Although he was not an orator, he could and did put a case plainly, strongly, indeed with very great strength. He was cool when it paid to be cool, vigorous when vigour was required; he was seldom impassioned. When he was angriest he was least stirred. Internally he might rage, as when under general attack, when the assailants were, in a double sense, offensive, but outwardly he would be calm and pale. You would know when he felt the fiercest stress, not by his voice nor by his actions, but by his pallor. It was only in the last months of his life that he gave his temper free rein, let himself go, fiercely lashed his opponents, hitherto his partisans. There was something of revenge in this, of resentful wrath long pent up. Who shall say it was not justified, or that it was unnatural? What he would have been as an administrator we have no means of knowing. What he would {259} have been as the leader of an Irish parliament we may at least imagine. He had always been in Opposition. What he would have been in power we may guess but never know. But his lot would not have been enviable. It was never enviable. His death, in 1891, was a happy release. {260} CHAPTER XVII "LE BRAV' GÉNÉRAL" Who _was_ Boulanger? At the Cheshire Cheese, a year before the war, a young Fleet Streeter asked the question. He had heard some of us spinning yarns. But the name of Boulanger meant nothing to him. The world was created in the year he came to Fleet Street, say in 1908. There are times when I feel it necessary to apologise for writing of the days of antiquity. There will certainly be some one to exclaim, when he sees the heading of this chapter, "Why drag Boulanger into _London Days_?" One answer would be: Because I knew Boulanger in London. "Was he ever here? How strange we should have forgotten it!" Not in the least strange. Boulanger was forgotten soon after he arrived. He arrived at the Hotel Bristol, behind Burlington House, and was cheered by a few waiters and chambermaids. It was a murky afternoon in the summer of '89,--dark, damp, and dreary. I saw him alight from his carriage. Some of the papers next day told of "the enthusiastic {261} greeting" he had received. Thus history is made. A few waiters, a porter or two, half a dozen chambermaids, and, of course, a manager. These were the enthusiasts. It was a little disappointing to those who love "scenes", or have to describe them. Nothing happened. Of course, it was not disappointing to realise that one was a prophet. I had prophesied a scene like this, months before, when quite another kind of scene was being played in Paris, when Boulanger had the ball at his feet, or the game in his hands, if you prefer a choice of metaphors. He did n't play. There was merely an escape of gas from the balloon. The gas was not inflammable.