[13] For this information we are indebted to Mr. Overall, the courteous Librarian of the Guildhall Library.
The history of the Republic up to this time has been such a course of surprises, that any forecast as to the future must be made with a large reckoning for accidents; but this much may be said, that the Republic owes its present appearance of stability to the want of commanding talents among her ruling men. The outlook could not have been so peaceful had Gambetta been alive. Gambetta had a vast ambition, and a leonine, roaring energy, which provoked furious opposition. The men who have parted his influence among them may be as ambitious as he was; but they are so for personal objects, and as there is nothing great in their characters or their policy, nothing imperious in their manner, nothing stirring or seducing in their eloquence, they are less feared than the man who wished to be a master, and said so. Nobody could denounce M. Jules Ferry as aspiring to become a dictator; yet during the past year he has held more effective power than was ever wielded by Gambetta. He is a faithful party-servant who has been allowed to exercise authority, because his employers have felt that they could dismiss him at a moment’s notice. We bear more from a humble, useful domestic, than from a self-asserting master. Louis XIV., who broke the tyranny of Mazarin, and could not brook the arrogance of Fouquet, submitted to the management of the quiet, astute Colbert.
In his novel “Numa Roumestan,” written while Gambetta was alive, Alphonse Daudet showed “the North being conquered by the South,” that is, the blustering, bragging, blarneying _blagueurs_ of Provence and Gascony enthralling the democracy with their charlatanism, and seizing upon all the public offices. Sardou had worked out the same idea in “Rabagas;” but it must be noticed that the holders of the four most important posts in France at this moment—the four Presidents, of the Republic, of the Senate, of the Chamber of Deputies, and of the Cabinet—are conspicuously exempt from the usual attributes of demagogues. They are cold-headed men, plain of speech, dry in manner; they are not Southerners, and, in fact, they are by no means representative of the French as a nation.