornelius Herz and Arton were able to escape from the grip of the law, and of the facility which the famous Rochette, the hero of the last financial scandal that France can boast, found in avoiding being imprisoned or obliged to give up any portion of his ill-gotten gains. Rochette succeeded in avoiding every pursuit for a long time, though numerous complaints had been made against him. It was said that the complaints had always been left unexamined under the pretence that they proceeded from people who simply wanted blackmail. It is no secret that several deputies were great friends with that successful financier, during whose reign their stock exchange operations were always profitable.

Rochette is a curious example of the ease with which any man gifted with sufficient impudence can become an important personage. He began his career by being a waiter in a small hotel at Melun, soon tired of it, and went to Paris, where he obtained a situation as office assistant in one of those financial establishments which flourish for a few months and disappear together with their directors into the unknown after a brief and brilliant existence. His experience there helped him considerably in his future life. He learned to avoid mistakes into which a novice in finance would be apt to fall. It is said that he profited by the whispered advice that “in order to be a lucky financier, one must before everything have a deputy in one’s pocket.”

When he became a banker and a director of several large concerns, he frequented the Chamber of Deputies, and even honoured with his attention the Senate. He affected great modesty, but took care to be kept well informed as to the private means of several important personages whose protection he thought might be of use to him in the future, and he managed in an unobtrusive way to make himself indispensable to them.

When the end came it was rumoured in Paris that most scandalous facts were about to come to light, and that the Panama affair would be eclipsed by them. Names were mentioned, at first secretly then quite loudly, until at last they found their way into the newspapers. But, somehow, the inquiry which had been begun dragged on until the public got tired of hearing nothing about it, and made up its mind not to think any more about the affair. In the meantime in prison Rochette was leading the best kind of life possible under the circumstances, had all the comforts which money allowed him to procure for himself, received visits from his numerous friends, and when at last he was released on bail pending his trial, he declared to all those who cared to hear it, that he would not only prove his innocence, but find people willing to trust him with their money again, in spite of his recent misadventures.

And when he was sentenced to several years’ imprisonment, Rochette quietly took a railway ticket and disappeared into an unknown land, which probably is not very far from the scene of his former exploits; sure that no one is going to discover him in the refuge which he had chosen, he is awaiting with the greatest confidence and calm the expiration of the time when proscription will allow him to reappear in Paris, and to begin again the financial career which he was obliged to interrupt for a short period.

How was it possible for Rochette to escape whilst Charles de Lesseps and his father were obliged to drink to the dregs the cup of their humiliation? The reply is very simple, perhaps obvious, and I hesitate to doubt the reader’s perception by uttering it.

When the great Lesseps was accused of having tried to buy the support of some members of the Parliament, everyone cried out that it was a scandal which ought to be punished as severely as possible; but when it was proved that Rochette had succeeded in buying or winning over to his side some of the most influential political people in France, that he had even secured the indulgence of judges who ought to have been at least impartial, the public only shrugged its shoulders, and some persons were even found to say that after all he had been un homme très fort, and that it was better to be his friend than his enemy. When Rochette was arrested, excuses without number were found for him, and he was represented to be the victim of private vengeances and private blackmail. Times are changed indeed, and not only the opinions of men, but also their ideas as to right and wrong.

CHAPTER XXX

M. Fallières as President

His successor, M. Fallières, was elected largely through the influence of M. Clemenceau. M. Fallières was essentially a peaceful man. He had accepted the position of President of the Republic, partly because he did not like to disobey the orders of his superiors, and partly because he was a careful man, an excellent father, and saw in his septenary the opportunity to improve the material prospects of his children.

It was during his tenure of office that the Dreyfus affair came to a close, and that the Captain was not only rehabilitated but also rewarded for his sufferings with the Legion of Honour, in spite of the outcries which this decision raised among the Clericals and the anti-Semites. It was also he who signed the decree granting burial in the Panthéon to the ashes of Zola, and it was during his septenary, moreover, that relations were definitely broken with the Vatican. The last event produced a great sensation, especially when the representative of the Papal Nuncio, Mgr. Montagnini, was expelled from Paris by the police in about as brutal a way as it was possible to conceive.

Much has been written concerning that last measure, of which, let it be said en passant, neither M. Fallières nor the French Government had any reason to be proud. It was one of those acts of violence which only tend to exasperate the public mind against those who render themselves guilty of the indiscretion, but which is of no importance in reality. Of course Mgr. Montagnini had not behaved with the necessary tact in the delicate position wherein he found himself placed, but if he had had to do with gentlemen they would have asked him to go away of his own accord, which he would probably have been but too glad to do, and they would not have expelled him mania militari. M. Fallières, in spite of his middle-class education, felt this, and it is said that he vainly tried to avoid this scandal. The Radical party, however, had laid down its conditions not only to him, but also to M. Clemenceau, and the latter with all his cleverness and his energy was not strong enough to refuse it this satisfaction, which was craved with persistence and in such imperative terms.

I knew Mgr. Montagnini very well, and I happened to call on him on the eve of the day which saw him thrown out of France with such unnecessary brutality. He had been warned of the measures about to be taken against him, but would not believe in its possibility. When I asked him why he had not telegraphed to Mgr. Merry del Val, then Secretary of State of the Holy See, asking permission to leave of his own accord, he replied to me that it would have been useless, because that permission would never have been granted to him. As I expressed my astonishment he explained to me at length that Rome wanted the French Government to resort to violence against its representative because it would only raise the prestige of the Church and provoke general indignation against its persecutors.

“All this will pass,” he added; “many months will not go by before the very government which does not hesitate to insult a priest and the official representative of the Pope will find itself obliged to renew relations with the Holy See. So many questions will arise in connection with this separation of the Church and State, of which the French Radicals are so proud, that they will very soon see the mistake they have made.”

Though Mgr. Montagnini was not a prophet by any means, he proved in this particular case to be right, because in spite of the open rupture of the French Republic with the Vatican, relations were never entirely interrupted between Rome and Paris. Indeed it would have been impossible, because in spite of the hatred for the Catholic Church which the leading politicians in France affected, they had on different occasions to turn to the representatives of the clergy for help, and they did not disdain even to ask them to use their influence whenever they wanted a candidate to be elected either in the Senate or in the Chamber of Deputies, who under the mask of being a moderate Liberal, was in reality a Radical of the purest water, and a fervent partisan of M. Clemenceau and his group.

It was at that time that the star of M. Clemenceau began to ascend higher in the heavens than it had ever been. Until the election of M. Fallières, he had more or less ruled in the dark, and as it were en cachette. When his candidate had been given the first position in the State the hour of his triumph sounded.

M. Clemenceau, in spite of all that has been said, had never been a partisan of the Russian alliance. His sympathies were entirely English. He had been the object of the special attention of King Edward, and his political plans comprised a strong Franco-English friendship, which would prove to be a shield in case of a new war with Germany.

M. Clemenceau would not have been sorry to see war. He was far too shrewd not to notice that in spite of the violent attacks of a certain portion of the press against Germany, the majority of the nation did not any longer harbour such feelings of hatred against their eastern neighbour as formerly existed. More than that, a good many people thought that it would be better to reconcile oneself to facts, and, by an understanding with the German Government, to avoid the heavy taxes which the increased armaments imposed on the country. These armaments were not popular among the greater number of Frenchmen. Forty years had gone by since the war of 1870, and a new generation had succeeded to the one that had witnessed the unexampled disasters which had brought about the fall of the Second Empire. That younger generation could not feel in the same way as its fathers had done; it only saw that France was prosperous, and that a war, even if it turned out to be successful, could but increase the military burdens of the country. This appealed to no one, and consequently a renewal of hostilities with Germany was not desired. M. Clemenceau, on the contrary, had rabid anti-German feelings, and he encouraged what chauvinist tendencies still existed in France, and tried to persuade the leading men in England that the conclusion of an understanding with France would prove of infinite advantage to both countries.

Unfortunately Russia could not be left out of this understanding, and M. Clemenceau had perforce to submit to the fact, but he did his best, nevertheless, to destroy the Russian sympathies which existed in his fatherland by urging the newspapers which were at his disposal to say that in signing the famous Franco-Russian alliance, which had been the cause of so much joy, France had been the dupe—France who had given her money, and France who had thrown herself into the arms of Russia, whilst the latter had taken all that she had been offered, without giving anything in return for the gifts freely showered on her with a more than generous hand.

Nevertheless, M. Fallières started for St. Petersburg, as in duty bound, almost immediately after his election, conforming himself thus to the tradition which had been handed over by M. Félix Faure to his successors. He was warmly welcomed on the banks of the Neva, but welcomed only by the government and officials who followed the lead given to them by the Sovereign. The country itself remained very indifferent during his visit, and the attitude of the public was not at all what it had been when Félix Faure had arrived at Peterhof to return the memorable visit of Nicholas II. in Paris. Somehow the alliance was more accepted as an accomplished fact than as an advantage. In Russia, too, the hour of disillusion had struck.

M. Fallières, in spite of what had been said of him, was very far from being the nonentity he was reported to be. On the contrary, he had an unusual amount of common sense, and was not slow to notice the change in the political atmosphere of the day. Nevertheless, he did his best to disguise from the public the fact of the coolness which had begun to replace the mutual enthusiasm of France and Russia for each other, but when he returned home he began to listen more than he had done formerly to the advice of M. Clemenceau, and to look towards England as a possible ally, having learnt much by his visit to Peterhof.

Although it has been reported otherwise, M. Fallières was fond of M. Clemenceau, and they got on very well together the whole time the latter remained Prime Minister. Together they worked for the benefit of M. Briand, the new star that suddenly arose in the heaven of the Third Republic, and which began to shine in great part through their efforts to assure themselves of its help and co-operation towards the final triumph of the Radical party.

I shall talk of M. Briand in the next chapter. Some people saw in him a successor of M. Fallières as President of the Republic, a conviction which personally I did not share at all, and events proved the truth of my conviction. M. Briand was far too clever to retire at that moment from political life, which still has many triumphs in store for him, and a man who has once occupied the position of Head of the State has no future after his term of office is over; he can only end his days in peace, with the broad red ribbon of the Legion of Honour across his breast as a remembrance of happy days never to return.

The reign of M. Fallières had its share of scandals. I have already spoken of M. Rochette. There were others besides, among them that provoked by the tragic adventures of Madame Steinheil, whose trial and subsequent acquittal occupied Parisian society for long months.

Several episodes of the same kind have lately occupied public attention. They have all left M. Fallières more or less indifferent, and have not ruffled his equanimity. He fulfilled his duties in an unostentatious fashion, and tried to impart as much simplicity as possible to the Presidential household. He travelled about, distributed all the handshakes required of him and all the medals and decorations that his ministers had awarded to their adherents. He partook of the regular number of official dinners, opened exhibitions and charitable institutions, in a word he was a model President, and it is quite possible that M. Clemenceau viewed the end of his Presidency with regret.

Madame Fallières has been the subject of all kinds of absurd stories. Notwithstanding these, she did not show herself as unfit for the part she had been called upon to play as her enemies would have us believe. She was polite with everybody, reserved in her manners, and avoided mistakes. She has done much good, and if she was not so generous as some of her predecessors had shown themselves, she never refused to give money for the cause of charity, when it was necessary, but on the contrary tried to alleviate the distresses which were brought to her notice. She did not pose for what she was not, and she always declared that when she would have to leave the Elysée, she would do so with regret at having to give up such a sumptuous home, but that at the same time she would not be sorry to return to private life and its simplicity.

M. and Mme. Fallières had several children born to them. Their only daughter was married a few years ago to M. Jean Lannes, who had been, until the day when he accompanied to the altar the daughter of his chief, the private secretary of the President of the Republic. His marriage caused a certain sensation in Republican circles, because it was celebrated in the Church of the Madeleine, in spite of the fact that M. Fallières was supposed to be a freethinker, which in reality he was not by any means. But Madame Fallières was a fervent Catholic, and she never would have allowed her child to be married simply at the mairie, as it was suggested to her by some zealous friends. Madame Fallières had always the courage of her opinions, and she has showed it during her reign as the first lady of the French Republic.

Her son, André Fallières, was the subject of much talk at the time of the Steinheil affair, and some people affirmed—well, it does not matter what; it is needless to say that there was not the slightest foundation for such a story.

When M. Fallières’ term of office was over, there were but three candidates possible for the position: one of them was M. Clemenceau himself; M. Pamm, a very wealthy manufacturer possessed of the vast influence which unlimited means always allow one to wield; and M. Poincaré, advocate and Academician, a man gifted with singular strength of will, strong Conservative principles, who endeavours to govern personally the country entrusted officially to his care, who has a holy horror of Radicals, and who is cordially disliked by M. Clemenceau.

This last was perhaps the very reason why M. Poincaré was elected—the Chamber and the Senate have become just a little tired of the autocracy exercised over them by the tombeur de ministères.

CHAPTER XXXI

M. Briand and the Socialists

M. Briand is one of the most ambitious men of his generation, and he distinguishes himself from most of his colleagues by the knowledge which he possesses of his own power, and by the extreme prudence with which he shows it in public. It is true that he likes to rule, but he does not care for people to know that he rules them. In this he differs from others in power, who are not guiltless of displaying the influence which they exercise over their political friends and disciples.

When M. Briand entered the Chamber of Deputies, he spent the first years initiating himself into the secrets of social life, being very well aware of the importance of such things; with an energy of which very few people would have been capable he set himself to learn. He ended by becoming one of the best-groomed men in Paris. His former friends stared; at first they felt tempted to be angry. They very soon realised, however, that a deep political purpose was hidden behind this apparent flattery of society, and they began to respect him, and to talk about him as of a man born to great things. When at last he became a power in his party, and in France, and joined M. Clemenceau’s ministry, they understood that he would prove a leader such as very few political parties could boast.

His ambition is defined by those who are watching his career as aiming to grasp the reins of France, and to hold them fast, until the day when he can show himself to the whole world as the strong man of France.

M. Briand has an exceptional nature. He has no illusions, either about himself or about those who surround him. He knows very well that the man who allows sentimentality to interfere with politics is lost long before he has begun to fight. He early hastened therefore to put a barrier between himself and everything that could be called by that name.

He gained his place in his party; won the votes of the electors who had sent him to the Chamber to defend their interests, without having recourse to underhand tricks; he fought his adversaries with clean hands. He won the admiration of his partners in the game he played by the audacity with which he always put himself forward when danger was ahead. He exercised influence over his colleagues in the ministry by the energy with which he defended his personal opinions, and the independence which he showed in questions where his principles found themselves involved. And he gained the attention of his country by the strength of his personality, the calm which never forsook him in the gravest circumstances of life, and the cold determination which he brought to bear upon everything he did, and every blow which he dealt.

Enemies he had in plenty, detractors very few. Many hated him, but they did not despise him. Years ago he realised that he had succeeded in winning the respect of France, and he meant to keep it.

Too far-seeing to fail to understand that the theories by which he had been able to attain his position were utopian and would not carry him very far, M. Briand had no sympathy with the programme of destruction which the Labour party of his early days had brought forward; indeed, it looked as if he meant to sweep away that party as soon as he succeeded in gaining power and in inspiring confidence in his personality and his political principles. He had patience, a thing so rarely met with in politicians, who are always eager to see their opinions triumph without waiting for the moment when they become acceptable to the nation. He felt, moreover, that he was the only man capable of saving France from the hands of the anarchists who at that time were determined to destroy her.

He had been a workman, and had learned to appreciate the evil passions and the thirst for unreasoning destruction which not infrequently animates the mob. He knew but too well that the spread of Socialist theories would lead to nothing but the desire to overthrow everything without the possibility of putting anything else in the place of what had been trampled under foot, and he made up his mind not to lend himself to the ambitions of those who aimed at annihilation.

It is yet too early to judge whether M. Briand’s plans will ever be realised, but for those who know him as well as I do, it is pretty certain that sooner or later he will try to constitute a moderate Republican party, determined to put a stop to the progress of anarchism, and to rally around the new party the sound forces of the nation. He will then be the object of the denunciation and hatred of his friends of yesterday, who will see in him a traitor, and who will fight him with all the energy of which they are capable. They will endeavour to overthrow him as they have other idols that they have worshipped in the past.

It is probable, however, that M. Briand will not lose prestige by this cry of revenge which will certainly be raised, and that he will continue in the path which he has marked out. He is essentially an opportunist, and moreover has enough common sense not to attach himself to the success of the moment; rather he looks to the future for his ultimate triumph, a triumph he will not miss, and which will not miss him. At present the only hope France can have of the establishment of a strong, moderate Republican government, able to exist without having recourse to the votes of the Socialists, lies in M. Briand. He alone is able to stop the torrent that is threatening to carry away the existing order of things.

In M. Briand, M. Clemenceau finds a strong man with strong political opinions, but it is not likely, so long as the latter is alive, that his former pupil will come out openly against him.

M. Briand was for a short time considered the real leader of the Socialist party. This did not last very long, and perhaps he was not sorry to give up that position, and to have the opportunity of disagreeing openly with M. Jaurès, the great oracle and prophet of Socialism.

M. Jaurès is a curious personality. He is extremely rich, and yet preaches a general division of all wealth—save his own. He is gifted with singular and powerful eloquence, and knows how to appeal to the hearts and especially to the imagination of his hearers, using a torrent of words which leaves such a deep impression on those who listen to him that they lose sight of all that is false and untrue in them. M. Jaurès is worshipped by the more fiery Socialists, who consider even Radicalism as something associated with Conservatism, and whose only creed is the destruction of everything that existed before their time.

He is ambitious of influencing others, but has no desire to rule his country, perhaps because he knows very well that the moment he would consent to enter or to form a ministry half his prestige would be gone. He is too intelligent not to understand that the moment that one has power one is bound to defend those who have given it to you as well as the principles to which one owes it. And M. Jaurès with all his eloquence is unable to defend anything; he can only attack, a thing which is easier and nine times out of ten more successful—at least in politics.

He is the type of a tribune of Roman times; he can win the masses over to his view, and knows very well how to incense them against those whom they consider to be their enemies; it is a question whether he would be able to stop these masses, should he ever desire to do so.

Very often the question has been asked whether M. Jaurès is a sincere Socialist, or whether he has declared himself to be one simply because he wanted to attract the attention of the world to his person, his opinions and his speeches. To this question it is most difficult to reply. Certainly M. Jaurès has a great deal that is theatrical in his nature, he is an actor by temperament as well as a fighter, and this has perhaps contributed more than anything else to the attitude

which he has taken in politics. Nothing gives him more pleasure than by scathing phrases to disarm his adversaries or inspire them with terror.

Strange to say, the Socialists have never reproached him for his large fortune, which he has always steadfastly refused to share with them. M. Jaurès is in their eyes a privileged person whom they allow not to practise the virtues which he preaches. They know but too well that they possess in him a strength they cannot well spare.

France, it seems to me, is a country where Socialism is rampant, and yet one where it has the least chances to seize control of the country. The explanation lies in the fact that the working classes are far from possessing the intellectual development which we find among them in Germany, or even England. Men like Virchow, Liebneckt, or Bebel are not to be found in France, where if they existed they would at once embrace the political convictions of the bourgeois class, which after all has the upper hand in that country. Frenchmen are very practical; it suits them to scream against all those who are in possession of riches, but the moment they have earned the francs which they envied in their opponents they immediately become disdainful of their former friends. All the French workmen are Socialists until they get rich, but the country itself is essentially bourgeois, and we all know that the French bourgeois is not the most unselfish of beings.

From this fact I draw the conclusion that, so long as the present love of money lasts, there is little danger of a purely Socialist government ever ruling France.

CHAPTER XXXII

A Few Literary Men of the Present Day

The well known Octave Mirbeau began his literary career as the secretary of Arthur Meyer, the director and present owner of the Gaulois. He has a profound belief in his own work, and with some justice. He certainly is clever, and the talent with which he describes in his novels what he has not felt is such as one but seldom meets nowadays. His books are remarkable, and they awake passionate interest in their readers, even though they are so strong with realism that they repel many. They are highly imaginative, and provoke not only curiosity but also the desire to read them over again as soon as one has finished them.

From being quite unknown Octave Mirbeau has risen high in the literary firmament of his country and his generation. He soon made his name, gossip saying that he kept himself before his contemporaries by his sharp criticisms of everybody and everything he did not like, or he thought did not like him. He spared no one. Nevertheless he became famous in Paris and throughout France. He succeeded, therefore, in making his books popular.

M. Mirbeau began as a poor man; quickly, however, he earned for himself a large fortune, partly through his books, partly through successful operations on the Stock Exchange, and partly by marriage. M. Mirbeau lives in clover in one of the finest apartments of the Avenue du Bois, and on the lovely property which he possesses at Cormeilles-en-Vexin, near Paris. He gives dinners now and then, and has always been upon excellent terms with the wife to whom he owes so much of his worldly goods. He likes to see at his hospitable hearth the people of whose admiration he feels sure, and honoured me once with an invitation to lunch when I least expected it, for we had never been very friendly towards each other.

I shall never forget that lunch. There were only four of us, the host and hostess, Rodin the sculptor, and myself. When I arrived I was introduced in the study, where the first thing which struck my eyes was the bust of Mirbeau himself on the mantelpiece. As I looked at it, after having exchanged the first greetings with the people in the room, Madame Mirbeau turned to me, and said in her softest accents—and she has a delightfully soft voice: “You are looking at my husband’s bust; it is the work of our great master here,” and she turned towards Rodin.

The latter raised himself slightly from the depths of the large arm-chair in which he was ensconced beside the fire, and looking at me, murmured dreamily: “Ah, it is not everybody’s bust I care to do, but when one meets with a remarkable personality like our great writer here, it is a pleasure for an artist to reproduce his features.”

He sighed as he spoke, and Mirbeau’s face lighted up as he said in his turn: “I never hoped for such a reward for all my work as to be thought worthy of the attention of our great master.”

And then Madame Mirbeau began again: “Ah, it is not often that two great souls like our two great masters here present meet and think together.”

Lunch was announced, and Rodin rose, and directed his steps towards the dining-room. Fearing that I might step before him, Mirbeau stopped me by laying his hand upon my arm, saying as he did so: “Laissez passer le maître, notre maître à tous!”

And this kind of thing went on during the whole meal. Rodin praised Mirbeau, Mirbeau praised Rodin, and Madame Mirbeau praised both of them. One heard nothing but “cher maître,” and “ce grand maître,” and “notre grand maître”—I began to think that I had been invited to assist at the canonisation of Rodin by Mirbeau, and of Mirbeau by Rodin, or of both by Mirbeau’s wife.

Anatole France has a fluent and correct French diction, but whilst admiring him, I cannot forget that there have been other great thinkers, writers, and philosophers, not only in France but also in Europe. And this is what his worshippers won’t admit. St. Simon will always provide enjoyment for the people who wade through his pages; Renan’s works will always remain a model of fine language, and of noble thoughts nobly expressed; Thiers’s history of the Consulate and the Empire will always be consulted by those who care for the past and all it has seen and witnessed. I doubt very much whether the life of Jeanne d’Arc will ever become a classic work.

Apart from this liking for the congenial atmosphere of praise, Anatole France is a charming man, full of humour, amusing in the extreme, his conversation sparkling with witty anecdotes and bons mots, which he utters now and then when one least expects them. He has a wonderful memory, and when all is said and done possesses a great deal of kindness in his judgments, with a considerable indulgence towards his neighbours. He has none of the sharpness of language of Mirbeau, and is more a gentleman. His manner with women is a model of its kind; he treats them with a chivalry which savours of the days of old, when men still died for the ladies of their heart. M. Anatole France, taken on the whole, is certainly a person worth knowing, and is one of the most charming men in Paris at the present day.

I don’t think that I met Flaubert more than a couple of times, but he left on my mind an impression that probably nothing will ever efface. There was real genius in his face, and, in spite of a certain tendency to grumble at everything and at everybody, he could be a charming companion. He was the inventor of the Naturalistic school, and unfortunately others tried to copy him, with the appalling result which we who live in France have seen. But nothing could be more amusing than to witness his rage when shown the distasteful manuscript of some talentless young man, and being told that it was supposed to be an imitation of his style. He used to burst into real fury, and declare that if this was going to be the result of his arduous work, he would rather throw in the fire all that he had ever written. Flaubert was not devoid of ideals, and though he believed that novels ought to describe life, he did not think that they must depict every phase of the material side of it. He was a great genius, and what was allowed to him would not be tolerated in others.

Pierre Loti is another genius in his way. In his charming, lovely books each line breathes with a deep, real talent. Some of his descriptions show us certain spots and places with such vividness that it is almost possible to think one has seen them too. There are passages in “Mon Frère Yves,” in “Désanchantées,” in “Le Pélerin d’Angkok,” and especially in that delightful and profound work, “Le Livre de la Pitié et de la Mort,” the like of which have perhaps never been written before in the French language. But the man himself is anything but sympathetic. He thinks far too much of his own genius, and his affectation jars on the nerves. I have never been able to understand why the people who write clever books should consider themselves as made of superior clay to other mortals, and I feel inclined to laugh always whenever I see an author affect habits, language, and general demeanour different from those of common humanity simply on account of the tales which he has composed, thanks to the intelligence and cleverness that Providence has given to him, and which it might just as well have given to someone else.

A man who did not think himself something extraordinary, and who, perhaps, had more genius in his little finger than others in their whole body, was Guy de Maupassant, that cruel observer of the human heart who understood so well the feelings of his generation, and who was to die so miserably, first losing that intellect which had made him such a strong man and such a remarkable writer. There was a time when I often saw him, and his death grieved me very much more than I could even have supposed.

Emile Augier and Jules Claretie belonged still to a generation where self-praise was absent. The last-mentioned writer was perhaps one of the greatest workers of his time. I often wondered at the activity which allowed him to fulfil his duties as director of the Comédie Française, to write the charming feuilletons which the Temps publish every week, and to do all this apart from innumerable other things, among which the composition of novels holds a place.

There have been many who grumbled in public at the manner in which Claretie administered the Comédie Française, perhaps they would have grumbled just as much if someone else had been in his place. The post was not an easy one, for it required an amount of tact such as is not to be found everywhere. But what cannot be denied is that he filled it like the gentleman he was, and that he insisted on his staff behaving like gentlemen and ladies so long as they remained under his control. He gave to his theatre an air of dignity and of correctness which put it high above any other in Paris.

Another man who could be classed in the same category as Jules Claretie was the Vicomte de Vogué, also a member of the Academy, and a writer imbued with the grand traditions of the seventeenth century when La Rochefoucauld wrote his maxims and La Bruyère his philosophical meditations on the foibles of mankind. M. de Vogué can be classed among the best authors of the latter part of the nineteenth century, and his books will always be read with pleasure when those of other authors will be entirely forgotten.

There are just a few writers of the same style left among the ranks of the French Academy, such as the Marquis de Ségur, whom I have already mentioned, but unfortunately that learned assembly has deteriorated, and has welcomed to its bosom literary men of a very inferior rank.

I will not put among them M. Paul Bourget, who, though his books have sadly gone out of fashion, is an active, charming writer full of the spirit of observation. I find myself thinking of him, however, as an author who wanted to imitate Balzac, and who imagined that he had written a sequel to the “Comédie Humaine,” whilst in reality he had only described the comedy of a certain small circle of Parisian smart society, which has already changed so much that one cannot recognise a single known person among those he tried to describe so faithfully.

Marcel Prévost is also among the men I have often met, and I liked him very much. He was modest; he did not always speak of his personal perfections, and did not think that the fact of his having been elected a member of the French Academy relieved him from study or from honest hard work. He was also a delightful companion. Few men are living to-day who are better informed as to the virtues or the vices of his generation; he has a thorough knowledge of the human heart, he realises the artificiality of the society among which he lives, and also its follies, for which his indulgence is seldom lacking.

There is much earnestness in the talent of M. Marcel Prévost, far more than in the sketches, for one can hardly call them anything else, of Abel Hermant, who poses for the satirist of his time and of his generation, and who forgets that one could often find much about himself to satirise.

I will not do more than mention the modern playwrights such as Henri Bataille, Alfred Capus, Henri Bernstein, Francis du Croisset, and so on. They write in order to make money, and of course must compose dramatic pieces which can bring it to them. They are more or less cabotins themselves, owing to the influence of the many actors with whom their whole life is spent, and they often mistake life for a comedy, which unfortunately it is not, introducing drama when it is not needed. Still, I hardly see how they could avoid it, living, as everybody does, in an artificial atmosphere. The greatest actors in Paris indeed are those who do not appear on the stage.

It is impossible to pass actresses by in silence; they rule Paris with a rod of iron, and are given far more importance than the highest born. Artists like Madame Sarah Bernhardt, Réjane, Jane Hading, or the “divine” Bartet, as she is called, of the Comédie Française, without mentioning Cecile Sorel, who is something else besides an actress of unrivalled talent, are all the objects of far more attention than a queen would be should she appear in the circles in which these ladies live. One looks up to them not only as clever, talented artists, but also the supreme mistresses of fashion; as examples to be imitated by all those who can do so; as the most fascinating, interesting women in Paris. Their dresses, their hats, their jewels, carriages, and sumptuous apartments are described in all the newspapers; their movements are chronicled as if they were empresses.

Among all these fair, charming creatures, Madame Bartet is certainly the most ladylike, not only in her person, but also in her tastes and quiet refinement. She has been lucky enough to keep her youth at an age when most other women have long ago forgotten that they ever had such a possession, and her slight figure, her lovely complexion, despite her more than fifty years, make her look always young and altogether charming. Sarah Bernhardt is a great-grandmother, yet she also can play the Dame aux Camélias without appearing ridiculous in the eyes of her old admirers. She is perhaps the greatest actress that France has produced since Rachel, but I cannot say that I ever found her sympathetic. To my mind she screams far too much, and is not natural in her conception of the many heroines which she represents. But she is so charming as a woman of the world, so interesting in her intercourse, that I am quite ready to say that it is I who have bad taste, and that all she does is perfection itself.

Réjane is something quite different; there is more real passion in her acting, though much less refinement. She is vulgar, and the heaviness of her whole person adds to that first impression; but she knows how to represent the different feelings of joy, despair, sorrow, anger and rage that can shake a human creature. She is life itself whenever she appears on the stage, not life seen through rose-coloured spectacles, but life as we have unfortunately to live and to bear it.

Jeanne Granier is still a favourite with the Parisian public, though her lovely voice has become worn, and her increasing stoutness has done away with her former grace.

Jane Hading was also at one moment the rage, but she did not remain a long time the fashion, though we still see her name on the programmes of different theatres. She certainly played well, but tried too much to imitate Sarah, which did not always agree with her style of beauty, to which, let it be said en passant, she owed most of her successes rather than to her talent, which was not that of a tragedienne by any means.

As for Cecile Sorel, she is an exception among actresses, just as much as she is an exception among women. She has often reminded me of the Duchesse de Longueville and those other ladies of the time of the Fronde who led men to victory or to death. Her beauty is something quite extraordinary, more by its originality than by its perfection. She is the incarnation of feminine charm, and clever in mind as well as cultured and well-bred. Her whole demeanour is that of a grande dame.

And actors, you will ask me, actors such as Guitry, or Le Bargy or Mounet Sully, what do you think of them? I think nothing, because I do not know them. In my time one kissed the pretty fingers of a lovely actress, but one did not invite actors to one’s house. I have kept to this tradition, and do not regret it.

CHAPTER XXXIII

A Few Foreign Diplomats

Count Nigra was a charming man. It was said that one could never believe anything he said, or rely upon anything he promised. But apart from this he was the pleasantest colleague one could have, and contrived to remain on good terms with all those he knew, even when in diplomacy he had cheated them of something or other. After he left Paris, I met him in Vienna and in St. Petersburg, and was always delighted to have those opportunities.

Lord Lyons spent long years in Paris, and represented the government of Queen Victoria with great dignity. He was a gentleman and also a most able diplomat, and whilst he stayed at the Faubourg St. Honoré, Anglo-French relations remained excellent in spite of the many attempts made to spoil them. His successors also left excellent memories behind them when their term of office came to an end; and Lord Lytton especially had contrived to make for himself many friends among French society, which at that time did not look upon foreigners with the same enthusiasm it professes to-day. Lord Lytton was a scholar, a writer and also a statesman, a combination one does not meet frequently in our age of mediocrities. He was a great friend, and, I think, also a distant relation, of Lord Salisbury, who had firm confidence in his abilities; he enjoyed greater latitude than other Ambassadors had done or did later on.

I will say nothing about Count Arnim. We were never intimate or even on friendly terms with each other. He was extremely stiff, and had a considerable amount of the morgue prussienne in his ways, so that very few people sympathised with him or with his opinions. Nevertheless, his trial, and the long war which Prince Bismarck waged against him, aroused an interest in his fate which would not have existed under different circumstances. But, all the same, one was not sorry when Prince Hohenlohe succeeded him. The Prince was received with a certain amount of kind feeling such as could not have been expected under ordinary conditions.

Prince Hohenlohe was one of the greatest among the grand seigneurs in Germany. He was related to the Royal Family of Prussia and to almost all the crowned heads in Europe. He had been President of the Bavarian ministry, and as such had shown great devotion to the cause of German unity. His character had always been above reproach, his tact was exquisite, and his straightforwardness was recognised even among the enemies of his political ideas and opinions. He was essentially a man of duty, and he never failed in its fulfilment, no matter how painful this might be. All those who knew him respected him, and when he was sent to Paris as Ambassador, it was felt among the diplomatic circles of Europe that his presence there would help to do away with many prejudices and misunderstandings.

I was a frequent visitor at the house of Prince Clovis, as we called him familiarly, and whenever I left him it was with admiration for his shrewd intelligence and the logic displayed in all his reasonings and appreciations of men and of events. He had very few illusions, but at the same time an excessive kindness in all his judgments of other people. Ill-nature was unknown to him, and he was always ready to find excuses for the mistakes he could not help noticing in his neighbours. Prince Hohenlohe was infinitely above all his contemporaries in everything, both as a private and as a public man, and in all the high offices which he held he won for himself the esteem and the affection of all who had to do with him.

He made himself liked, too, in Paris in those first years which followed upon the war, in spite of the natural prejudice which existed against everything German. He had some relatives in the Faubourg St. Germain, where both he and his wife were received with more cordiality than in official circles, and he felt more or less at home among them. This fact made him cling to his Paris mission, where it was felt at the time that it would be difficult to replace him, and where, later on, his appointment as Chancellor of the German Empire was received with a certain amount of sympathy.

Princess Hohenlohe was a fitting wife for that distinguished man. She was also a grande dame, highly born and highly connected, with some of the bluest blood in Europe flowing in her veins. She admirably filled her position as Ambassadress, and she made for herself in France, as everywhere else, a considerable number of friends.

Prince Hohenlohe’s successor, Count Munster, as I think I have already remarked, was in appearance more an Englishman than a German. His wife had been English, and he affected great sympathies for everything that was British, loving London, where he always declared he spent the happiest time of his life, and crossing the Channel whenever he found it possible to do so. He was in Paris at the time of the Dreyfus affair, and contrived not to make for himself too many enemies, in spite of the difficult position and circumstances in which he found himself during that anxious period. Among diplomats he was liked, his advice being always appreciated and mostly followed. I cannot say the same thing about his successor, Prince Radolin, formerly Count Radolinski, who, in spite of the many years he remained in Paris, did not succeed in attaining the great position which had belonged to Prince Hohenlohe or to Count Munster.

During the latter’s tenure of the German Embassy, the present Prince von Bülow was one of his secretaries. Intelligent, clever in noticing what ought to be noticed, and in not seeing the things which apparently did not concern him, he contrived to keep himself exceedingly well au courant of all that was going on around him, and of the intentions and designs of French diplomacy. He was a man singularly unprejudiced, for whom the end always justified the means. He may perhaps have had too high an opinion of his own merits, and too much confidence in his power to do always what he liked and wanted. He could make himself very charming when he saw a personal advantage, and he was constantly on the look out for the things that others did not see or did not care to notice. His admiration for Prince Bismarck was unbounded, and he fondly nursed an ambition to replace him as Chancellor of the German Empire. Even at the time when he was a simple secretary at the Paris Embassy, he told a friend of his that he would probably never become an ambassador, but might, if circumstances favoured him, come to be at the head of Germany’s foreign policy.

Prince Bülow, who fell from his high position because he had not understood the character of the Emperor William II., and imagined that the latter would not notice or would forgive him for trying to keep him in leading-strings, married one of the most distinguished women in Europe, an Italian by birth, and the daughter of the Princesse de Camporeale. Madame Bülow was the wife of another German diplomat, Count Donhoff, when she made the acquaintance of the future Chancellor. No one can doubt his love for the beautiful and intelligent woman who at present is his wife.

The first Ambassador whom Russia sent to Paris after the signature of peace with Germany was Prince Orloff, one of her greatest noblemen. His exalted position and high moral character put him above any suspicion of playing a double game between France and Prussia, and he had, moreover, the advantage of being a personal friend of President Thiers. He remained at his post for something like ten years, and when he was removed to Berlin, at the express desire of Prince Bismarck, his departure was mourned by all those who knew him.

Of his successor, Baron Mohrenheim, I shall say no more than that he had a very complex personality. He was not liked in France nor in Russia; it is said that he only kept his post because he enjoyed the protection of the Empress Marie Feodorovna, the Consort of Alexander III.

It was M. Nelidoff who replaced him, and who remained in possession of the Russian Embassy in Paris until his death. M. Nelidoff was a diplomat of the old school, who had spent almost his whole career in the East, and who had served under Count Ignatieff in Constantinople, accompanying him to San Stefano, where his signature figures on the famous treaty which was signed there, and which Europe did not consent to accept. He was not a man who would shrink with horror when seeing something dirty under his feet, but rather one who would try not to step into it. No one knew better than he did how to get over a difficulty, or how to avoid a mistake. He can certainly be considered as an able diplomat, and certainly also he cut a better figure in Paris than his successor, M. Izvolski, whom wicked tongues in St. Petersburg nicknamed Izvostchik, which means a cabdriver.

Prince Orloff had had for private secretary during his stay in Paris Count Mouravieff, whom he took with him to Berlin, and who was ultimately to be put in possession of the Russian Foreign Office after the unexpected death of Prince Labanoff. Count Mouravieff was one of the most charmingly amiable men that Russian diplomacy ever possessed. His tact was something surpassing, and his cleverness, which had no shade of pedantry mixed with it, made him delightful. He has been accused of many things, including that of not being either a good or a faithful friend. I have had occasion to see that this was a most unjust and untrue reproach, because Count Muravieff, far from deserting those who had been his companions, when their worldly star did not shine any longer as brightly as it had done, was, on the contrary, always eager to oblige them in anything that he could possibly do for them, and kept up his relations with them sometimes even at the cost of some personal sacrifices. He was not liked by those who saw in him a possible rival, his quick career interfering with their own, but the few who knew him well esteemed him as much as they appreciated his intelligence and his pleasant conversation.

I must, before ending with these few words of remembrance that I have given of my former colleagues, say something about the Italian Ambassador, Count Tornielli, or rather about his wife, who was a Russian by birth, a Countess Rostopschine, the granddaughter of that Count Rostopschine who burned Moscow rather than give it up to Napoleon. She was an amiable woman, whose house was always open to her compatriots; one who had kept a great attachment for the land of her birth, and whose salon was a favourite resort for those who cared more for clever conversation than for polo or for tennis. She had a sister, the Countess Lydie Rostopschine, who has written several books full of interest, among them one called “Rastaquèropolis,” which is the best description that has ever been published of Nice society and in general of the life and the people of the French Riviera.