In contemplating the disastrous end of M. Grévy we must remember that the scandal which caused his fall, after so many years of honorable service for his country, amounts, so far as he was concerned, to very little. The only fault of which he can be accused was that of too great toleration of the speculative propensities of his son-in-law. It was proved, indeed, that there were agencies in the hands of disreputable persons in Paris for the purchase and sale of influence and honors, but there was little or no evidence that these agencies had had any influence with the public departments. The existence of such agencies under the Empire would have excited little comment. That the trials of Madame Limouzin, General Caffarel, and M. Wilson so excited the public and produced such consequences, may be proof, perhaps, of a keener sense of morality in the Parisian people.
Some one said of M. Grévy that he was a Radical in speech and a Moderate in action, so that he pleased both parties. The strongest accusation against him was his personal love of economy, and his entire indifference to show, literature, or art. It was also considered a fault in him as a French president that he showed little inclination to travel. Socially, the polite world accused him of wearing old hats and no gloves. On cold days he put his hands in his pockets, which in the eyes of some was worse than putting them for his own purposes into the pockets of other people.
GENERAL BOULANGER.
[CHAPTER XX.]
GENERAL BOULANGER.
Up to 1886 the name of General Boulanger commands no place upon the page of history. After that year it was scattered broadcast. For four years it was as familiar in the civilized world as that of Bismarck.
A new word was coined in 1886 to meet a want which the general's importance had created. That word was boulangisme, though it would be hard to give it a definition in the dictionary. We can only say that it meant whatever General Boulanger might be pleased to attempt.
George Ernest Jean Marie Boulanger was born in the town of Rennes, in Brittany, in 1837.[1] His father had been a lawyer, and was head of an insurance company. He spent the latter days of his life at Ville-d'Avray, near Paris; and as he did not die till 1884, he lived to see his son a highly considered French officer, though he had not then given promise of being a popular hero and a world-famous man. General Boulanger's mother was named Griffith; she was a lady belonging apparently to the upper middle class in Wales. She had a great admiration for George Washington, and the future French hero received one of his names from the American "father of his country." In his boyhood Boulanger was always called George; but when he came of age he preferred to call himself Ernest, which is the baptismal name by which he is generally known.
[Footnote 1: Turner, Life of Boulanger.]