About Paris

by Richard Harding Davis

"The President of France," he said, "must be a man who can look well on a horse;" and the crowd of old women in white caps, and boy soldiers with their hands on their baggy red breeches, from the barracks across the square, nodded their heads approvingly. It was a most interesting sight when compared with the anxious, howling mob that surrounds the building in which a Presidential convention is being held at home.

It is also interesting to remember that a special telephone wire was placed in the Chamber at Versailles in order that the news of the election might be communicated to the newspaper offices in Paris, and that this piece of enterprise was considered so remarkable that it was commented upon by the entire newspaper press of that city. In Chicago, at the time of the last Presidential convention, when a nomination merely and not an election was taking place, the interest of the people justified the Western Union Telegraph Company in sending out fifteen million words from the building during the three days of the convention. Wires ran from it directly to the offices of all the principal newspapers from San Francisco to Boston, and in Chicago itself there were two hundred extra operators, and relays of horsemen galloping continually with "copy" from the convention to the main offices of the different telegraph companies.

This merely shows a difference of temperament: the American likes to know what has happened while it is hot, and to know all that has happened. The European and the Parisian, on this occasion at least, was content to wait at a café in ease and comfort until he was told the result. He did not feel that he could change that result in any way by going out to Versailles in the hot sun and cheering his candidate from the outside of an iron fence.

At the gate of the Place d'Armes there was a crowd of fifty people, watched by a few hundred more from under the shade of the trees and the awnings of the restaurants around the square. The dust rose in little eddies, and swept across the square in yellow clouds, and the people turned their backs to it and shrugged their shoulders and waited patiently. Inside of the Court of Honor a single line of lancers stood at their horses' heads, their brass helmets flashing like the signals of a dozen heliographs. Officers with cigarettes and heavily braided sleeves strolled up and down, and took themselves much more seriously than they did the matter in hand. A dozen white-waistcoated and high-hatted Deputies standing outside of the Chamber suggested nothing more momentous or national than a meeting of a Presbyterian General Assembly. Bicyclers of both sexes swung themselves from their machines and peered curiously through the iron fence, and, seeing nothing more interesting than the fluttering pennants of the lancers, mounted their wheels again and disappeared in the clouds of dust.

In the meanwhile Casimir-Perier has been elected on the first ballot, which was taken without incident, save when one Deputy refused to announce his vote as the roll was called until he was addressed as "citizen," and not as "monsieur." This silly person was finally humored, and the result was declared, and Casimir-Perier left the hall to put on a dress-suit in order that he might receive the congratulations of his friends. As the first act of the new President, this must not be considered as significant of the particular man who did it, but as illustrating the point of view of his countrymen, who do not see that if the highest office in the country cannot lend sufficient dignity to the man who holds it, a dress-suit or his appearance on horseback is hardly able to do so. The congratulations last a long time, and are given so heartily and with such eloquence that the new President weeps while he grasps the hand of his late confrères, and says to each, "You must help me; I need you all." Neither is the fact that the President wept on this occasion significant of anything but that he was laboring under much excitement, and that the temperament of the French is one easily moved. People who cannot see why a strong man should weep merely because he has become a President must remember that Casimir-Perier wears the cross of the Legion of Honor for bravery in action on the field of battle.

The congratulations come to an end at last, and the new President leaves the palace, and takes his place in the open carriage that has been waiting his pleasure these last two hours. There is a great crowd around the gate now, all Versailles having turned out to cheer him, and he can hear them crying "Vive le Président!" from far across the length of the Court of Honor.

M. Dupuy, his late rival at the polls, seats himself beside him on his left, and two officers in uniform face him from the front. Before his carriage are two open lines of cavalry, proudly conscious in their steel breastplates and with their carbines on the hip that they are to convoy the new President to Paris; and behind him, in close order, are the lancers, with their flashing brass helmets, and their pennants fluttering in the wind. The horses start forward with a sharp clatter of hoofs on the broad stones of the square, the Deputies raise their high hats, and with a jangling of steel chains and swords, and with the pennants snapping in the breeze like tiny whips, the new President starts on his triumphal ride into Paris. The colossal statues of France's great men, from Charlemagne to Richelieu, look down upon him curiously as he whirls between them to the iron gateway and disappears in the alley of mounted men and cheering civilians. He is out of it in a moment, and has galloped on in a whirling cloud of yellow dust towards the city lying seven miles away, where, six months later, by his unexpected resignation, he is to create a consternation as intense as that which preceded his election.

It would be interesting to know of what Casimir-Perier thought as he rode through the empty streets in the cool of the summer evening, startling the villagers at their dinners, and bringing them on a run to the doors by the ringing jangle of his mounted men and the echoing hoofs. Perhaps he thought of the anarchists who might attempt his life, or of those who succeeded with the man whose place he had taken, or, what is more likely, he gave himself up to the moment, and said to himself, as each new face was framed by a window or peered through a doorway: "Yes, it is the new President of France, Casimir-Perier; not only of France, but of all her colonies. By to-night they will know in Siam, in Tunis, in Algiers, and in the swamps of Dahomey that there is a new step on the floor, and governors of provinces, and native rulers of barbarous states, and sous-préfets, and pretenders to the throne of France, will consider anxiously what the change means to them, and will be measuring their fortunes with mine."