power which it abuses, has just been signally humiliated by the
present Government and the dominant majority.

In the second district of Bergerac in the Dordogne, the Monarchist
candidate for the Chamber, M. Thirion Montauban, received 6,708 votes,
against 6,439 given to his Republican competitor. I took a special
interest in this election, because M. Thirion-Montauban is the present
proprietor of the house of Michel de Montaigne, which came into his
possession through his marriage with the daughter of M. Magne, the
eminent Finance Minister of Napoleon III. I made a visit there late in
the summer, and found him busy with his canvass, on lines of respect for
personal liberty and the right of men to think their own thoughts as to
life and death, which would have commanded the cordial sympathy of the
great Gascon sceptic. The tower, the study, the bedroom of Montaigne are
preserved by him with religious care. The inscriptions on the walls
which John Sterling copied so lovingly half a century ago are there
still, and if indeed there be a life of faith as Tennyson says, 'in
honest doubt,' the Pyrrhonist seigneur who thought before Pascal that
the true philosophy was to laugh at philosophy, would not find himself a
stranger in his old haunt to-day because its lower hall has been
consecrated as a chapel.

The opponents of M. Thirion-Montauban behaved throughout the contest
with extraordinary violence, and on one occasion put him into serious
personal peril. However, he was elected. When the Chamber met in
November his election was contested. M. Leon Say took an active part in
maintaining the validity of the returns which gave the seat to M.
Thirion-Montauban, and the evidence in the case was overwhelmingly in
his favour. Nevertheless after the Report of the Committee was made, the
majority of the Chamber coolly invalidated the choice of the electors,
and seated the candidate who had not been elected. It was an open secret
that this was done quite as much to punish M. Leon Say as to exclude M.
Thirion-Montauban.

Intolerant as the 'true Republicans' are towards their political
opponents, they are still more intolerant towards those 'false
Republicans' who hesitate at framing the policy of a French Republic in
the nineteenth century upon the principles which led to the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes. Were Socrates alive and a Frenchman, he would
stand no chance for a government chair of philosophy in a competition
with th