After the Panama scandal and the vanishing of the "two hundred and fifty million francs," cabinets were formed and cabinets fell with symptomatic and alarming rapidity. For instance, in January 1898, Ribot becomes Premier, but already in March Dupuy succeeds him. The general election reveals nothing... except the nation's apathy. The election of fifty Socialists as deputies, however, is worth noting. Later Casimir Périer becomes Prime Minister. He has a revered name, is capable, and he is wealthy, but his Ministry does not last six months, and in May 1894, Dupuy returns to power. The next month an Italian anarchist murders President Carnot, the noblest of men and an able statesman, worthy grandson of the victor of Wattignies, of Lazare Carnot, the "Organiser of Victory." Four days later, the Congress sitting at Versailles, elects Casimir Périer to the highest office in the Republic, but in January 1905, tired of being slandered, fettered, and insulted, and for private reasons, too, Casimir Périer resigns and Félix Faure becomes President.
He had rapidly reached the supreme rank. Under-Secretary for the Colonies from 1882 to 1885 in Jules Ferry's Cabinet, he was elected vice-president of the Chamber in 1893, became Minister for the Navy in 1894, and President of the Republic in 1895.
That very year he received the Lord Mayor of London, Sir Joseph Renals, and the following year, in October, the Czar and the Czaritza. I attended the gala performance at the Opera, the laying of the first stone of the Alexander III. bridge, which was to illustrate in stone and bronze the Franco-Russian Alliance, and even went to Châlons to see the military review held there. I had left Beaucourt for the purpose of attending these ceremonies in the company of an important official. The Czar struck me as more unassuming than the President, and the rather pathetic beauty of the Empress of all the Russians made a deep impression upon me. France went Russia mad, and Félix Faure became extremely popular.
The Alliance which had been marked by the visit of a French squadron commanded by Admiral Gervais to Kronstadt (1891), the mission of General Boisdeffre to St. Petersburg in the following year, and the visit of the Russian Admiral Avelan to Toulon and Paris in 1893, was to become a fait accompli during the return visit of Félix Faure to the Czar in August 1897.
Three months before this momentous visit there occurred in Paris the terrible catastrophe of the Bazar de la Charité which claimed some hundred and fifty victims. I miraculously escaped death that day. I was one of the ladies in charge of the buffet, and was serving tea, when I felt suddenly unwell, so much so that, reluctantly, I had to leave the Bazaar. The carriage in which I drove home had hardly turned the corner of the Rue Jean Goujon when the fire broke out.
My mother arrived at my house in a state of mad terror, for she had accompanied me a few hours before as far as the doors of the Bazaar, and when she had heard of the fire, had feared that I was one of the victims. I was safe but, alas, lost my dear friends in the catastrophe.
A few weeks later the second jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated, and with a few English friends staying in Paris, I attended the great garden-party given at the British Embassy by Sir Edmund Monson. Mme. Faure and her daughter, M. Hanotaux, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the whole literary, artistic, and political élite of France were present.
I heartily congratulated an eminent English personage on the splendour of the reception and the atmosphere of pleasant mirth which permeated the Embassy.
"Of course, Madame," he remarked, "the Embassy has not always this bright animation! But you must not believe that we English are as sedate and stolid and gloomy as some people say. And I may inform you, by the way, that this house was once the residence of the notorious Pauline Borghese, whose only ambition was to be pretty and to... to be loved." He then told us a number of lively anecdotes about the ravishing sister of Napoleon—and concluded; "Don't you think there is something piquant in the fact that the Ambassador of stern and solemn Old England lives in a house which once belonged to a famous crowned courtesan!"
On July 14th—the day of the fête nationale—the usual review took place at Longchamps, and I took my six-year-old daughter to see "the soldiers," but, instead of watching them, she kept staring at the Rajah of Kapurthala, who was close to us, and asking endless questions which brought smiles to the lips of all those who overheard her, but embarrassed me very much.