hey want to make him out the heir of a
dynasty--Carnot III.!'

'That is not a very republican way of looking at a President,' I
observed.

'Possibly not, but it is a very French way of looking at one! We should
be the most monarchical people in Europe if we were not the most
anarchical. Give a public man a legend and a grandfather, and he can go
a long way with us. I don't know that the grandfather will do without
the legend, even when, as in this case, the grandfather has a legend of
his own.'

'Is that legend of grandfather Carnot very strong in this region?' I
asked.

'Neither in this region nor anywhere else,' he replied. 'I think it is
very foolish of the managers in Paris to provoke comparisons by sending
a political bagman to Germany to bring back the ashes of Papa Victory,
as the Prince de Joinville brought back the dead Emperor from St.
Helena. Carnot I., after all, was simply a good war minister, who loomed
into greatness only in comparison with the rogue Pache and the
phenomenal booby Bouchotte who preceded him. He was certainly no better
than his successor Petiet, and it was Petiet, not he, who finally
"organised victory" by sending Moreau to the Rhine, and Bonaparte to
Italy. Napoleon, who knew them both, made Petiet governor of Lombardy,
and chose him, not Carnot, to organise the great camp at Boulogne. When
Petiet died, not long after Austerlitz, Napoleon gave him a much grander
funeral in the Pantheon than can be got up now for the grandfather of
Carnot. Most people have forgotten Petiet, and it is a blunder to remind
them of him. But this is a government of blunderers. See what trouble
the Ferrys and the Freycinets are taking to unmake the legend
Clemenceau made for Boulanger! Do what they may, that black horse is
worth more to Boulanger to-day than Carnot's grandfather ever will be to
Carnot III.'

'But has Carnot III. no value of his own? Has he not shown more firmness
than people expected of him when this Boulangist business began?'

'Carnot III. is simply the firm-name of Ferry and De Freycinet. I am not
fond of the scurrilities of Rochefort, as you know, but he sometimes
hits the nail on the head very hard, as he did when, on the day after
that comedy of the presidential election, he said "the fact that a man,
if you ask him to dinner, will not put your spoons into his pocket is
not a sufficient reason for making him president of a republic." Only,'
he added reflectively, 'that was not quit