Part 17

Other “incidents”? Well, for months there was incident after incident: and when Émile Loubet drove to the Longchamps Races surrounded by cavalry, it was stated that he feared assassination. At Longchamps up rushed an elegant young aristocrat with a stick in his hand, and the stick was aimed at the President’s head. It only smashed the President’s hat: but the Nationalists rejoiced. And the elegant young aristocrat was regarded as a hero, and caricaturists always portrayed Émile Loubet with his hat smashed over his head. Came another message from Montélimar, inviting him to accept the public verdict: but came, also, messages of sympathy and esteem from all the Courts in Europe.

And here, passing over other incidents, let me arrive at once at the day when the man in the street began to admire Émile Loubet’s patience, tact, determination, and when he was delighted at the calm, kindly smile; and when—day of days—he said: “Ce bon Loubet,” and then—moment of moments—cried, “Vive Loubet.” A change, a change! Through the streets drove the President, saluting, saluted. Parisians rejoiced to learn that the Tsar had a veritable affection for Émile Loubet, and Parisians were pleased to see him drive across Paris with the King of England, chatting, smiling, laughing. Cordial the shouts of “Vive Loubet.” Cordial the newspaper appreciations of Émile Loubet. And the streets lined to see him take train to London.

In London, scores of journalists accompanying him, and also scores of _camelots_. Yes, real Paris _camelots_ in Soho, and in the public-houses and little restaurants of Soho, the _camelots_ loud in their praises of Émile Loubet.

Here, there and everywhere the motto: “Entente Cordiale.”

I remember the King of the Camelots telling me in Soho that he and his men had taken a great fancy to Englishmen.

His appreciation was worth having, for he was no enthusiast. Indeed, he had done a great trade some time ago in Anti-English caricatures, toys and post cards. He drank to the _entente_ in a bottle of Bass. He vowed that Bass was better than _bock_. He paid tributes to roast beef, apple tart and kippers; indeed, regretted with veritable emotion that there were no kippers in France. So kind and affable and flattering was the King of the Camelots that I could write of him for hours. However, I must leave him on the kerbstone in Holborn, shouting: “Vive Loubet,” and waving his hat and receiving (so, at least, he declared afterwards) a special salute from the smiling, delighted President.

Everyone charmed with Émile Loubet, and Émile Loubet charmed with everything. Of course, King and President held little private conversations; it is certain that Lord Lansdowne and M. Delcassé met often and talked long.

Then, Paris again—and crowds in the street once more to shout: “Vive Loubet.” Heavens, what a change since the February afternoon four years ago! To-day, nothing but sympathy and esteem for the President, part author of the Anglo-French Agreement. To-day, nothing but sincere pleasure at the Agreement, which brings together two naturally friendly and sympathetic countries. “Perhaps the most important Treaty ever signed in time of peace,” said an enthusiastic Parisian to me. And then, with equal enthusiasm: “Vive Loubet!”

[9] M. Loubet was Premier and Minister of the Interior at the time of the exposure of the Panama scandal. In November, 1892, he was forced to resign, but retained his post of Minister of the Interior under M. Ribot, the new Premier. Two months later, disgusted by the calumnies of their adversaries in the Chamber, both M. Loubet and his colleague M. de Freycinet (Minister of War) retired.

2. M. ARMAND FALLIÈRES. MOROCCO AND THE FLOODS

A day or two ago, in the Presidential palace of the Élysée, M. Armand Fallières celebrated his seventy-second birthday. I do not know whether there were gifts, flowers, a birthday cake, champagne and speeches: but, according to an incorrigible gossip in a boulevard newspaper, M. le Président stated that this was the blithest birthday he had known for seven years. “I breathe again,” he is reported to have said. “This time next year, I shall pass my anniversary, not in a frock coat and varnished boots, but in a dressing-gown and carpet slippers.”

I believe this is the “mood” that would obsess anyone who had passed seven years of his life as President of the French Republic. It was M. Émile Loubet’s mood. Nothing in this world would have induced him to accept a second Septennat; and to-day M. Loubet lives in a quiet little flat on the Rive Gauche, where (in his slippers) he has often exclaimed: “Ce pauvre Fallières!” And then gone to bed tranquilly and comfortably; whilst his successor at the Élysée was in consultation with the Minister of Foreign Affairs over the miseries of Morocco. President Casimir-Périer endured just six months of Presidency. “On m’embête; je m’en vais,” said he. He was too elegant to care for slippers. But a day or two after his resignation he was discovered stretched in an easy-chair in the garden of a Bois de Boulogne restaurant, in white duck trousers. “I breathe again,” he stated—just as President Fallières has now declared on his seventy-second birthday.

Thus it would miraculously appear that one stops breathing upon being appointed President of the French Republic, and doesn’t regain one’s breath until one’s martyrdom at the Élysée has expired. Certain it is that the President of the French Republic, living as he does in the most amazing city in the world, must experience and endure amazing tribulations and adventures. President Loubet went through the Dreyfus Affair; President Fallières through the Floods. Up and down the Seine in a barge sailed M. Fallières, and because of his bulk and lest the barge might capsize, the boatmen had to implore M. le Président not to move. He was a heroic, but not a dignified, figure as he sat, massive and motionless, in that barge. Nor could he ever look other than bulky in the Presidential carriage (which, when he entered it, nearly tilted over) as he drove forth to meet foreign sovereigns, or to attend the great military review or gala performances at the Français and Opéra. That vast bulk has always been against him. Not a Parisian that has not commented on it, not an illustrated newspaper that has not depicted it, not a theatrical revue that has not exaggerated it.

Although M. Armand Fallières has left Paris for his country residence at Rambouillet, the French “Presidential Holiday” has not yet begun. To start with, Rambouillet is a State château, almost another Élysée, in that Cabinet meetings are held there, the Ministers motoring down from Paris with their portfolios and wearing their official, inscrutable expressions. Outside in the park, flowers, birds, winding paths, shady trees, hidden, tranquil corners; but within the Council Chamber, the old, eternal complications and miseries of politics.

No doubt, when the Ministers have left, M. le Président seeks to lead the simple, the ordinary life. But, as Rambouillet is a State residence, flunkeys abound, and not only gardeners, but detectives, haunt the park. Impossible, to put it vulgarly, to be “on one’s own.” Worse than that, how the majestic, powdered flunkeys wink and grin when M. Armand Fallières has turned his back upon them in his slippers, alpaca jacket and vast gardening hat! For M. le Président is burly, with a formidable _embonpoint_; and when he enters a carriage, it tilts; and when he steps into a rowing boat, it very nearly capsizes, and when——

“I am the most inelegant of Presidents,” M. Armand Fallières himself has admitted. “Heavens, how my servants despise me!”

At Rambouillet M. Fallières’ predecessor, most admirable M. Loubet, also aroused the disdain of the flunkeys by reason of his simplicity—and his real holiday did not begin until he had reached his native town of Montélimar, where he was treated—and liked to be treated—as _un enfant du pays_—a son of the soil. Because Montélimar is famous for its nougat, M. Loubet was dubbed by fierce, lurid old Henri Rochefort—“Nougat the First.” But Republican France liked to hear of her President hobnobbing with the people of Montélimar and gossiping with the peasantry of neighbouring villages, and leading forth on his arm a little brown-faced and wrinkled old lady, in the dress and cap of a peasant woman—his mother.

But those are all memories. We have nothing to do with Montélimar; we are only concerned with the wine-growing districts of Loupillon, where M. Fallières (released from official Rambouillet) will be amiable, pottering and peering about amidst his vineyards in a few days. Behold, just as last year, M. le Président, not only in slippers, but in his shirt-sleeves; and behold, too, the peasantry stretched over hedges and perched high up in trees, that they may view the burly Chief of the State inspecting and admiring his grapes. They are his hobby, his pride, his exquisite joy: and yet it is notorious that they are a very sour, a very inferior, one might almost say, a very terrible little grape.

Ask the Loupillon peasants and they will exclaim: “It is extraordinary, it is unheard-of that a Son of this Soil, and a President of the President, should produce such a grape! Look at it! _Cré nom d’un nom_, what a sad little thing!”

Ask those privileged, intimate friends who lunch _en famille_ at the Élysée, and they will cry: “Ah, the white wine of Fallières! Ah, the Presidential grape from Loupillon! It makes one shudder to mention it.”

But, M. le Président ignores these criticisms and mockeries. After Morocco and Proportional Representation, his dear little grapes! In spite of their smallness, their sourness, how he loves them!

Six weeks of his grapes—then the Élysée, Morocco, once again; and then, in February next, nothing but holidays for the Chief of the State. For February will see the end of M. Fallières’ seven years’ Presidency, and, like his predecessor, he will not seek re-election. Like M. Loubet, too, his next Paris residence will be a comfortable, bourgeois third-floor _appartement_—its site, the Boulevard St Germain, within a few minutes’ walk of M. Émile Loubet’s flat in the rue Dante. No flunkeys, no detectives in plain clothes—and no telephone. Moreover, no pianolas, no gramophones, no parrots, no poodles, for M. Fallières (who owns the building of flats in which he has decided to reside) has warned his tenants that no such nuisance will be tolerated when he moves to his new quarters. The simple, the ordinary life! Morocco, etc., etc., etc.—only memories. Never ceremonious banquets, with Château Yquem, and Morton Rothschild, and Lafite, and the finest of Extra Secs. Modest luncheons and dinners _en famille_. And for wine, nothing but the sour, little white grape of Loupillon.

It has been said that the best rulers are those who feel an extreme disinclination to rule, and who only consent to accept authority under a strong sense of duty. If this be true, then unquestionably M. Émile Loubet and M. Armand Fallières were good and loyal presidents, who, without personal ambition and at the cost of their own tastes, as well as of their own interests, served the Republic—for seven years, each of them—to the very best of their knowledge and power. And upon this question of power one has to keep in mind that M. le Président, though he holds the title of Chief of the State, is very much in the hands of his ministers. He forms ministries? Yes; but here, too, it is not always the most competent and disinterested men, in France particularly, who are most eager for office. Nothing can be more unjust than to make admirable M. Émile Loubet, excellent M. Armand Fallières, responsible for everything that happened, and especially for everything that went wrong, during the two periods of seven years these patriotic French citizens devoted to the service of their country.

The difficulties of M. le Président, the impertinent disregard of his rank in the State shown by the very men he has called to power, is a favourite theme of playwrights and novelists. In _L’Habit Vert_, the brilliant, satirical comedy by MM. de Flers and de Caillavet, just produced at the Variétés theatre, a Cabinet Minister submits an important political telegram for the President’s official approbation. “Yes, that will do; send it off immediately,” says M. le Président. “That’s all right; it was sent half-an-hour ago,” replies the Minister. Then, in that famous comedy, _Le Roi_, which so rejoiced the heart of King Edward the Seventh, the French Premier to one of his colleagues: “Cormeau, the Minister of Commerce, has just resigned. Nearly a Ministerial Crisis, but we have escaped it. Telephone the name of Cormeau’s successor, and that all is well, to the Press, the Chamber, the Senate, the Palace of Justice, and—ah yes, I forgot—to the President of the Republic.”

On the top of all this, M. le Président, although practically in the hands of Messieurs les Ministres, is held responsible by the public for the possible blunders and follies and sins of the Cabinet. Salary, £40,000 a year, with all kinds of substantial “perquisites.” Residences: the Palace of the Élysée and the Château de Rambouillet. Ironical official title: Chief of the State. Result: Morocco, Floods, or the Dreyfus Affair, helplessness and worry, collapse of the respiratory organ. But, thank heaven! M. le Président recovereth his breath when the time comes for another to take his place: and he himself may drift into a dressing-gown and carpet slippers and exclaim of his successor, by the tranquil, unofficial fireside: “Ce pauvre——!” Successor at the Élysée. Who will he be? Of course, after the lofty and admirable statesmanship he has exhibited throughout the Balkan conflict, M. Poincaré, the Prime Minister, is hailed by the man in the street as the future Chief of the State? But elegant M. Paul Deschanel, of the French Academy, President of the Chamber of Deputies, and a would-be President of the Republic for the last fourteen years, is also mentioned; and impetuous, despotic, sallow-faced M. Georges Clemenceau, in spite of his recent delirious ups and downs, has hosts of followers. Solid M. Ribot is stated to be an eager candidate. M. Léon Bourgeois (who did such fine work at The Hague Peace Conference) would probably be elected, were there a Madame Bourgeois to “receive” officially at the Élysée. After that, M. Delcassé, M. Lépine, M. Briand, Madame Sarah Bernhardt, M. Dranem the comic singer, “Monte Carlo Wells.” But I am anticipating events. I am also in peril of appearing incoherent; so let me hasten to declare that the last-named candidates for the Presidency of the Third Republic are but the gay “selections” of that inveterate gossip in a certain boulevard newspaper. And, that made clear, let us for the moment leave the emptiness of political ambition and share in the dressing-gown and carpet-slipper mood of M. Armand Fallières.

3. M. RAYMOND POINCARÉ AND THE RECORD OF M. LÉPINE

Last February (1913) must be accounted an important month in the history of the Third French Republic. Away, after his seven years’ official tenancy of the Élysée, went M. Armand Fallières to a comfortable bourgeois _appartement_, there, no doubt, to recall, in dressing-gown and carpet slippers, the rare joys and successes and the many shocks and miseries of his Septennat, and to speculate upon the destiny reserved for his successor, ninth President of the Republic, M. Raymond Poincaré.

No commonplace destiny—that was certain. M. Fallières took possession of the Élysée amidst general indifference; M. Émile Loubet assumed office amongst eggs, threats, vegetable stalks, shouts of “traitor” and “bandit”: but M. Poincaré found Paris _en fête_—flags flying, hats and handkerchiefs whirling, the crowd in its Sunday best—on the day that _he_ became Chief of the State.

A vast popularity, M. Poincaré’s! Exclaimed M. le Bourgeois: “At last we have got a strong man for a President! For the first time, there will be a master at the Élysée.” On all sides, indeed, it was agreed that M. Poincaré’s election to the Presidency signified the collapse of the tradition that the Chief of the State should be a figure-head, a mere signer of documents, placed, none too ceremoniously, before him by his Ministers.

Thus, a new régime had dawned. Poincaré was “going to wake things up”; Poincaré was also “going to do things”; what precisely Poincaré was going to do nobody could explain; but “Vive Poincaré,” was the cry of the hour; and not only in luxurious, radiant Paris, but in grim, industrial centres, dull, provincial towns, and remote, obscure hamlets. Such a popularity that into the shop windows came Poincaré Pipes, Poincaré Braces, Poincaré Walking Sticks, the Poincaré Safety Razor. Then, on restaurant menus: Consommé Poincaré—Poulet Poincaré—Omelette Poincaré. More Poincaré, smiling and bowing, on dizzy kinematograph films and in the music hall revues; and imagine, if you can, the sale of Poincaré photographs in the flashy arcade of the rue de Rivoli! “Poincaré and Gaby Deslys—that’s what we are selling,” the shopkeepers stated. “But Poincaré is surpassing the blonde, elegant Gaby.”

In a word, nothing but Poincaré, only Poincaré, until the announcement that M. Lépine, Chief of the Paris Police, had tendered his resignation, that his decision to retire was “irrevocable.” Then M. Lépine leading in the photographic commerce of the rue de Rivoli: and M. Poincaré a poor second, and the blonde Mademoiselle Deslys a remote third. Elsewhere and everywhere, M. Lépine and his resignation superseded M. Poincaré and the New Régime, as the one and only topic of conversation. For twenty years the Chief of the Police had governed his own departments of Paris with extraordinary skill. Throughout that period he had practically lived in the streets: repressing riots, scattering criminals, dispersing Royalist conspirators, controlling fires, directing all manner of grim or poignant or delirious operations—a short, slender, insignificant-looking figure, in ill-fitting clothes, a dusty “bowler” hat, and square, creaking boots. With him, a shabby umbrella or a stout, common walking-stick, the latter the only weapon he ever carried. Never more than four or five hours’ sleep: even then the telephone placed at his bedside.

It was all work with M. Lépine—all energy, all courage. The most familiar figure in the streets, he soon became the most famous and most popular of State servants. Cried M. le Bourgeois, whilst out walking with his small son: “_Voilà—regarde bien—voilà_ Lépine!”

Everyone “saluted” him, all political parties (except the United Socialists, who admire no one) applauded him. There was (with the same solitary exception) general rejoicing when the dusty, intrepid little Chief of the Police received the supreme distinction of the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour.

Yes; a popularity even vaster than M. Poincaré’s. Gossips remarked that it was curious that the Presidency of the one should synchronise with the resignation of the other. Critics agreed that if France had gained a strong Chief of the State she had lost an incomparable Chief of the Police. Alarm of M. le Bourgeois, who had got to regard M. Lépine as his special protector. Once again, and for the hundredth time, M. Lépine became the hero of the hour. And, as I have already recorded, there was a rush for Lépine photographs—Lépine side and full face, Lépine gay or severe, Lépine with Grand Cross or shabby umbrella, and a decided “slump” in Poincarés and blonde, bejewelled Gaby Deslys’ in the rue de Rivoli arcade.

Impossible, in the space at my disposal, to give more than an idea of M. Lépine’s amazing record. Born at Lyons in 1846, he is now sixty-seven years of age—a mere nothing for a Frenchman of genius. At thirty he was already Under-Prefect of the Department of the Indre. Successively he was Prefect of the Seine-et-Oise, General Secretary of the Préfecture de Police, Governor-General of Algeria, and Chief of the Police. From a biographical dictionary that devotes pages and pages to Louis Lépine, I take the following passages:—“Actif et ferme, il parvint à rétablir les relations rompues entre le Conseil Municipal de Paris et la Préfecture de Police, et opéra d’importantes réformes.... Nommé Gouverneur-Général de l’Algérie, il apporta en plan de grands travaux publics et de réformes.... Nommé Conseiller d’État, il prit de nouveau la direction de la Préfecture de Police. Il s’est occupé de refondre tous les règlements administratifs relatifs au service de la navigation et de la circulation dans Paris, et un vaste Répertoire de Police a paru sous sa direction.” Thus it will be seen that M. Lépine was always “reforming,” for ever reorganising, unfailingly “active” and “firm.” He it was who “reformed” the nervous, excitable Paris police in the delirious Dreyfus days of 1899. To their astonishment he preached calm.

“Mais oui, mais oui, mais oui, du calme, nom d’un nom,” he expostulated. “You charge the crowd for no reason. You thump the innocent bourgeois on the back and tear off his collar. You exasperate the Latin Quarter. You are making an inferno of the boulevards. You are bringing ridicule and discredit on the force. In future, I myself shall direct operations.”

Dreyfus riots every day and every night, and M. Lépine in the thick of them. Short and slender, he was swept about and almost submerged by the Anti-Dreyfus mob. He lost his hat, his umbrella, but never his temper. He was to be seen swarming up lamp-posts, that he might discover the extent of the crowd and whether reinforcements of agitators were coming up side streets, and from which particular windows stones, bottles and lighted fusées were being hurled. His orders he issued by prearranged gesticulations. Not only the police, but the Municipal and Republican Guards, had been taught to understand the significance of his signals. A wave of the arm, and it meant “charge.” But it was only in desperate extremities that M. Lépine sent the crowd flying, battered and wounded. Pressure was his policy; six or seven rows of policemen advancing slowly yet heavily upon the manifestants, truncheon in hand and the formidable horses and shining helmets of the Republican Guard in the rear. When, upon a particularly tumultuous occasion, the “pressure” was resisted, and a number of boulevard kiosks were blazing and heads, too, were on fire, M. Lépine implored assistance—from Above.