I recalled this story to Mr. Sumner years afterwards in New York, and he assured me not only that it was literally correct, but that he had been consulted himself about it by M. Marrast at the time. This particular device could not now be used as effectively. But, with the telegraph wires and the telephones in its control, any government which may get itself installed to-morrow in Paris would certainly have tremendous odds in its favour, from one end of France to the other. The immense increase of the French public debt under the republican administration since 1877 has correspondingly increased, all over France, the number of people known as _petits rentiers_, who, having invested their savings, in part or wholly, in the public securities, will be as quick to acquiesce in any revolution which they believe to have been successful at Paris, as they are slow to promote any revolution, no matter how desirable otherwise a change in the government may seem to them to be. So long as it is not shaken out of the public offices at Paris, the government of the Republic may probably count upon this vast body of quiet people, as confidently as the Empire counted upon it twenty years ago, or as the monarchy or the dictatorship might count upon it to-morrow, were the king or the dictator acclaimed in the capital. M. Fleury cites one of General Boulanger's most active supporters, M. Mermieix, as saying to him during the election in 1888, 'with a few millions of francs, the liberty of the press and of public billsticking, and three thousand rowdies, I can change the government of this country in less than a year.' The remark is slightly cynical. But the extreme anxiety of the government of the Republic to get General Boulanger either into a prison or out of Paris certainly goes far to justify the boast of M. Mermeix. 'I told General Boulanger at Doullens,' said M. Fleury, after going thither in company with him from Amiens, 'that he was sure of his election. My reason was that while I saw little real enthusiasm for him at Amiens, none at all indeed among the middle classes, and no open display of any on the part of the workmen, I found the peasants for him almost to a man. They crowded about his railway carriage. They insisted on shaking hands with him, many of them kissed his hand (that ancient form of homage lingering still in their traditions), they fired off guns, and, above all, the women held up their children to be kissed by him. This settled the question for me. When I saw him kissing the little girls, I knew that he had captured the mammas, and the mammas govern the rural regions of Picardy.