CHAPTER XXVI

THE PRESIDENCY OF M. LOUBET

The death of M. Félix Faure took France greatly by surprise; the appointment of his successor astonished it even more. M. Loubet was President of the Senate, it is true, but his name had figured among those who had been mentioned in connection with the Panama scandal. This last fact was put forward by some people when the question arose of the candidature of M. Rouvier for the Presidency of the Republic, and caused it to be rejected. No one imagined, therefore, that it would be disregarded in the case of M. Loubet. He had many rivals, among them M. Brisson, M. de Freycinet, whose name came forward regularly whenever a Presidential election was about to take place, and the above-mentioned M. Rouvier. This candidate possessed a powerful personality and wielded an immense influence; his experience had been varied, and his intelligence was certainly one of the foremost in France. Had he been elected to the Presidency his appointment would have been received with great favour in Europe. On the other hand, M. Loubet was more or less an unknown person, supposed to be inoffensive and retiring, but possessed of a most violent anti-Clericalism, of which he had given every possible proof, in the hope that by these means he would make himself a _persona grata_ with the Radical party, through whom he had secured the Presidency of the Senate, an office which hitherto had constituted the _summum bonum_ of his ambitions.

He had no wish to become President of the Republic, and it was with great reluctance he allowed his name to be put forward as a candidate. But he was under the influence of, or, what is even truer, dependent upon, M. Clemenceau. M. Clemenceau had lately come forward with considerable energy, especially since the Dreyfus affair once more was in the public mind, and he was such a considerable personage among the Radical party that they could not afford to disregard his orders or even his personal wishes.

M. Clemenceau was the Henri Rochefort of political life, with far more intelligence and almost as much wit as the director of the _Lanterne_, with an extraordinary force of character, very determined ideas, and about as few convictions as were indispensable to a man who had risen to the leadership of a powerful party. Moreover, he had real statesmanlike qualities.

He had no great sympathy for the Russian alliance, which his ever-ready wit had quickly discerned, when all was said and done, to be a very one-sided affair.

His sympathies were entirely English, and as such it was but natural he should not look with enchanted eyes upon a policy that was bound, by its close association with the diplomacy pursued on the banks of the Neva, to become antagonistic to that of the Court of St. James’s. Perhaps it was for this very reason that he pushed forward the candidature of M. Loubet.

He felt, or rather he knew, that M. Loubet had had nothing to do with the visit of the Tsar to Paris beyond receiving him when he called at the Luxembourg in defiance of etiquette and precedent.

With a friend of his at the Elysée, the position of M. Clemenceau was perhaps even stronger than if he himself had been established within its walls. He had always admired the personality of Père Joseph, so well known in the history of France as the adviser and counsellor of Richelieu. He intended playing the same part; to govern under M. Loubet’s name as far as the constitution allowed him, to govern the Republic which he secretly despised, but to which he clung, because he knew that it was the only government under which he could do absolutely what he liked.

M. Clemenceau had taken a sincere liking to a very attractive and very beautiful lady. He is still on terms of great friendship with her, notwithstanding the fact that she is no longer young, and that white locks have taken the place of her golden curls. She is an American, the daughter of that Colonel Burdan who invented the rifle which still bears his name. She had married a French diplomat, the Comte d’Aunay, and was noted in her youth for her extraordinary loveliness. Mme. d’Aunay was ambitious above everything, and her great dream was to see her husband become an Ambassador. She imagined that M. Clemenceau could help her to realise her one ambition, and she then set herself to win his friendship for herself and for her husband. The task was easy enough for a woman gifted with such beauty and such remarkable intelligence, and though the world chatted not a little--as so often it does without foundation--concerning this friendship, yet secretly it envied her for her cleverness in having won him as a well-wisher. Then one day came the crash and the blighting of the fair Countess’s hopes. The French Ministry for Foreign Affairs became alarmed at the marvellous way in which M. Clemenceau was kept informed of what was going on in diplomatic circles at Copenhagen, where Count d’Aunay was accredited as French Minister, and wondered how he could be in possession of the most secret information before even it became known at the Quai d’Orsay. Inquiries

_All photos, Petit, Paris._

were instituted which resulted in the resignation of certain parties.

It was partly Mme. d’Aunay who was responsible for the English sympathies of M. Clemenceau; she had lived in London for a long time, had made many good friends, and also won still more admirers. She was ambitious to have her husband appointed to the British capital as Ambassador for the French Republic, and she did her best to persuade M. Clemenceau to set his back against the Russian alliance.

The great Radical leader did not ask anything else, but he was very well aware that to go against the popular feeling was quite useless and hopeless, and might even cause his own patriotism to be suspected. But he knew also that French people are apt to lose their illusions as quickly as they come under their influence, and so he quietly waited for the course of events to justify the words of warning he had uttered to the few friends before whom he could talk quite openly.

When he favoured the candidature of M. Loubet to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic, he had his plan quite ready, together with a programme which included an alliance with England and a rupture with the Vatican. Papal influence he dreaded the more in that he knew that in Pope Leo XIII. he had an opponent just as shrewd as he was himself, one who would consent to the greatest sacrifices in order to keep upon good terms with the Republic. To this last the Radical party was not at all agreeable, and consequently it was indispensable that he should assure himself of the sympathies of the President, whoever he might be, in order not to be thwarted secretly in his designs as earlier he had been by M. Félix Faure, whose policy had been far more personal than the world was permitted to guess.

I happened to be at Versailles on the day of the election of M. Loubet. An hour before the result became known bets were still being taken concerning the chances he had to be elected. M. Rouvier was distinctly favoured, and probabilities pointed to M. Brisson making a close run. I was lunching at the Hotel des Réservoirs with some friends, of whom Henri Rochefort was one, when suddenly M. Clemenceau came by. He was instantly surrounded by a group of journalists eager to hear his opinion as to who would win. He laughingly parried their questions, saying that the only thing he was sure of was that Clemenceau would not be President of the Republic, to which Rochefort remarked in an undertone that he would not need to be, as it would be his candidate who would occupy that post.

M. Loubet was elected, and at once the Dreyfus affair took a new turn. After a struggle, in which the government yielded almost without fighting, the unfortunate captain was brought back to France, and his re-trial took place at Rennes, with the result known to everybody, and for which M. Clemenceau deserves the thanks of his compatriots as well as of posterity, because anything more iniquitous than this affair has never disgraced a country.

Most emphatically of all the politicians who were prominent in France at the time of the election of M. Loubet, M. Clemenceau was the shrewdest and also the most far-seeing. He had perceived that even had Captain Dreyfus been guilty, it would be to the advantage of France for him to be declared innocent, and also that so long as that bone of contention was left to the enemies of the Republic, they would expend all their efforts in using it as a weapon to discredit not only the form of government they disliked, but also to shame France herself.

One cannot say that the Elysée improved as regarded its inner life under the Presidency of M. Loubet. The pomp and grandeur introduced by M. Félix Faure were reduced to a minimum, and existence began to resemble the one led by M. and Mme. Jules Grévy, with perhaps a shade more elegance, but without any luxury, save what was absolutely necessary. Madame Loubet rarely went out in anything else but a modest brougham drawn by one horse, and she avoided everything that could be construed as love of ostentation or luxury. On the other hand, she was extremely charitable, and, with the exception of the Maréchale MacMahon, no wife of a President of the Republic did more for the welfare of the poor of Paris, and by them she was literally worshipped. She was totally devoid of affectation, and never tried to pose for what she was not, or to play at being the great lady by birth as well as by position. Everyone liked and respected her. Such was not the case with M. Loubet, in whom some people saw a nonentity and others merely a puppet in the hands of M. Clemenceau and his friends.

During his tenure of office the new President paid several visits abroad, among others to St. Petersburg, London, and Rome. With the exception of the one to London, it cannot be said that his journeys were successful. In Russia people were getting just a little tired of the perpetual ovations which had been allowed to take place in favour of France and the French alliance. The Japanese question was already engrossing the public mind, and it was vaguely felt in the country, whatever one may have thought at the Foreign Office, that somehow France had failed in her friendship for her ally of the other day in the Far East, and had not sufficiently upheld her pretensions in the many entangled questions which had sprung up in consequence of the fatal policy of Admiral Alexieff and his friends.

The entire misunderstanding which had prevailed at the demonstrative Franco-Russian alliance was becoming more apparent every day; essentially it had been based on the desire of each of the signatories to get as much as possible out of the other. France had fully expected that she would be given the opportunity of recovering Alsace and Lorraine, and Russia had only seen the possibility of borrowing, under favourable conditions, the money she wanted. As time had gone by Russia had found out that French bankers were just as exacting as were German bankers, while France had discovered that her interests were dear to Russia only insomuch as they did not clash or interfere with her own. A certain coolness had sprung up between them, though in Paris as well as in St. Petersburg politicians and journalists were eagerly seizing every opportunity to declare that the alliance was stronger than ever.

Under those circumstances the journey of M. Loubet to St. Petersburg might have been pleasant, but could not have been very useful. In London it was different. He found there many sympathisers and well-wishers who were only too desirous of accentuating the good relations of France with Great Britain. To begin with King Edward and to end with the man in the street, they all vied with each other to show the greatest cordiality to the President and to make him welcome in the fullest sense of the word. When M. Loubet returned to Paris he could say with pride and satisfaction that the old rivalries which had divided the two countries had been buried under the flowers which had ornamented the dining-table in the Waterloo Hall of Windsor Castle.

The Roman trip of the President, though conducted on simpler lines than those of his English journey, was perhaps the most important event of M. Loubet’s septenary. It distinctly proclaimed the attitude which the French Government meant to adopt in regard to the religious question and to its relations with the Vatican. The guest of the Italian King at the Quirinal, M. Loubet did not think it necessary to follow the example set by all the other foreign monarchs who visited Rome by going from the house of the Ambassador to the Holy See, as a neutral place, to visit the Pope at the Vatican. The courtesy paid to the head of the Roman Catholic Church by the German Crown Prince, and later on by the German Emperor, was deemed to be beneath the dignity of the President of the French Republic; and when the government was asked in the Chamber what M. Loubet meant to do in regard to this question of a visit to the Pope, it replied that it had been decided that the President should refrain.

Soon after this relations were entirely suspended between the Holy See and the French Republic, and the separation between Church and State became an accomplished fact. M. Loubet had not failed in the confidence which M. Clemenceau and the Radical party had reposed in him.

The principal feature of this septenary of a gentle and yielding little bourgeois was the establishing of the regular and automatic change of Presidents--a rule which gave to the Republic a stability which hitherto it had been wanting. M. Thiers had been overturned; Marshal MacMahon and M. Grévy had been obliged to resign; M. Carnot had been murdered, and M. Faure had died suddenly, whilst M. Casimir Périer had grown impatient at the restraint to which he found his faculties subjected. It was only dating from M. Loubet that the transmission of the supreme power became an accomplished fact, and that at last the Republic, as well as a Monarchy, had its Sovereigns whose reign was followed by that of their duly elected successors.

During his Presidency, too, the components of Paris society changed considerably. New salons sprang up which aspired to replace the older ones, and in a certain sense they succeeded in doing so. The bourgeoisie which Loubet represented so well came to the front, and the newspapers, which hitherto had carefully noted the sayings and doings of the Duchess of So-and-So and the Countess of So-and-So, began to chronicle those of Madame Ménard Dorian or of Madame Alphonse Daudet, or of the wives and daughters of members and supporters of the government. Thus a new society began to play its part in Parisian social life, and soon entirely pervaded it. Financial houses, too, opened wide their doors to all who cared to enter, and whilst formerly the Rothschilds had been almost the only bankers with whom the old French nobility had cared to associate, dozens of Jews now invaded Parisian society. The distinction which used to exist formerly between the _noblesse_ and what it had called disdainfully “les roturiers” had entirely disappeared under the glamour which millions always exert over the imagination of the crowds. It was felt that money was the principal thing required, and under this influence the Hebrew and the American element had a fine time of it.

It is impossible to write anything about Parisian society nowadays without saying something concerning M. de Castellane. For a few brief years he incarnated in his person the acme of French elegance, and was the _fleur des pois_ of all the smart clubs of Paris. He was a terrible little fop who aspired only to one thing: to be the most talked-about man of his generation. When he married Miss Gould, he fondly imagined that this marriage gave him the right to do everything he liked, down to ill-treating his wife. He began buying right and left everything that caught his fancy, and built for himself a palace after the model of the Petit Trianon; he made Paris ring with his extravagances, and pretended to assume the part of the one supreme leader of society. Even the many millions which his wife had brought to him proved insufficient; and very soon his horses, his vagaries, his losses at cards, and his general behaviour brought about a financial catastrophe, which was the prelude to a conjugal one. Mme. de Castellane became tired of being outraged at every step, and sued for a divorce, which was easily awarded to her.

Anyone in de Castellane’s place would have resigned himself to the inevitable, but instead, he threatened to take the children from her. Madame de Castellane behaved nobly on this trying occasion. She might easily have retaliated, and she had got plenty of proofs which she could have produced that would have for ever compromised the Comte de Castellane and other people with him. She never made use of that power, and as her advocate, M. Albert Clemenceau--the brother of M. Georges Clemenceau--eloquently said: “My client has her hands full, but she disdains to open them in order to harm the man who, after all, is the father of her children!”

The Countess came out of this painful ordeal with flying colours. Her children were left in her charge, notwithstanding all the efforts of M. de Castellane. Soon after her divorce was pronounced she married a cousin of her former husband, the Duc de Talleyrand, the son of the famous Prince de Sagan. The couple lead a very quiet life in the palace erected by Count Boni, and at the Château de Marais, a splendid property which they possess not far from Paris. The Faubourg St. Germain, not approving of divorces, has turned the cold shoulder upon them, which fact does not trouble them much. They are happy in themselves, and the Duchess must often congratulate herself on her moral courage, of which she gave proof when she decided to seek her freedom from an ill-assorted union which had brought to her nothing but unhappiness and sorrow. As for M. de Castellane, he vegetates in an obscurity which must be doubly painful to him when he remembers the luxury in which he spent a few short years, and which he lost through his own vanity and stupidity.