Under those circumstances the journey of M. Loubet to St. Petersburg might have been pleasant, but could not have been very useful. In London it was different. He found there many sympathisers and well-wishers who were only too desirous of accentuating the good relations of France with Great Britain. To begin with King Edward and to end with the man in the street, they all vied with each other to show the greatest cordiality to the President and to make him welcome in the fullest sense of the word. When M. Loubet returned to Paris he could say with pride and satisfaction that the old rivalries which had divided the two countries had been buried under the flowers which had ornamented the dining-table in the Waterloo Hall of Windsor Castle.
The Roman trip of the President, though conducted on simpler lines than those of his English journey, was perhaps the most important event of M. Loubet’s septenary. It distinctly proclaimed the attitude which the French Government meant to adopt in regard to the religious question and to its relations with the Vatican. The guest of the Italian King at the Quirinal, M. Loubet did not think it necessary to follow the example set by all the other foreign monarchs who visited Rome by going from the house of the Ambassador to the Holy See, as a neutral place, to visit the Pope at the Vatican. The courtesy paid to the head of the Roman Catholic Church by the German Crown Prince, and later on by the German Emperor, was deemed to be beneath the dignity of the President of the French Republic; and when the government was asked in the Chamber what M. Loubet meant to do in regard to this question of a visit to the Pope, it replied that it had been decided that the President should refrain.
Soon after this relations were entirely suspended between the Holy See and the French Republic, and the separation between Church and State became an accomplished fact. M. Loubet had not failed in the confidence which M. Clemenceau and the Radical party had reposed in him.
The principal feature of this septenary of a gentle and yielding little bourgeois was the establishing of the regular and automatic change of Presidents—a rule which gave to the Republic a stability which hitherto it had been wanting. M. Thiers had been overturned; Marshal MacMahon and M. Grévy had been obliged to resign; M. Carnot had been murdered, and M. Faure had died suddenly, whilst M. Casimir Périer had grown impatient at the restraint to which he found his faculties subjected. It was only dating from M. Loubet that the transmission of the supreme power became an accomplished fact, and that at last the Republic, as well as a Monarchy, had its Sovereigns whose reign was followed by that of their duly elected successors.
During his Presidency, too, the components of Paris society changed considerably. New salons sprang up which aspired to replace the older ones, and in a certain sense they succeeded in doing so. The bourgeoisie which Loubet represented so well came to the front, and the newspapers, which hitherto had carefully noted the sayings and doings of the Duchess of So-and-So and the Countess of So-and-So, began to chronicle those of Madame Ménard Dorian or of Madame Alphonse Daudet, or of the wives and daughters of members and supporters of the government. Thus a new society began to play its part in Parisian social life, and soon entirely pervaded it. Financial houses, too, opened wide their doors to all who cared to enter, and whilst formerly the Rothschilds had been almost the only bankers with whom the old French nobility had cared to associate, dozens of Jews now invaded Parisian society. The distinction which used to exist formerly between the noblesse and what it had called disdainfully “les roturiers” had entirely disappeared under the glamour which millions always exert over the imagination of the crowds. It was felt that money was the principal thing required, and under this influence the Hebrew and the American element had a fine time of it.
It is impossible to write anything about Parisian society nowadays without saying something concerning M. de Castellane. For a few brief years he incarnated in his person the acme of French elegance, and was the fleur des pois of all the smart clubs of Paris. He was a terrible little fop who aspired only to one thing: to be the most talked-about man of his generation. When he married Miss Gould, he fondly imagined that this marriage gave him the right to do everything he liked, down to ill-treating his wife. He began buying right and left everything that caught his fancy, and built for himself a palace after the model of the Petit Trianon; he made Paris ring with his extravagances, and pretended to assume the part of the one supreme leader of society. Even the many millions which his wife had brought to him proved insufficient; and very soon his horses, his vagaries, his losses at cards, and his general behaviour brought about a financial catastrophe, which was the prelude to a conjugal one. Mme. de Castellane became tired of being outraged at every step, and sued for a divorce, which was easily awarded to her.
Anyone in de Castellane’s place would have resigned himself to the inevitable, but instead, he threatened to take the children from her. Madame de Castellane behaved nobly on this trying occasion. She might easily have retaliated, and she had got plenty of proofs which she could have produced that would have for ever compromised the Comte de Castellane and other people with him. She never made use of that power, and as her advocate, M. Albert Clemenceau—the brother of M. Georges Clemenceau—eloquently said: “My client has her hands full, but she disdains to open them in order to harm the man who, after all, is the father of her children!”
The Countess came out of this painful ordeal with flying colours. Her children were left in her charge, notwithstanding all the efforts of M. de Castellane. Soon after her divorce was pronounced she married a cousin of her former husband, the Duc de Talleyrand, the son of the famous Prince de Sagan. The couple lead a very quiet life in the palace erected by Count Boni, and at the Château de Marais, a splendid property which they possess not far from Paris. The Faubourg St. Germain, not approving of divorces, has turned the cold shoulder upon them, which fact does not trouble them much. They are happy in themselves, and the Duchess must often congratulate herself on her moral courage, of which she gave proof when she decided to seek her freedom from an ill-assorted union which had brought to her nothing but unhappiness and sorrow. As for M. de Castellane, he vegetates in an obscurity which must be doubly painful to him when he remembers the luxury in which he spent a few short years, and which he lost through his own vanity and stupidity.
CHAPTER XXVII
The Dreyfus Affair
When Paris at first began talking about the high treason of Captain Dreyfus, people did not take much notice; it seemed to be but one of many such. The public was more or less used to events of the kind, and did not give them more than a passing thought. I happened, however, to know some friends of the Dreyfus family, and, calling on one of them, I was not very much surprised to hear him declare that the Captain was innocent—the victim of an intrigue. Such language was perfectly natural on the part of relatives of the accused man, but these denials were also accompanied by several details which gave them more importance than, under different conditions, would have been legitimate.