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Updated: July 14, 2025
At half past nine in the morning the procession approached the field of Plessis-Piquet in the following order: first came our carriage nobody in it but M. Gambetta and myself; then a carriage containing M. Fourtou and his second; then a carriage containing two poet-orators who did not believe in God, and these had MS. funeral orations projecting from their breast pockets; then a carriage containing the head surgeons and their cases of instruments; then eight private carriages containing consulting surgeons; then a hack containing a coroner; then the two hearses; then a carriage containing the head undertakers; then a train of assistants and mutes on foot; and after these came plodding through the fog a long procession of camp followers, police, and citizens generally.
The present French Republic has endured for over forty years. Within that time it has produced just one man of extraordinary power and parts. This was Leon Gambetta.
The difficulty was what royalty? It seemed to all men, and very probably to Thiers himself, that that question would be answered in favor of Henri V., the Comte de Chambord. Gambetta, resigning his power without a word, retired to San Sebastian, just over the Spanish frontier. There he lived in two small rooms over a crockery-shop.
As he concluded he felt a strange magnetic attraction; and, sweeping the audience with a glance, he saw before him, not very far away, the same woman with the long black gloves, having about her still an air of mystery, but again meeting his eyes with her own, suffused with feeling. Gambetta hurried to an anteroom and hastily scribbled the following note: At last I see you once more.
Yet neither of them specified what sort of marriage this should be, nor did it seem at the moment as if the question could arise. For Gambetta was very powerful. He led his party to success in the election of 1877. Again and again his triumphant oratory mastered the National Assembly of France. In 1879 he was chosen to be president of the Chamber of Deputies.
She felt that her life must be a perpetual penance for what had befallen her through her ignorance and inexperience. She told Gambetta that her name was Leonie Leon. As is the custom of Frenchwomen who live alone, she styled herself madame. It is doubtful whether the name by which she passed was that which had been given to her at baptism; but, if so, her true name has never been disclosed.
An hour or two later, Number Nine Platoon, distended with concentrated nourishment and painfully straightening its cramped limbs, decanted itself from the lorry into a little cul-de-sac opening off the Rue Jean Jacques Rousseau in St. Grégoire. The name of the cul-de-sac was the Rue Gambetta.
Young Gambetta was accordingly sent to the lycée that is, the lay public school of Cahors, and here he immediately won golden opinions by his cleverness, his industry, and the happy vivacity of his character. One of the half-yearly bulletins of the lycée, which has been preserved in his family, records that he was "passionate without being vindictive, and proud without arrogance."
"Good morning, Colonel Tempe," he said, cordially; and then added, in some surprise, "who are these men you have with you, and where are your young Englishmen? I hope they will not be late." "These are they," the colonel said, smiling. "They are who?" Gambetta said, puzzled. "I do not understand you, colonel." "These are the Lieutenants Barclay," Colonel Tempe said.
When he finished and descended from the rostrum he looked at her, and their eyes cried out as significantly as if the two had spoken to each other. Then Gambetta did what a person of finer breeding would not have done. He hastily scribbled a note, sealed it, and called to his side one of the official pages.
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