But we may talk of the selfishness of French politics, for this, unfortunately, does not change. In a country where politics are so mixed that the elector understands very little about them, it is not difficult to catch votes by arguments of another kind. Our business just now being with the Caillaux drama, it may not be a bad method of explaining how French politicians gain the authority to govern, by some sidelights on the election at Mamers of Monsieur Joseph Caillaux. Immediately after Madame Caillaux had shot the editor of the _Figaro_ dead her husband resigned office. He was of course obliged to do this. Immediately after his resignation he announced that he intended to retire from public life entirely, and would take no part in politics in the immediate future. He had hardly made this announcement, which I mentioned on page 79, before he changed his mind, and announced that owing to the insistence of his constituents he would be a candidate for re-election when the general election took place, but that he would not canvass, and that his friend Monsieur D’Estournelles de Constant would canvass for him, while he himself would remain in the retirement demanded by the situation of his wife. A very few days after this second change of plans Monsieur Caillaux changed his mind once more and determined to canvass Mamers. He has been re-elected. It is not uninteresting to glance at the reason why. Any foreigner might have imagined that there was no possible chance for any body of electors to re-elect Monsieur Joseph Caillaux as their representative. The fierce light which played so recently and so unsparingly on his political career had scarcely shown him to be a desirable member of Parliament. It would be difficult, one would think, for Frenchmen to vote for the man who had made such a number of mistakes, and who had been connected, as Monsieur Caillaux was connected, with the negotiations disclosed in the chapters in this volume on Agadir and the _affaire_ Rochette. But the foreigner would not realize, and Monsieur Caillaux realized, very conclusively, that the peasants of the Sarthe district cared little or nothing for the revelations in the Paris Press, and cared a great deal for Monsieur Caillaux’s personality.