Thus M. Ferry was truly on a certain day the _Deus ex machinâ_. His advance to a position so powerful can only be explained by comparing him to the winner of an obstacle race. Nine years ago, any politician contemplating the possibility of Gambetta’s death, would have named at least six Republicans now living as more likely than M. Ferry to succeed him as leader of the party. He would have named Jules Simon, Léon Say, William Waddington, Charles de Freycinet, Challemel-Lacour, or Eugène Clémenceau; and supposing all these runners had started with M. Ferry over a flat course, it may be questioned, to keep up the racing metaphor, whether Ferry would have been so much as placed. But in an obstacle race, one man comes to grief at the “hanging-tub,” one at the crawling, another at the water-jump, and the winner is often the man who, having scrambled through every thing in a haphazard fashion, comes in alone—all the others having dropped off. No man ever spoilt a fine chance so sadly as Jules Simon—the first to “drop off”—and this all for want of a little spirit at the right moment. The author of many learned and entertaining works on political economy, a bright scholar, charming _causeur_, persuasive debater, a man of handsome face and lordly bearing, infinitely respectable in his private life, full of diplomatic tact and with a genuine aptitude for administration—M. Simon had all the qualifications of a party-leader. Under the Empire he was an Orleanist, but he let himself be converted to Republicanism by M. Thiers after the war, and he was the only Minister whom Thiers trusted to the extent of never meddling with the business of his department. He was Minister of Public Instruction and Worship for more than two years, and acquitted himself of his functions in a manner to please both Catholics and Freethinkers, cardinals and vivisecting professors. He was perhaps a little too unctuous in his phrases; he had a suspicious facility for weeping, and he scattered compliments and promises about him, as a beadle sprinkles holy water in a May-day procession. But these are the little arts of diplomacy: M. Simon could be quite firm in dismissing a Bonapartist professor, even while shedding tears over the poor man’s appeal to be suffered to earn his bread in peace; and when he was sent as High Commissioner of the Government to visit the pontoons and prisons in which Coummunists were confined, all his tender pity for political offenders in general (he recognised many of his quondam electors in bonds) did not prevent him from investigating each individual case with unemotional acumen. He had power to liberate whom he pleased, but he used it sparingly. At Brest he was much pained by the rudeness of a prisoner to whom he had said kindly: “Why are you here, my friend?” “For having too much studied your books,“ was the sniggering answer.[20] He had another disagreeable shock at the prison of Versailles, where Louise Michel called him ”_Vieux farceur._”