of 1870 he had become sufficiently well known
to be nominated mayor of the 18th arrondissement of Paris
(Montmartre)--an unruly district over which it was a difficult task to
preside. On the 8th of February 1871 he was elected as a Radical to the
National Assembly for the department of the Seine, and voted against the
peace preliminaries. The execution, or rather murder, of Generals
Lecomte and Clement Thomas by the communists on 18th March, which he
vainly tried to prevent, brought him into collision with the central
committee sitting at the hotel de ville, and they ordered his arrest,
but he escaped; he was accused, however, by various witnesses, at the
subsequent trial of the murderers (November 29th), of not having
intervened when he might have done, and though he was cleared of this
charge it led to a duel, for his share in which he was prosecuted and
sentenced to a fine and a fortnight's imprisonment.

Meanwhile, on the 20th of March 1871, he had introduced in the National
Assembly at Versailles, on behalf of his Radical colleagues, the bill
establishing a Paris municipal council of eighty members; but he was not
returned himself at the elections of the 26th of March. He tried with
the other Paris mayors to mediate between Versailles and the hotel de
ville, but failed, and accordingly resigned his mayoralty and his seat
in the Assembly, and temporarily gave up politics; but he was elected to
the Paris municipal council on the 23rd of July 1871 for the
Clignancourt _quartier_, and retained his seat till 1876, passing
through the offices of secretary and vice-president, and becoming
president in 1875. In 1876 he stood again for the Chamber of Deputies,
and was elected for the 18th arrondissement. He joined the Extreme Left,
and his energy and mordant eloquence speedily made him the leader of the
Radical section. In 1877, after the _Seize Mai_ (see FRANCE: _History_),
he was one of the republican majority who denounced the Broglie
ministry, and he took a leading part in resisting the anti-republican
policy of which the _Seize Mai_ incident was a symptom, his demand in
1879 for the indictment of the Broglie ministry bringing him into
particular prominence. In 1880 he started his newspaper, _La Justice_,
which became the principal organ of Parisian Radicalism; and from this
time onwards throughout M. Grevy's presidency his reputation as a
political critic, and as a destroyer of ministries who yet would not
take office