short time ago did the
French government cause his body to be placed within the great
Pantheon, which contains memorials of the heroes and heroines of
France. But, though we may not fairly judge of his political motives,
we can readily reconstruct a picture of him as a man, and in doing so
recall his one romance, which many will remember after they have
forgotten his oratorical triumphs and his statecraft.

Leon Gambetta was the true type of the southern Frenchman--what his
countrymen call a meridional. The Frenchman of the south is different
from the Frenchman of the north, for the latter has in his veins a
touch of the viking blood, so that he is very apt to be fair-haired and
blue-eyed, temperate in speech, and self-controlled. He is different,
again, from the Frenchman of central France, who is almost purely
Celtic. The meridional has a marked vein of the Italian in him, derived
from the conquerors of ancient Gaul. He is impulsive, ardent, fiery in
speech, hot-tempered, and vivacious to an extraordinary degree.

Gambetta, who was born at Cahors, was French only on his mother's side,
since his father was of Italian birth. It is said also that somewhere
in his ancestry there was a touch of the Oriental. At any rate, he was
one of the most southern of the sons of southern France, and he showed
the precocious maturity which belongs to a certain type of Italian. At
twenty-one he had already been admitted to the French bar, and had
drifted to Paris, where his audacity, his pushing nature, and his
red-hot un-restraint of speech gave him a certain notoriety from the
very first.

It was toward the end of the reign of Napoleon III. that Gambetta saw
his opportunity. The emperor, weakened by disease and yielding to a
sort of feeble idealism, gave to France a greater freedom of speech
than it had enjoyed while he was more virile. This relaxation of
control merely gave to his opponents more courage to attack him and his
empire. Demagogues harangued the crowds in words which would once have
led to their imprisonment. In the National Assembly the opposition did
all within its power to hamper and defeat the policy of the government.

In short, republicanism began to rise in an ominous and threatening
way; and at the head of republicanism in Paris stood forth Gambetta,
with his impassioned eloquence, his stinging phrases, and his youthful
boldness. He became the idol of that part of Paris known as Belleville,
where artisans and