United States or British Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The weather was fine and sunshiny, with a light southerly breeze. All at once the yellow balloon rose, with three men in it, one of whom was Gambetta. Then the white balloon went up with three men, one of whom waved a tricolour flag. Beneath Gambetta's balloon hung a long tricolour streamer. "Long live the Republic!" shouted the crowd.
Gambetta, however, fell from power at the end of January 1882, and his far weaker successor, de Freycinet, having to face a most complex parliamentary situation in France and the possible hostility of the other Powers, drew back from the leading position which Gambetta's bolder policy had accorded to France.
They therefore went at once to the Maire; to whom they presented Gambetta's letter, and requested his assistance in purchasing a van, with a pair of good strong horses, at once. "It will be next to impossible to get horses," the Maire said, "but I will do my best. I have two carriage horses, of good breed; but I fear, if I were to let you have them, the Prussians might remark it."
It was like a shipwreck in which, captain and officers being disabled, the command falls to the most able seaman. Gambetta had no legal right to govern France, but he governed it by right divine, as the only man who could govern it. This is how a newspaper writer speaks and justly of Gambetta's government:
Sure enough I saw him in a group near the yellow balloon, wearing a heavy overcoat and a sealskin cap. He seated himself upon a paving-stone and put on a pair of high fur-lined boots. A leather bag was slung over his shoulder. He took it off, entered the balloon, and a young man, the aeronaut, tied the bag to the cordage above Gambetta's head. It was half past 10.
The next day the mob tore down all the imperial eagles and bees from the public buildings; M. Gavini, the Bonapartist prefect, had to escape the best way he could over the frontier, and madame his wife made her way to the station under a shower of potatoes, eggs and carrots, and a volley of insults and coarse epithets; Gambetta's father, a fine white-headed old gentleman, a grocer, was carried in triumph through the streets; the timid trembled for their lives; the wildest reports were circulated; the town was placed in a state of siege; but "le jour de gloire" did not arrive.
"We have two first-rate animals," Ralph said, "from Gambetta's own stables. They have carried us a hundred miles, since breakfast time yesterday. They are likely to be at least as good as yours are, only they want a few days' rest. Will you exchange?" "Certainly," the Maire said, at once. "If any inquiries were to be made about it, I need make no secret of that transaction.
The latest German papers announce that Mézières has fallen, and it seems to occur to no one that Gambetta's last pigeon despatch informed us that the siege of this place had been raised. La Liberté thus sums up the situation: "Nancy menaced; Belfort freed; Baden invaded; Hamburg about to be bombarded. This is the reply of France to the bombardment of Paris.
He was mistaken. Three months after he accepted office, the Radicals and the Conservatives combined for his overthrow. He was defeated in the Chamber on a question of the scrutin de liste, and resigned. Gambetta's disappointment was very great. He had counted on his popularity, and had hoped to accomplish great things.
I can still picture Gambetta's departure, and particularly his appearance on the occasion his fur cap and his fur coat, which made him look somewhat like a Polish Jew. He had with him his secretary, the devoted Spuller.
Word Of The Day