on several occasions. In his "Memoirs " he refers to these. Mr., and afterwards his wife Mrs. Emily, Crawford, the correspondent of the Daily News, which was the leading organ of English Liberalism of that time, kept up, as Gambetta's personal friends, a sort of feud in which they were as strongly hostile to Blowitz as Gambetta's paper, a feud which persisted till many years after Gambetta's death, when as the friend of both, I was the means of bringing it to an end.

Gambetta's character was essentially derived from the Italian middle-class side of his family tree. Any one who has any acquaintance with the Etrurian peasantry will be reminded by Gambetta's senti mentalism, buoyant good humour, indifference to wealth, enjoyment of his own vitality and glorious voice, of the peasants and petty bourgeoisie who come together in the evening to hear an entertainer who ives them no more thrilling amusement than the recitation in sonorous tones of grandiloquent verses of popular poets not excluding Dante. Amid the people of Provence he was quite at home. In the north he felt himself an alien, and schemers for place were more than a match for him who never schemed for any selfish purpose. "Méfiez-vous d'un bordelais roux," somebody said to him when he was trusting one of his followers, a very distinguished man who soon supplanted him when his star began to wane.

There was something childish in the pleasure it gave Gambetta to meet the Prince of Wales privately as a personal friend in 1877, but I do not agree with Mme. Adam that it was the Prince's influence that affected his convictions in regard to foreign affairs. His peasant common sense more than any alien arguments,

T.Y.

49

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I feel sure, determined his leaning to a policy of conciliation and peace. Besides, he, least of all men, could be suspected of weak-kneed patriotism. He it was who said, "Pensons-y toujours, n'en parlons jamais"; though this did not prevent his going to Germany more than once, and I firmly believe he hoped some day to see French feeling about AlsaceLorraine become mild enough to facilitate an understanding with her. At the same time in co-operation with England, he saw a horizon of greater national self-confidence for France and a possible medium of bringing Western Europe to a normal condition of peace and amity.

*

M. Grévy was a quiet unostentatious man who hated all fussiness and pose. Chess was his favourite recreation, and good players he had met in the old days at the Café de la Régence, the rendezvous of chess-players, were still admitted to a game with him after he had become the chief of the State. In conversation he had the knack of knocking out the bottom of an argument, when its exponents had nothing more to say, with a terse but courteous observation. At cabinet meetings it was well known that he never attempted to impose any view of his own, and yet always got his own way. By appropriate observations he destroyed all other suggestions one after another, and left alone open the course he wished to be followed. He had a habit of peering into men's characters rather than their views and ideas, which he believed he could divine if he knew their character. The hand was a barometer which gave him his first impressions of the inner man. Hence his habit of holding everybody's

hand for a few moments in his. He distrusted fat, soft hands in men.

M. Grévy, who, by the way, was never referred to as Grévy tout court, once told me he had been very much impressed by an English solicitor who had come over to Paris on a case in which he had been retained. M. Grévy thought him the ablest and wisest man he had ever met, but he could not remember his name. I thought from the circumstances that it must have been Sir John Hollams, who afterwards told me he had, in fact, been engaged in a case with M. Grévy. Sir John, when I spoke to him of this, was a very old man, but I remember him as he was in the prime of life, and can quite understand the impression he produced in the handling of a complicated matter.

CHAPTER IV

EGYPT

THE anti-English irritation in connection with Egypt, occasioned by Lord Beaconsfield's purchase of the Khedive's holding in the Suez Canal, showed no signs of abating. In subsequent events, despite their conciliatory appearance, French politicians saw only a disguised intention on the part of the British Government, gradually to get the upper hand and reduce France in Egypt to the same secondary position as that of other States in that country. The "counter policy, as a French writer expressed it in 1881, necessarily became one of "multiplying obstacles to the advance of British policy, and for this purpose of supporting the Egyptian Nationalist Party, whose claims had served as a pretext to Ismaïl Pasha to start on the series of intrigues which brought about his deposition. This party, if granted discreet but effective assistance, offered a basis for a complete political system in which France, being less dangerous than England for Egypt, would have acquired a great moral authority."1

These ideas were in fact those which the French consul-general at Cairo, M. de Ring, was endeavouring to carry out.

In 1878. M. Fournier, then French ambassador at

1 André Daniel, "Année Politique," 1881, p. 248. England, predicted this acute observer, would nevertheless gradually absorb Egypt to guarantee for her ships safe navigation in the Suez Canal (1882, p. 32).

Constantinople, whom I met at Chenonceaux when on a visit to Mme. Pelouze, told me that much as he appreciated the fine, straightforward qualities of English diplomatists, English diplomacy was a harsh, self-seeking system which rode rough-shod over the feelings and aspirations of all who had the misfortune to cross the path traced for it towards an always specific goal. Still, like the French commissioner, M. de Blignières, he regarded the maintenance of the dual control and steady co-operation with England as in the true interest of France. This was also Gambetta's view, and when after the bombardment of Alexandria, from which the French fleet withdrew by orders of M. de Freycinet, Gambetta's successor at the Foreign Office, the progress of events forced France to decide whether she would vote the necessary money to enable her to join England in the action events were precipitating, he delivered a speech on the subject of Anglo-French co-operation in which the following passage marked his unwavering trust in this co-operation :

"When I behold Europe," he said, "this Europe which has bulked so largely to-day in the speeches delivered from this tribune, I observe that for ten years there has always been a Western policy represented by France and England, and allow me to say that I do not know of any other European policy capable of helping us in the direst emergencies which may arise. What I say to you to-day I say with a deep sense of a vision of the future."

I was present at the debate and heard the halfhearted approval given to the above utterance of the grand tribun and even disdainful disapproval muttered when he spoke of his vision of the future. The lion