In private conversation Clemenceau is the most delightful yet unartificial talker I ever had the pleasure of listening to. Others who possess great gifts in this direction are apt to work up their effects so that you can hear, as it were, the clank of the machinery as their pyrotechnic monologues appeal to your sense of cleverness while they balk your desire for spontaneity. There is none of this with Clemenceau. He takes his fair share in any discussion and leaves nothing unsaid which, from his point of view, can elucidate or brighten up the friendly discussion. Never was any man less of a brilliant bore. Another quality he possesses, which proved exceedingly useful to him at more than one stage of his adventurous career. Clemenceau was, and possibly is even to-day, at the age of seventy-seven, the most dangerous duellist in France. A left-handed swordsman and a perfect pistol-shot, no one who valued the integrity of his carcase was disposed to encounter with either rapier or pistol the leader of the extreme Left. Even the reactionary fire-eater, Paul de Cassagnac, who himself had killed three men, shrank from meeting his quietus from Clemenceau. His power of work also is extraordinary. In this he was only equalled by Jaurès. Even an English barrister of exceptional physique, striving to make his mark or endeavouring to keep the place already won, could scarcely surpass the inexhaustible energy and endurance of either of these great Frenchmen. It is doubtful whether the generation of younger men keep abreast with the pace set by their elders in this respect. Both Jaurès and Vaillant complained to me more than once that, to use an English expression, the younger deputies did not "last over the course," and thus frequently lost in the Committees what they had gained in the set debates. Certainly, few of the French politicians of to-day, at half Clemenceau's age, would care to attempt to do the work which he is doing now, day after day, with all the anxiety and responsibility that now rest upon his shoulders.