“C’est cette sensation du danger présent que j’aurais voulu donner dans _La Barricade_ sûr, si j’avais pu y réussir, d’avoir servi utilement ma classe, et par conséquent mon pays.” But according to M. Pataud, the notorious ex-Secretary of the Syndicate of Electricians, M. Bourget carried away with him a totally false impression of the men and places he professes so closely, and also so impartially, to have studied. A word about M. Pataud. It was shortly after he had ordered the Electricians’ strike that plunged Paris almost into darkness for two hours,[2] and at the zenith of his fame, that the “Roi de la Lumière” attended a performance of _La Barricade_ at the Vaudeville Theatre. It had been reported that he had served M. Bourget as a model for the character of Thubeuf, the professional agitator in the play. This, M. Bourget emphatically denied. “Let me see for myself,” said M. Pataud. And he requested M. Bourget to send him a ticket of admission to the theatre, and humorously offered to return the compliment by placing a seat in the Bourse du Travail at the dramatist’s disposal. Well, M. Bourget granted the request: but ignored the invitation to the Labour Exchange. And one night “King Pataud” seated himself, amidst _le Tout Paris_ in the most fashionable of the boulevard theatres. He himself, in spite of his pink shirt, red tie, and “bowler” hat, belonged in a sense to _le Tout Paris_. Was he not “Le Roi de la Lumière”? There were columns about him in the newspapers; he was “impersonated” in every music-hall _revue_, and his picture post cards sold by the thousand. Then, pressing (and sentimental) requests for his autograph; invitations out to dinner and gifts of cigarettes and cigars; and what a stir, what excited cries of “There goes Pataud,” when the great man swaggered down the boulevards with a fine Havana stuck in a corner of his mouth, and the “bowler” hat tilted rakishly over the right eye! Nor in the Vaudeville Theatre was his triumph less complete. The interest of the brilliant audience was centred on “Fauteuil No. 159”; not on the stage. There sat the man who had but to give the signal and—out would go the lights! So was every opera-glass levelled at him, and so—at the end of the performance—were all the reporters in Paris eager to obtain “King” Pataud’s impressions of the play. “Not bad,” he was reported to have said. “But M. Bourget’s conception of how strikes are conducted is ridiculous. And his strikers are equally absurd.”