Professor Skelton's life of Laurier does not take us much behind the
scenes. It is in the main a record of political events, with
comments upon Laurier's relations to them. Laurier's letters, mostly
to unnamed correspondents, are of slight interest, but to this there
are a few notable exceptions. There are letters between Laurier,
Tarte and Chapleau of the greatest political value. They make clear
to a demonstration, what shrewd political observers of that day
surmised, that there was a definite political understanding between
these three men. This explains the composition of the Quebec
delegation in the Laurier government. Apart from Laurier there was
in it no representative of French Catholic Liberalism, unless the
purely nominal honor of minister without portfolio given to C. A.
Geoffrion is to be taken as giving this representation. C. A. did
not put the honor very high. "I am," he said, "the mat before the
door." Tarte, a Quebecker and a Bleu, became Montreal's
representative at Ottawa. Disappointment among the Liberals led
first to rage and then to rage plus fear as Tarte with the magic
wand of the patronage and power of the public works department,
began to make over the party organization in the province. Open
rebellion under Francois Langelier broke out in December: "A
coalition with Chapleau," Langelier informed the public, "is under
way." But the rebellion died away. The Laurier influence was too
strong. Langelier was quite right in his statement. The coalition
movement at that time was far advanced. The letter from Chapleau to
Laurier, bearing date February 21, 1897, quoted by Professor
Skelton, was that of one political intimate to another. Take this
paragraph as an illustration: "The Castors in the battle of June
23rd lost their head and their tail; their teeth and claws are worn
down; even breath is failing for their cries and their movements and
I hope that before the date of the Queen's jubilee we shall be able
to say that this race of rodents is extinct and figures only in
catalogues of extinct species." The reference to the coming
extinction of the Castors had relation to the then pending
provincial elections as to which he made certain references to
political strokes which "I am preparing." Associated with this
Laurier-Tarte-Chapleau triumvirate was a fourth, C. A. Dansereau,
nominally postmaster of Montreal, actually the most restless
political intriguer in the province of Quebec. Dansereau had