United States or Nigeria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Afterward she came to Paris and hid herself away in a garret of the slums. All the light of her life had gone out. She wished that she had died with him whose glory had been her life. Friends of Gambetta, however, discovered her and cared for her until her death, long afterward, in 1906.
The Palais de Justice was the seat of the Government of Léon Gambetta in the autumn of 1870, after the dictator had been obliged to retire in his balloon from Paris and before the Assembly was constituted at Bordeaux. The Germans occupied Tours during that terrible winter: it is astonishing, the number of places the Germans occupied.
At 3 o'clock I receive a telegram from Paris couched in the following terms: "Bring the children with you." Which means "Come." MM. Claretie and Proust dined with us. During the dinner a telegram signed "Francois Hugo" arrived, announcing that a provisional government had been formed: Jules Favre, Gambetta, Thiers. September 5.
Gambetta was very keen about foreign affairs, very patriotic, and not at all willing that France should remain indefinitely a weakened power, still suffering from the defeat of 1870. There were many fetes and reunions of all kinds, all through the summer months, as people had flocked to Paris for the exposition.
He tells me that Arago, Pelletan, and Garnier Pagès were delighted to leave Paris, and that it was only the absolute necessity of their being as soon as possible at Bordeaux, that induced General Vinoy to consent to their departure. As for Gambetta, he says, it is not probable that he has now many adherents in the provinces; and it is certain that he has very few here.
This was repeated again and again, until at last whenever he came to a peculiarly fervid burst of oratory he turned to this woman's face and saw it lighted up by the same enthusiasm which was stirring him. Finally, in the early part of 1870, there came a day when Gambetta surpassed himself in eloquence. His theme was the grandeur of republican government.
But the two chief men in the Committee of Defence were Jules Favre and Gambetta. Gambetta, who before that time had been little known, was from the South of France, and of Italian origin. He was a man full of enthusiasm, vehement, irascible, and impulsive.
I have an idea we shan't stay much longer, and report says Freycinet will be the next premier." He evidently had heard the same report, and spoke warmly of Freycinet, intelligent, energetic, and such a precise mind. If W. were obliged to resign, which he personally would regret, he thought Freycinet was the coming man unless Gambetta wanted to be premier.
And when, at length, on October 7th, Gambetta and his secretary, with the aeronaut Trichet, actually got away, in company with another balloon, they were vigorously fired at with shot and shell before they had cleared St. Denis. Farther out over the German posts they were again under fire, and escaped by discharging ballast, not, however, before Gambetta had been grazed by a bullet.
There, from the seclusion of Chiselhurst, he and his still beautiful Eugénie watched the republic weathering the first days of storm and stress. Immediately after the deposition of the emperor a third Republic of France was proclaimed. A temporary government was set up under the direction of MM. Favre, Gambetta, Simon, Ferry, Rochefort, and others of pronounced republican tendencies.
Word Of The Day