The 30th June 1913. Day of Rochefort’s funeral. All Paris lining the boulevards and streets as the cortège, half-a-mile long, passes by. A crowd of all kinds and conditions of Parisians. Here is M. Jaurès, “the decayed turnip.” There is M. Clemenceau, “the loathsome leper.” Over there, M. Briand, “the moulting vulture.” And their heads are uncovered; there is not the faintest resentment in their minds as the remains of lurid, yet not always unkind, old Rochefort are borne away round the corner under a magnificent purple pall. Round the corner and up the steep hill to the vast, rambling Montmartre Cemetery. Tombs, shadows, silence, mystery within the cemetery walls; but, beyond them, the hectic arms of the Moulin Rouge, and the lurid lights of night restaurants. In this mixed atmosphere Henri Rochefort has an appropriate resting-place. [6] He died on 27th June 1913. [7] See page 196. [8] 19th January 1905. XIV ROYAL VISITS TO PARIS Whenever France is shaken by a scandal, convulsed by a crisis, the voice of the undiscerning prophet is to be heard proclaiming the doom of the Republic. The Affair of the Decorations in President Grévy’s time, the Panama Affair, the Dreyfus Affair, the Steinheil Affair, yesterday’s Rochette-Caillaux-Calmette Affair; each of these delirious dramas excited the assertion that the French people, disgusted and indignant at so much political corruption, were ready and eager for the restoration of the old régime. True, these five scandals—and many other smaller ones—shocked, saddened, humiliated the French nation. But at no time have they caused the average Frenchman—most intelligent and reasonable of beings—to lose faith in the Republic. Invariably he has maintained that it is not the Republic that is at fault, but the Republicans behind her; emphatically, he has insisted that the remedy lies, not in the overthrow, but in the _reform_, of the Republic—in the honest enforcement of the principles and doctrines of the Rights of Man. No Kings, no Emperors for Twentieth-Century France! Imagine, if you can do it, Philippe, Duke of Orleans, the handsomest, the most brilliant, the most irresistible of Pretenders. Suppose Prince Victor Napoleon endowed with some of the military and administrative genius of the Petit Caporal, instead of having married and settled down in comfortable, bourgeois little Belgium. Picture a modern General Boulanger on a new black charger—France would, nevertheless, remain true to the Republican régime. “Ah non, mon vieux, pas de ça,” one can hear the average Frenchman say to the would-be monarch. “We have had you before. We know better than to try you again. Bonsoir.”