n the legend of Boulanger--and this tremendous vote of January
27 looked very much like it--it mattered little what the real value of
the man might be, the legend would make him master of France. That would
mean for the Third Republic the fate of the First Republic and of the
Second, and for the men who had identified it with their own fanaticism
and folly, and greed, and incapacity, a long farewell to all their
greatness!

As for the eventual results, what mattered these to them?

The Universal Exposition might collapse, or it might be opened by
General Boulanger on his black horse, instead of President Carnot in his
landau. What did that signify? But it signified much that the men who
had invented President Carnot were not likely to make part of the
_cortege_ of General Boulanger.

It is no exaggeration to say that from January 27, 1889, the Government
of the Third French Republic was openly and visibly given up by night
and by day to one great purpose alone--and that purpose was, not to
glorify the 'principles of 1789,' not to celebrate the Republic--the
grand statue of the Triumph of the Republic, destined to be set up with
great pomp in the sight of the assembled human race, was actually left
to be cast in plaster of Paris, no functionary caring to waste a sou on
putting it into perennial bronze or enduring marble--no! the great
dominant, unconcealed purpose of all the leaders of the Republic was, in
some way--no matter how, by hook or by crook--to conjure that spectre
of the First Consulate, riding about, awful and imminent, on the black
horse of General Boulanger!

Perhaps the high-water mark of this quite unparalleled and most
instructive panic was the appearance, towards the end of the last
parliamentary session, of M. Jules Ferry, the author of the odious
'Article 7,' the man who after hesitating--to his credit be it
said--originally to propose that ministers of religion should be
absolutely forbidden to teach the children of France in her public
schools, at last succumbed to the vehemence of Paul Bert, the Condorcet
of this modern persecution, and became the acknowledged leader of the
war against Liberty and Religion--in the tribune of the Deputies, there
to urge, and indeed to implore, the Conservative members to make peace
with the persecutors, and save them from the peril of Boulanger!

The scene of that day in the Chamber of Deputies was not one to be
forgotten. The aspect and the accents of the Repu