There is one point of resemblance between M. Grévy and the Marshal, for M. Grévy is a keen sportsman; but in most other things the two differ, though in sum M. Grévy differs more from M. Thiers than he does from the Marshal. His manner of living at the Elysée is dignified without ostentation. His servants do not wear gray and scarlet liveries; but the arrangements of his household are more orderly than those of M. Thiers could ever be. His servants in black know well how to keep intruders at a distance. No mob of journalists, inventors and place hunters calls to see M. Grévy in the morning. On the other hand, three or four times a week a great number of deputies, artists, journalists and officers may be seen going into the Elysée as freely as if they were entering a club. They do not ask to see the President or the latter’s secretary, M. Fourneret, but they make straight for a magnificent room on the ground floor overlooking the garden, which has been converted into a fencing saloon, and there they find M. Daniel Wilson, le fils de la maison. All these habitués, who form the court of the Third Republic, keep their masks, foils and flannels at the Elysée, and set to work fencing with each other as if they were at Gâtechair’s or Paz’s. Presently a door opens and the President walks in. For a moment the fencing stops, the combatants all turn and salute with their foils, whilst the visitors stand up. But, with a pleasant smile and a wave of the hand, M. Grévy bids the jousters to go on, and then he walks round the room, saying something to everybody, and inviting about half a dozen of the guests to stay to breakfast.
M. Grévy has allowed his beard to grow of late, and he is almost always attired in evening clothes, with the moiré edge of his scarlet cordon peeping over his waistcoat. But for the rest he is the same unassuming man as ever, and he takes life very easily. Now and then the Cabinet meets at the Elysée in the Salle des Souverains, and he presides over it. It is worth observing that in this Salle there are the portraits of a dozen sovereigns of the nineteenth century, including Queen Victoria, but not a symbol of any kind to remind one that it is a Republican Government that sits in this room. Even the master of the house has more in him of the Constitutional Monarch than of the President. The Constitution has conferred upon him large powers which he never uses; he seems to keep his eye on the portrait of the English Queen whilst his ministers discourse. Whatever papers are offered for his signature he signs, and then it is Bon jour, Messieurs; au revoir; and while the ministers disperse the President makes his way to his private apartments, where he finds his daughter and his grandchild, in whose company he sometimes takes more delight than in that of statesmen.
Now and then there is a dinner at the Elysée, twice a week at least there are evening receptions, and about twice in the winter there are grand balls. On all these occasions everything is done in the best possible style, and the President discharges his functions of host with a serenity which disarms all criticism. He says nothing much to anybody, but he is the same to all. If by chance he falls into deep conversation with any particular guest, nobody need suspect that state matters are being discussed. The probabilities are that the President will be talking about the next performance of his new breechloader at Mont-sous-Vaudrey. Moreover, what makes M. Grévy more puzzling and interesting at once to those who behold him so simple in his palace, is the knowledge which all have, that when his time comes for leaving the Elysée he will walk out of it as coolly as he went in, without wishing that his tenancy had been longer, and certainly without doing anything to prolong it. His only anxiety will be to see that his gun-case suffer no damage at the door.—Abridged from Temple Bar.
Thus God has willed
That man when fully skilled
Still gropes in twilight dim,
Encompassed all his hours
By fearfullest powers
Inflexible to him.