“N’en Parlons Plus,” reiterated Paris, when the Amnesty Bill permitted the exiles to return to their country. Little more was heard of Jules Guérin. France, having been restored to order and sanity, and having made what reparation she could to Major Dreyfus, would have no more of Anti-Semitism; and on his return from exile, the rebel of Fort Chabrol retired into the obscurity of a damp, ugly little house in the valley of the Seine. He still wore his sombrero; but his spirit was broken, and he pottered about in his garden and smoked cigarettes by the side of an evil-smelling stove. Then, a year ago, came the devastating floods. After saving his own scanty furniture, Jules Guérin went to the assistance of his neighbours. He was himself again, dashing hither and thither, issuing orders, directing operations. Many valiant feats he performed. He was rough, but he was kind. It was through standing waist-deep in the cold, murky water—whilst helping his neighbours—that he contracted pneumonia. “The death, at the age of forty-nine, is announced of M. Jules Guérin: who had his hour of notoriety.” So—and no more—said the _Figaro_. XIII DEATH OF HENRI ROCHEFORT[6] It is with mixed emotions that I record my own personal recollections of the late Henri Rochefort. They go back fourteen years, to the lurid, delirious summer of 1899, when Jules Guérin, the leader of the Anti-Semites, evaded arrest by shutting himself up in Fort Chabrol; when Dreyfus, bent, shattered, almost voiceless, was enduring the anguish of a second court-martial; when the boulevards were being swept of tumultuous manifestants every night by the Republican Guard. Rochefort was living in a little villa at the entrance to the Bois de Boulogne: a retreat for a sage, a poet, a dreamer; the very last abode, one would have thought, for the most thunderous figure in French public life. By rights, Rochefort the Ferocious should have been living in a vast boulevard apartment overlooking the nightly Anti-Dreyfusard uproar. But there he was (when first I met him) in that innocent maisonnette—in dressing-gown and slippers, amidst flowers, pictures and frail china—actually playing with a fluffy toy lamb, of the kind hawked about for two francs on the terraces of the Paris cafés. It was only his snowy white hair, brushed upwards, that made him picturesque. Pale, steely blue eyes, that lit up cruelly, evilly at times; a face seamed, sallow and horse-like in shape; a harsh, guttural voice; large, yellowish hands, with long, pointed finger-nails.