ored to address him, pointing to a bust of M. Thiers;
but she was unable to make herself understood; her powers of speech
had failed her.

Two rules M. Thiers never departed from: one was, as he said himself,
"to defend ferociously the public purse," the other, never to give
house-room to any but first-rate objects of art. Some of his pictures
were very dear to him. Several of his bronzes, which were pillaged by
the Commune and never recovered, were mourned by him as if they had
been his friends. He had been wont to call them "the school-masters
of his soul."

CHAPTER XIX.

THREE FRENCH PRESIDENT'S.

Marshal MacMahon, the Duke of Magenta, was of Irish descent, his
ancestors having followed James II. into exile, and distinguished
themselves at the Battle of the Boyne. Their descendant, Patrice
(or Patrick), the subject of this sketch, was the sixteenth of
seventeen children.

He was born when French glory was at its height, under the First
Empire, in the summer of 1806. When he was seventeen he was sent to
the military school at Saint-Cyr. There his Irish dash and talent
soon won him renown. In Algeria he acquired fame and fortune and
the Cross of the Legion of Honor. In 1830 he went to the siege
of Antwerp, at the time when the French insisted on promoting a
revolution in Belgium, and the moment that enterprise was over,
he retired to Algeria. At twenty-five he was a captain and had
distinguished himself at the siege of Constantine, fighting side
by side with the Duc de Nemours and that other French officer of
Irish descent, Marshal Niel. At forty-four he was a general of
division, and had seen twenty-seven years of service. The Arabs
called him the Invulnerable.

He went to the Crimean War, and there led the attack on the Malakoff,
holding his post until the place was won. Devoted to his profession,
he was diffident in society. He was named a senator by Napoleon
III. after his return from the Crimea, but declined to take his
seat, refusing at the same time some other proffered honors. He
was sent back to Algeria at his own request, and stayed there,
fighting the Arabs, for five years. Then, returning to Paris, he
took his seat in the Senate, where he opposed some of the arbitrary
decrees of the emperor.[1]

[Footnote 1: Temple Bar, "Courts of the three Presidents, Thiers,
MacMahon, and Grevy," 1884.]

In the Italian War in 1859 he fought with distinguished bravery,
and on the battlefield of Magenta w