In Paris, our next stopping-place, we also had a very interesting time. Of course we called on our minister, Robert M. McLane, then seventy-four years old, but looking sixty. He was distinctly of the old school, with all the grace of manner, combined with ability and wide experience in public service—an excellent representative who was esteemed by the French people quite as highly as by our own citizens in France. I speak of this especially because in capitals like Paris it is not an easy task to please both elements.
At dinner one evening in the home of my friend Adolphe Salmon, an American merchant residing in Paris, we met Count Dillon and his wife, most affable people to whom we felt ourselves immediately attracted. The Count was a thorough Royalist, had been for many years in the army. At this time he was managing director of the Mackay-Bennett Cable Company and the leader of a movement, really anti-Republican intrigue, designed to put General Boulanger, Minister of War, at the head of the State. The Count was a close personal friend and schoolmate of Boulanger, then the most extolled man in all France. The Count suggested that he arrange a luncheon or dinner to have us meet the General, if that was agreeable to us, for he felt sure the General would be pleased.
Consequently a few days later we lunched at Count Dillon's beautiful villa some thirty minutes outside of Paris. It was an intimate two-hour luncheon party, just Mr. and Mrs. Adolphe Salmon, the Count and Countess Dillon, General Boulanger, Mrs. Straus, and myself. Boulanger was a young-looking man for his fifty years, of medium height and weight, wearing a closely trimmed beard; rather Anglo-American than French in appearance, unassuming, of pleasant expression, and probably at the height of his power. Five years before he had been Director of Infantry in the War Office and made himself very popular as a military reformer. In 1886, under the ægis of Clemenceau and the Radical Party which brought Freycinet into power, Boulanger was made Minister of War. He was noted for his fire-eating attitude toward Germany in connection with the Schnaebele frontier incident, and because of this was hailed as the man destined to give France her revenge for the disasters of 1870. In fact, the masses looked upon him as a second Napoleon, "the man on horseback," and his picture on horseback was displayed in countless shop windows.
At our luncheon party he entertained us with many an interesting anecdote, and I particularly recall his telling of coming to the Yorktown Centennial Celebration and traveling as far as the Pacific Coast in company with General Sherman to see our fortifications. "I was asked what I thought of your American fortifications ["You know what antiquated and insignificant things they are," in an aside to Mrs. Straus], and I praised them and said I thought they were splendid, that I had never seen any better ones because"—and here his eyes twinkled—"no country has such nice ditches in front of its fortifications," He meant, of course, the Atlantic and the Pacific.
When the champagne was being drunk and toasts were in order I turned to the General, after drinking to the health of the company, and said: "May you administer the War Department so successfully that posterity will know you as the great preserver of peace." To this he responded that for fifteen years France had always been on the defensive and permitted insults rather than take offense, but that the time had come when she could no longer do so and must be ready for the offensive. He evidently had in mind that war was imminent. At a later meeting he asked me whether, in case of war, I would be willing to take charge of French interests in Turkey. I told him that while of course it would be agreeable to me personally, such action could be taken only under the authority of my government, which authority I would have to obtain before giving an official answer.
The subsequent meteoric career of Boulanger is a matter of history. For two years more his personality was one of the dominating factors of French politics. I remember writing from Constantinople early in 1889: "The most menacing condition exists in France, where, I am of opinion, Boulanger will gain the presidency before many months and from that time perhaps try to tread in the footprints of his Napoleonic ideal. If so—alas, poor France, and alas the peace of Europe!" He had become an open menace to the republic; and when Constans was Minister of the Interior a prosecution was instituted against Boulanger and a warrant signed for his arrest. He fled from Paris and was afterward tried and condemned in absentia for treason. In 1891 he committed suicide on the grave of his mistress in a cemetery at Brussels.
We dined, on another evening in Paris, with Mr. and Mrs. William Seligman, of the banking firm of Seligman Frères, the Paris branch of J. & W. Seligman of New York and of the London Seligman establishment. This dinner was a very large and elaborate affair, with many distinguished guests present. After dinner we were entertained by the budding genius of Josef Hofmann, then ten or eleven years old.
The noted Hungarian, Munkacsy, painter of "Last Day of a Condemned Man," "Christ before Pilate," "Christ on Calvary," and other celebrated works, was also there with his wife. As a couple they presented a striking contrast indeed. He was a silent man, talking very little and haltingly; he impressed one as a refined artisan of some sort, perhaps a carpenter. He was a large man of about five feet ten in height, with bushy hair combed up, bushy beard and mustache, and small eyes which he screwed up to almost nothing when observing something. His wife, on the other hand, was as coarse-looking a woman as one might discover, with a loud, raucous, almost masculine voice which, like a saw in action, rose above every other sound. However, I have observed that these contraries in personality in couples often make for happiness.
The artist seemed to take a keen interest in Mrs. Straus. He quite embarrassed her by his constant staring, and after dinner sought an introduction and sat next to her. Her plain hair-dress, smoothly brushed back and rolled in a coil behind, fascinated him. He remarked how natural and becoming it was and wanted to know whether she always wore it that way; he wondered whether it would be as becoming any other way. He wanted to know how long we should remain in Paris and expressed regret when told we were leaving in three or four days. Mrs. Straus felt he had studied her head long enough to paint it from memory. And who knows, perhaps he has used it in some painting that we have not yet discovered!