public treasury, and offered this
open insult to the tribunals of the city of Amiens, has since then been
made a senator of the Republic, with the help and concurrence of M.
Dauphin, then First President of our Courts, whose plain official duty
it was to revoke his commission as mayor as soon as this letter was
published! With such men as this in the French Senate do you wonder the
country laughs at senatorial courts of justice? I have no great opinion
of General Boulanger, though I have as good an opinion of him as of M.
Clemenceau, who invented him. But really is it not grotesque to see such
cotton-velvet senators as this mayor of Amiens going about to decide
questions of fidelity to public duty? Take my word for it' he continued,
'it is the direct personal knowledge which the people have of just such
personages as the mayor of Amiens all over France, which makes
two-thirds of the popular strength of General Boulanger. If the Senate
and the Government succeed in putting about the impression that General
Boulanger is no better than they are, they will no doubt weaken him with
the people, but they will not strengthen themselves. This Third Republic
is dying, not of any passion for the monarchy, not even of the
Imperialist legend, which is very strong in the country--more because
France was so prosperous under the third Napoleon than because France
dominated Europe under the first Napoleon: it is dying of popular
contempt. It is dying of the Goblets, the Petits, the Dauphins. They are
to be found all over France--under different names--yes--but always the
same: shallow, vain, vulgar sycophants of universal suffrage while they
are out of place, bullies and traders when they are in power. And then!'
he exclaimed after a pause, 'what most exasperates me is that they are
such a pack of wordmongers, for ever ranting about things which may have
intoxicated our grandfathers in 1792--they don't seem to me to have
invented gunpowder, our grandfathers!--but which simply make sensible
men sick to-day.

'Wait a moment! Let me complete the picture of our model Picard
Republican senator for you. The Comte de Chassepot told you the story,
did he not, of the Calvary in the cemetery of the Madeleine? Yes. But he
did not show you the correspondence about it between the bishop and this
charlatan of twopenny Atheism? No? Well it is a tit-bit, and I give it
to you! Petit sent his order to the keeper of the cemetery of the
Madeleine in Novemb