As a matter of fact, I was quite content. I was getting what I wanted, the drawings. I did not want political platitudes, and before election day I had formed the opinion that political platitudes were the General's stock-in-trade. He had not a single political idea. What he always said was what his backers wanted him to say. He was "the man-on-horseback", and that was enough. France had been looking a long time for the man-on-horseback. He would ride in and conquer the internal foes of France; they were numerous enough and to spare. He would unite the country, bring it stability, cleanse the Augean {269} stables, win back Alsace-Lorraine, humble the Germans who had humiliated them, who had menaced them ever since 1870-1871. He would be a MAN, this man-on-horseback. And Boulanger had been riding a white horse these three years. Sometimes he rode a black horse. At one end of the room, behind the chair where he sat at his writing table, was a large painting, a very large one, of General Boulanger on his horse. The room in which we sat was large, too. It had been a studio and was now a study. A great fireplace occupied one end of it, and the General on horseback occupied the other end. The general himself sat below the portrait, at his writing table, while Raven-Hill drew and I smoked. He could not have better suited the artist's purpose. He was not quite like the photographs, engravings, paintings, "reproductions" of him that one had seen, and that filled France. His hair was not clear black, and brushed nattily; it was streaked with grey, and worn shoe-brush fashion. His beard was tawny, touched with grey. His face was a stronger one, his head a better one, than the conventional portraits prepared you for. He was between fifty-one and fifty-two at that time. A handsome man, but disappointing. He did n't impress one as being a man of authority, of decisions. What his mouth was like, and what his chin, I do not know. His beard concealed them. But I did not get from him the impression of strength. And yet he was the most popular man in France. And that day the eyes not only of France, but of Europe, were watching him. {270} His face was deeply lined; his eyes were grey; he was in fatigue dress. May I whisper in your ear? I do not believe that he was pressed with work; I believe that he was posing for us.