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We do not wish to be ungallant, but Gambetta had good reasons for preferring Paul Bert to Juliette Lambert, although the lady is ludicrously wrong in saying that "it was to Paul Bert that Gambetta owed all the formulae of his scientific politics." She forgets that Gambetta's speeches before Paul Bert became his friend are in print.
The first thing that attracted our notice in a shop window was a coloured illustration representing the funeral procession of Gambetta, as it wound slowly past the veiled statue of Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde. These displays of patriotic feeling are forbidden, but they come to the fore all the same.
The Government is daily becoming more and more military, and the Parisian Deputies are becoming little more than lay figures. M. Gambetta, the most energetic of them, has left for the provinces. MM. Jules Favre, Picard, and Pelletan are almost forgotten.
"These gloomy doctrines, now applauded in public meetings, have ruined this man. He has heard republicans even women, yes, women ask for the blood of M. Gambetta, the blood of M. Grevy; his weakened mind gave way; he wanted blood, the blood of a bourgeois! "It is not he whom you should condemn, gentlemen; it is the Commune!" Everywhere could be heard murmurs of assent.
Paris, fond as it was of scandals, immediately spread the tale that he had been shot by a jealous woman. The truth is quite the contrary. Gambetta, in arranging his effects in his new home, took it upon himself to clean a pair of dueling-pistols; for every French politician of importance must fight duels, and Gambetta had already done so.
He longed to go to Paris to study law, but his father insisted that he must now confine his thoughts to selling groceries and yards of ribbon and lace, as he expected his son to succeed him in the business. Poor, foolish Joseph Gambetta! he would confine the young eagle in a barnyard.
Discontent was charmed into enthusiasm Belleville and Montmartre forgot the visions of Communism and Socialism and other "isms" not to be realised except in some undiscovered Atlantis! The Emperor was the idol of the day the names of Jules Favre and Gambetta were by-words of scorn.
They were all of fifteen thousand tons and eighteen knots. To these was added the Suffren, also of eighteen knots, but only twelve thousand seven hundred tons: she had come from Brest with a flotilla of torpedo boats. There were six armoured cruisers, Jules Ferry, Leon Gambetta, Victor Hugo, Jeanne d'Arc, Aube and Marseillaise.
Therefore I wrote the following note and carried it to M. Fourtou's friend: Sir: M. Gambetta accepts M. Fourtou's challenge, and authorizes me to propose Plessis-Piquet as the place of meeting; tomorrow morning at daybreak as the time; and axes as the weapons. I am, sir, with great respect, Mark Twain. M. Fourtou's friend read this note, and shuddered.
Moreover, that was not the time for deliberations concerning a permanent form of government. The deputies were met to make a temporary or provisional government, qualified to accept or to refuse the hard terms of peace offered by the Prussians. The two leaders of the Assembly were Thiers and Gambetta, the one in favor of peace, the other of prolonging the war.
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