CHAPTER XXIV

IMPERIAL AND PRESIDENTIAL VISITS

M. Félix Faure had been but a short time President when the Emperor Alexander III. died in such an unexpected manner. This untoward event interfered with the advances France had in contemplation; indeed, already in Paris there had been talk of Russia as _la nation amie et alliée_. But, on the other hand, the obsequies of the Emperor gave the French Government an opportunity of manifesting its sympathies with Russia. A special military mission, headed by General Boisdeffre, at that time head of the General Staff, was sent to St. Petersburg, where it remained until the marriage of the new Tsar. It was not only made much of by those who favoured a _rapprochement_ with France, of whom there were a considerable number in Russian society, but thanks to the ability of the French Ambassador, Comte de Montebello, was also brought into contact with leading Russian politicians.

It was then that the conditions of a defensive alliance between both countries came under serious discussion. The new Emperor showed himself unusually gracious to all the members of the mission, and when General Boisdeffre timidly remarked that the President of the Republic would be envious of the honour he had experienced of being brought into personal contact with His Majesty, Nicholas replied, half jokingly and half earnestly, that perhaps he would pay a visit to the President in Paris, which city he had a great desire to see.

These words raised roseate anticipations at the time, and later on were seized upon by the French Government and construed into a promise made by the Emperor Nicholas II. to visit M. Félix Faure, then President of France. Nor was the Emperor allowed to forget. General Boisdeffre returned to Russia some sixteen months later for the Coronation of the Tsar, and there, together with Comte de Montebello, had many serious conversations with Prince Lobanoff, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, and with General Obroutscheff, then head of the Russian General Staff, who, being married to a Frenchwoman, was one of the staunchest supporters of an alliance with France. At a direct result of these interviews, Nicholas II. was induced to promise that his visits to European Courts on the occasion of his accession to the throne would include one to Paris.

When the news became official, the enthusiasm it excited among all classes in France was absolutely indescribable. I remember that one morning, as I was walking down the Champs Elysées, I saw two workmen, who were mending one of the lanterns of the Avenue, eagerly scanning a newspaper with a portrait of the Tsar, and heard one say to the other, “C’est celui-là qui va nous débarrasser des Prussiens” (“He is the man who will rid us of the Prussians”). The whole nation saw itself once more in possession of Alsace and Lorraine, and never thought about the impending Imperial visit as anything else than the first step towards that consummation.

In Russia, however, we did not care for it at all. It seemed humiliating to our national pride that our Sovereign should make the first advances to a country the government of which represented everything that was antipathetic to an autocracy like ours. When I say “we,” I am talking of the saner elements of our country. In Russia, as well as in France, the anti-German elements hailed the situation with joy, and hoped great things from a closer union of the two nations.

The Emperor on his side could not but feel flattered at the shower of praise and compliments that fell from the French nation and the French press. It tickled his fancy to be received in triumph in the capital of a Republican country, and to find prostrate at his feet its most rabid Radicals. He did not see, or did not care to see, the undercurrents that actuated this enthusiasm; besides, Russia wanted a loan, and wanted it under favourable conditions. The presence of the Tsar in Paris ensured the success of such an operation, and, as Henri IV. said, “Paris vaut bien une messe.”

It is to be questioned which of the two countries indulged most in platitudes on this memorable occasion. France, at least, was actuated by the legitimate desire to recover her lost provinces, and she may well be forgiven if she allowed herself to be carried away beyond the limits of that courtesy which a great nation is bound to show to any foreign Sovereign who honours it with a visit. But Russia---- Was it worthy of her, was it dignified on the part of the Monarch so to stoop in order to get the money she wanted without the least intention to hold to the other side of the bargain, or to run into a war with Germany in order to gratify the feelings of revenge which animated the French nation?

Paris had turned out _en masse_ to see the royal entry. It was a little after ten o’clock when the report of the guns of Mont Valérien announced the arrival of the Imperial train at the Ranelagh station. Immediately the crowd began to cheer, long before they caught sight of the troops which escorted the carriage in which the Emperor and Empress, with the President, were driving. The French Government had chosen these troops with great care, and given the preference to the Spahis and Arabs from Algeria, whose picturesque costumes and white burnouses added to the general splendour of the brilliant scene.

It was an event without precedent, this recognition by the only autocratic Monarch left in Europe, of a Republic from which hitherto foreign Sovereigns had more or less held aloof. It was bound to create a deep sensation, not only in France, but throughout the world; and its consequences promised at that moment to become stupendous. In reality they were absolutely insignificant, and France certainly played the part of the dupe in this queer comedy.

But it was not of this that Paris was thinking as it welcomed its Russian ally. When the mob saw the Empress, pale and lovely, in her white dress, with an immense bouquet of flowers reposing in her lap, as she sat beside her Consort, who wore the dark green tunic of the Preobragensky Regiment, with the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour across his breast, its joy overstepped all bounds; it was more like a delirium of mad enthusiasm than anything else. But it was in the Place de la Concorde that the manifestations became quite grandiose. And I must say that of all the popular demonstrations I have ever witnessed it was the most imposing. Row upon row of human beings were massed like shots in a cartridge, which seemed suddenly on the passage of the Imperial carriage to explode into one single shout, whilst opposite, under the waving flags and banners on the terrace of the Tuileries, long lines of officers in uniform stood looking on the scene over the heads of the crowd. The statues were covered with human beings, boys and men who had climbed upon them to have a better view of the procession.

Only one, that of the town of Strasburg, was undecorated, and its bareness seemed more than suggestive to the impartial spectator. When M. Félix Faure pointed it out to the Emperor the acclamations of the mob became deafening. It was a triumph indeed, and if you had asked any one of these people why they were howling away their enthusiasm and joy, they would each and all have replied that it meant “Une Alsace Française,” and that by his visit to Paris Nicholas II. was tacitly promising it to the French people.

The only one who appeared unconscious of the significance attributed to his visit was the Emperor himself. Perhaps he knew that whatever people might think, he was not going to risk the life of even one of his soldiers in order to gratify the wild hatred of France against his German neighbours; perhaps, also, he was merely amused by the bright scene that stretched itself before his eyes; or, maybe, he was thinking that it would have been a good thing had his own subjects showed such demonstrative joy whenever he showed himself in the streets of his own capital. It was something new to him to see the whole population of a great city let loose without police surveillance--at least, none that was apparent; a vast multitude who seemed only eager to catch one of his smiles.

Later on, however, a few discordant notes were heard, even before the Tsar had left Paris. For one thing, the most rabid Radicals reproached Nicholas with having called personally on M. Loubet, President of the Senate, and M. Brisson, President of the Chamber of Deputies. These visits were not in the programme of the journey, and people said that by making them the Emperor was identifying himself with the political opinions of these personages, which were held in suspicion by the Socialists, who had already become very powerful at that time.

On the other hand, the Conservatives were quite indignant to hear that at the reception given in his honour at the Hotel de Ville, Nicholas II. had cordially shaken by the hand a municipal councillor, who in long bygone days had made himself conspicuous by sending an address of congratulation to Hartmann, one of the assassins of Alexander II.

Then, to crown all, the leaders of French society and of the Faubourg St. Germain, who had been invited to meet the Russian Sovereigns at a lunch given by Baron and Baroness de Mohrenheim, felt sadly chagrined that neither the Emperor nor the Empress had thought fit to address a single word to any of them, though there were present such great ladies as the Duchesse d’Uzès, the Duchesse de Luynes, and Madame Aimery de la Rochefoucauld.

But all these criticisms proceeded from the few. The many and the masses felt more than gratified at the unexpected honour which had fallen upon France. The enthusiasm was especially great after the toasts exchanged at Chalons between the Tsar and the French President, and to give an idea of the illusions which at that particular moment seized the whole French nation, with but very few exceptions, I will reproduce here a letter which I received one or two days after the departure of the Russian visitors from a political man who, by virtue of his official position, ought to have been able to judge of the consequences which this effervescence of the French public mind might have in the future, and which proves under what strange misconceptions some people were labouring:

“I am not at all of your opinion when you tell me that you deplore the facility with which the French nation has prostrated itself at the feet of the Cossack. What wind coming from the perfidious shores of Albion could have made you say such a thing? First of all, he is not a Cossack, this young Emperor of yours. On the contrary, he produces, together with his fair Egeria, an immense impression of greatness, seen, as he has been here, in the full sunlight of our intensive French civilisation, with his little girl in the background. As for the French crowds, they haven’t, believe me, prostrated themselves before him; they have only exchanged a long and passionate embrace with Russia; that is, with a Europe independent of the Prussian Empire. In this triumphal march of an Imperator towards our pseudo-Republican capital, the oldest and most experienced crowned foxes the world has ever seen have found their Tarpeian rock. Your young Imperial ephebe has emerged out of it admirably. Nothing that he has done has been out of place; he has shown simplicity, cordiality, good taste, tact, and everything, in short, that he ought to have done, without one single false note to mar the concert. In his place, William II. would only have shown the weight of his sword and invited us to test it. Nicholas II. is above all this, and has proved himself of stronger stuff. It is because, in the present case, the comedians, who generally act in presence of Her Majesty Humanity, are put to shame by another and newer spectacle, which is far more powerful than the old scene upon which they had been used to play since time immemorial.

“In spite of everything, real life will overthrow the false limits into which one has tried to confine it, and the Treaty of Frankfurt will share the fate of those of Paris in 1815 and of Westphalia. It was only real life that could have been strong enough to accomplish this superb effort, and to set itself up on the ruins of that old mischievous diplomacy which has produced that snake with three heads called the Triple Alliance.

“Only two nations could possibly have performed this miracle, and could have risen against the slavery in which, until now, Europe has been held in the bondage of the infernal policy of Prince Bismarck. He is the only real Cossack in the sense we generally attribute to that word, the Cossack before whom France, even when he vanquished her, has refused to prostrate herself, and against whom she has risen with sufficient courage and sufficient strength to deliver from his yoke both Russia and the dynasty of Romanoff, and to snatch it from the sphere of Prussian influence. Our two nations have married each other without the help of any notary, and without the need for any written treaty, and their union means peace, real peace, against general war which Bismarck wanted to transform into a _status quo_. This is civilisation in the highest sense, and Europe owes it not to the fact that France has prostrated herself before Russia, but to the energetic manner in which the former has tried and succeeded in establishing its military strength, and redeeming its lost military prestige.”

I have transcribed this curious letter in its entirety, as it can give, better than anything else, an idea as to the state of feeling which was prevailing in Paris in the autumn of the year 1896, when, for the first time since the fall of the Empire of the Napoleons, a foreign monarch was officially received with enthusiastic welcome within the doors of the capital. The enthusiasm was as false as the visit itself, but it cannot be denied that it gave greater stability to the Republic and considerably discouraged its enemies.

Nevertheless, nearly a whole year passed before M. Faure returned this memorable visit, and accomplished his passionate desire by being welcomed on Russian shores in his capacity of head of the French Republic. He arrived at Peterhof on a French man-of-war, escorted by a numerous and powerful squadron, and was received with a cordiality that must have considerably increased any illusions he may have had concerning the sincerity of the Russian alliance. St. Petersburg showed unusual enthusiasm, and the Imperial family treated him with a familiarity that must have ravished his parvenu heart. As he wrote to one of his friends in Paris, he held on his knees the little Grand Duchess Olga, to whom he had brought the most splendid present of dolls any Imperial child ever received, and the fact of having thus nursed in his arms the youngest member of the Romanoff family evidently appealed to his feelings. He began to think himself equal to all these crowned heads with whom he found himself so unexpectedly thrown into contact, and to believe himself the real Sovereign of France.

It was dating from this famous visit that M. Faure assumed the semi-royal manners which considerably displeased many of his former friends, and caused him to be ridiculed more than he deserved in the popular cafés chantants of Paris. And, strange though it may appear, the real popularity which M. Faure had enjoyed until the period of his return from Russia began to wane. The public reproached him for not having made the most of his opportunities and for having forgotten, in his childish joy at the grandeur and magnificence of the reception awarded to him, the real object of his visit. Disappointment at the failure to convince Nicholas II. of the necessity of immediately declaring war on Germany began to make itself felt among the French nation, and, little by little, both the influence of M. Faure and the sympathy for Russia began to disappear among the public, which realised that all the fuss proceeded from the simple desire on the part of Russia to get the money she wanted at a cheap rate.

I had been away on leave for a few months when I returned to France, and on the very day I reached Paris I happened to meet the person from whom I had received a year before the letter which I have reproduced. I could not help asking him whether he still was of the opinion which he had professed when he had written to me that enthusiastic anticipation of the establishment of a solid alliance between France and Russia for the special purpose of a joint attack against Germany.

I found him furious against M. Faure, to whom he attributed the delay. Another President, he asserted, would have laid down positive conditions before he had consented to pay a visit to Peterhof, and made it subservient to a promise of immediately beginning hostilities against Germany. When I objected that, in common courtesy, M. Faure could not have excused himself from accepting the invitation that he had received personally from the Russian Emperor, my friend replied in those characteristic words: “Je ne vois pas la nécessité de cela, au contraire, M. Faure aurait souligné la dignité de la France, en prouvant qu’elle ne se dérange pas pour rien” (“I do not see the necessity for it; on the contrary, M. Faure would have given a proof of the dignity which prevails in France if he had shown that she does not put herself out for nothing”).

This phrase, coming as it did from a man who was at the period playing an important part in French politics, will give an idea as to the opinions which began to prevail against M. Faure.

The Dreyfus affair, which began at that period, intensified it. He did not, however, live to realise this. He seriously believed himself to be the right man in the right place, which, in a certain sense, he was, because of all the Presidents who have held office during the forty odd years of the existence of the Third Republic in France, he was, perhaps, the only one that contrived to give it the illusion of a monarchy.

A great deal has been written concerning the sudden death of M. Félix Faure. It is unfortunately certain that it took place under much to be deplored circumstances. It is also certain that the manner of his death has thrown upon his memory an unpleasant shade.

Alas! alas! poor Yorick. In a Republican country the abuses of monarchy can but too often be met with, and in the case of M. Félix Faure these came very prominently to the front. He played at being a small King, even so far as to allow, in a Republican country, the establishment of the old custom of there being always “une favorite de roi” at his side.

But I must say once I am touching on that subject that I do not believe for a moment the assertions of the lady in question, that M. Faure used to consult her in political matters, and that she had great influence over him in that respect. M. Faure was an exceedingly shrewd politician, and knew perfectly well what he was about. He was also perfectly aware that he had numerous enemies who, if they had been able once to prove that he was confiding gravest matters of State to the discretion of another, would not have hesitated to make use of this fact to overthrow him, or at least to put him in such a position that he would have been obliged to send in his resignation. And M. Faure cared for his position as President of the French Republic, and would not have jeopardised it for anything in the world, least of all for a woman.

Perhaps it was as well for his own sake that death removed him from the political scene, before the curtain fell on the final act in the Dreyfus drama. What he would have done had he seen all that ensued after the discovery of the forgery of Colonel Henry, the knowledge of which made him so unhappy, and after the second condemnation of Captain Dreyfus at Rennes, it is difficult to say. Those who have known him well, told me that he had been very much troubled at the development this miserable business took so unexpectedly, and that he often regretted that he had not interfered and pardoned Dreyfus at the time of this first condemnation.

It seems that he had been very much tempted to do so, having always had some doubts in his own mind as to the Captain’s culpability, but the President was also aware that his own popularity was on the wane, and that voices had already accused him of trying to make up to the German Emperor.

This last fact deserves a few words of explanation. Some enemies of M. Faure had spread the gossip that his St. Petersburg laurels had not been sufficient for his inordinate vanity, and that as, in spite of all his conversations with Nicholas II. he had not succeeded in inducing the latter to consent to the adoption by Russia of an aggressive policy against Germany, he had tried to bring about some kind of arrangement with the German Emperor, and to persuade him to grant autonomy to Alsace and Lorraine. He knew that such a measure would have largely satisfied a certain section of public opinion in France. Serious politicians, however, knew very well that it was useless to hope that Germany would return without another war, and perhaps not even then, the provinces she had conquered at the cost of such stupendous sacrifices.

Whether M. Félix Faure ever nursed such a dream, it is difficult to say, but it was attributed to him, and for an excitable people like the French such a rumour was sufficient to set the tide against the President. Had he at that juncture pardoned Captain Dreyfus the outcry would have been immense, and the word traitor would undoubtedly have been applied to him. He knew it well, and perhaps this made him keep more aloof than he ought to have done from the net of intrigues which surrounded the tragedy of the Hebrew officer who was to draw on his person the attention of the whole world. But it is also to be regretted, perhaps, that the President found himself with his hands tied on this memorable occasion, and that in his dread of losing his position he forgot his constitutional prerogatives.