Until he attempted journalism he had been a subordinate clerk at the Hotel de Ville, earning barely enough to keep body and soul together. He never forgot this period of his existence, and, whenever he allowed himself to speak about it, a bitterness showed itself which he could not keep within bounds.
One day, alluding to those dark and hopeless times, when he had spent many hours scribbling at some wearisome task, he said to me: “It is impossible for anyone who has not undergone it to imagine what it feels like to see the spring and not be able to get out of doors.” The remark appeared to me almost too poetic to be the expression of a real feeling, but when I told him so, he replied quite earnestly: “Evidently you have never experienced what it is to know that you are a drudge, although possessing the inner feeling that you are born to better things.” I could not help then inquiring what his feelings had been when he was in prison, to which he exclaimed: “Oh, that was very different, one always comes out of prison, but sometimes one never escapes from the necessity of earning one’s bread and butter by copying the stupidities which other people have written.”
Before he died in July, 1913, the Marquis de Rochefort Luçay was a quasi-millionaire, the owner of one of the handsomest houses in all Paris, received everywhere that he cared to go, a desired guest, and an envied journalist. Even in his later days his pen was as sharp as ever, though perhaps it was no longer appreciated as was the case in the later days of the Empire.
He was often to be seen at the Hotel Drouot, attending the principal art sales of the year, where his knowledge of pictures and bibelots was highly appreciated. His life was like a fairy tale in many things, and in others like a dark nightmare. He made many foes, and kept few friends. Appearing to be everlastingly dissatisfied, he was yet one of the happiest men in the world—perhaps because he was one of the most selfish.
CHAPTER XXVI
The Presidency of M. Loubet
The death of M. Félix Faure took France greatly by surprise; the appointment of his successor astonished it even more. M. Loubet was President of the Senate, it is true, but his name had figured among those who had been mentioned in connection with the Panama scandal. This last fact was put forward by some people when the question arose of the candidature of M. Rouvier for the Presidency of the Republic, and caused it to be rejected. No one imagined, therefore, that it would be disregarded in the case of M. Loubet. He had many rivals, among them M. Brisson, M. de Freycinet, whose name came forward regularly whenever a Presidential election was about to take place, and the above-mentioned M. Rouvier. This candidate possessed a powerful personality and wielded an immense influence; his experience had been varied, and his intelligence was certainly one of the foremost in France. Had he been elected to the Presidency his appointment would have been received with great favour in Europe. On the other hand, M. Loubet was more or less an unknown person, supposed to be inoffensive and retiring, but possessed of a most violent anti-Clericalism, of which he had given every possible proof, in the hope that by these means he would make himself a persona grata with the Radical party, through whom he had secured the Presidency of the Senate, an office which hitherto had constituted the summum bonum of his ambitions.
He had no wish to become President of the Republic, and it was with great reluctance he allowed his name to be put forward as a candidate. But he was under the influence of, or, what is even truer, dependent upon, M. Clemenceau. M. Clemenceau had lately come forward with considerable energy, especially since the Dreyfus affair once more was in the public mind, and he was such a considerable personage among the Radical party that they could not afford to disregard his orders or even his personal wishes.
M. Clemenceau was the Henri Rochefort of political life, with far more intelligence and almost as much wit as the director of the Lanterne, with an extraordinary force of character, very determined ideas, and about as few convictions as were indispensable to a man who had risen to the leadership of a powerful party. Moreover, he had real statesmanlike qualities.
He had no great sympathy for the Russian alliance, which his ever-ready wit had quickly discerned, when all was said and done, to be a very one-sided affair.
His sympathies were entirely English, and as such it was but natural he should not look with enchanted eyes upon a policy that was bound, by its close association with the diplomacy pursued on the banks of the Neva, to become antagonistic to that of the Court of St. James’s. Perhaps it was for this very reason that he pushed forward the candidature of M. Loubet.