intellectual outlook which befitted a historian. I was arguing, at the time, that history was not a subject in itself, but an aspect of every subject, and that every branch of education and study should include its particular history. He vaguely agreed with me that the "verdicts" of history were not to be trusted except as evidence of the mental attitude of the age in which they were given. But I was so ultra-Renanian in those days that even Renan, I think, must have shuddered at such defiance of authority!

Dufaure, in the Marshal's eyes, was a mild politician and safe. Jules Simon was only a shade less mild, yet theoretically too advanced for the Marshal, and six months later came the famous seize mai of 1877, when he "dismissed " M. Jules Simon and his ministry and appointed a ministry composed entirely of reactionaries headed by the Duc de Broglie. This, too, six months later he dismissed and tried a ministry of public officials, which lasted three weeks. Then he tried M. Dufaure again, and finally in January, 1879, in exasperation that he could not discover any political quadrature of the circle, resigned.

I did not meet the Duc de Broglie till many years after these exciting events, when he was among the guests at a dinner party at the house of my late friend M. Arthur Desjardins, a member of the Institut and "avocat-général à la Cour de Cassation." I was struck by his unsympathetic manner and rasping voice, and could quite understand what people meant when they said of him that he was a good speaker who drove the votes away.

Anglo-French relations began now to shape themselves. It was in this period of ardent political strife and intrigue, when the fate of the Republic itself still hung in the balance, that I had made the acquaintance of Jules Simon, and of Gambetta, whom I met for the first time in 1878, when the Sugar Conference was sitting in Paris, at a reception given by the then Minister of Commerce, M. Tesserenc de Bort.

The grand tribun had ceased to be the fou furieux Thiers had called him, and had become a moderate thinker in home affairs, an" opportunist " (I think he was the author of the term), and was on the way to adopting moderate views also in foreign affairs. He even forgave Thiers the epithet hurled after him and became a respectful friend of the old man, consulting him on all matters of moment and even conspiring for his re-election to the Presidency. Gambetta had also begun to entertain the idea that it was in the interest of France, amid her then internal problems and turmoil, to cultivate the friendship of England, and conciliate English public opinion by showing that the new republican form of government resembled that of her island neighbour in the guarantees it offered to the free play of popular forces and the subordination of the administration to the will of the electoral majority. In the following year (1877) the question of the renewal of the Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce of 1860, "denounced " by France for the year 1878, would have to be dealt with, and this seemed to Gambetta an occasion which might be turned to profitable account. In any case it would need careful handling to avoid ill-feeling between the two countries if negotiations failed.

CHAPTER III

ANTI-ENGLISH SYMPTOMS. GAMBETTA

ONE day at lunch at Mme. Pelouze's I met M. Jules Lecesne, who had recently been elected Deputy for Havre, and had taken his seat among the Extrème Gauche. It was he who founded Le Havre, the chief Havre paper, which has since then been more or less eclipsed by its evening edition, Le Petit Havre. The latter was long afterwards among the keenest supporters of the Anglo-French agitation. M. Lecesne was anything but Anglophil. Anglophil. He attacked me violently about the disastrous consequences to France of seeking English friendship, and made me feel quite guilty of the evil deeds of Richard Cobden. and other wicked Englishmen who had beguiled the French into signing that treacherous document the Commercial Treaty of 1860. His language was so violent that Mme. Pelouze apologised for him. The treaty had evidently not been of unqualified benefit to the Havre shipping, which included M. Lecesne's business, that of shipowner. That grievances against England existed so near to English waters as Havre, especially grievances in connection with the famous treaty which I had always understood had been of unqualified benefit to both parties, took my uninitiate breath away. But M. Lecesne revealed other grievances against England to me. England had deserted France in the war of 1870 when she might have stopped her being bled à blanc and saved her from the territorial

spoliation to which she fell a victim. He could pardon Germany. She had been a sincere antagonist who avowed her object and made no pretence of not striving to reduce France to the dust, but England was a treacherous friend, and the French would never forget the conduct of her perfidious government, of her hypocritical Prime Minister, Mr. William Gladstone, and he hissed out the "William " as if it were a word of abuse.

This was not an isolated instance of the sudden growth of an unfriendly public opinion. It seemed as if the dam of the friendly feeling had given way and there was nothing now to prevent the latent traditional hostility from once more becoming active and overflowing.

The announcement on November 25, 1875, that the British Government had purchased the Khedive's Suez Canal shares had excited the deepest distrust, and, now that the German scare had subsided, attention became concentrated on the activity of the perfide Albion in the Near East. British action in the Turkish crisis a year later did not improve AngloFrench relations. "L'égoiste Angleterre," as Gambetta called her in January, 1877, was not to be counted upon for any act for which others might only be grateful. The feeling became so strong that Englishmen were already contemplating the possibility of serious trouble between the two countries. I remember about that time meeting in the street Lieutenant-General Palmer, who was then residing with his charming daughter (afterwards the wife of Mr. Pitt-Lewis, Q.C.) in Paris, and talking with him about the danger of a rupture with France. The

General was quite excited about it. "They had better take care," he said; we are not to be trifled with, and if we have to fight, they will get a worse hiding than in 1870." I never quite realised how this was to be done, but it showed that hostile feelings were running high. War among the Great Powers, moreover, was already in the air. Insurrection in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria had been followed by the outbreak of the Servian war in June, 1876. General Ignatieff on behalf of Russia and Lord Salisbury on behalf of England had been endeavouring to agree upon some terms of arrangement to be imposed on Turkey. They and then the Conference at Constantinople had failed. England and Russia seemed within an inch of war with each other. The Sultan's diplomacy had defeated them and the " concert of Europe." England and Germany seemed to be acting together on the one side and France and Russia, now regarded by French politicians as the "true friend," true friend," on the other.

This Franco-Russian friendliness did not apply to the Jews or the financiers whom the Jews influenced. I was at the international gathering in Paris of the Jews of Europe held in 1876 to protest against the anti-Jewish measures in Roumania and there met Crémieux, one of the most curious and unforgetable figures of his time. Small, with a large head taillée à coups de hâche, as somebody said of him who, like myself, saw him then for the first time, he moved about slowly and benignly, and talked with extreme deliberation as if he wanted his words to eat deep into the hearers' grey matter. The memory of Crémieux' utterances has long been