4 A Man of Peace [1888 



the far table in a snuff-coloured morning dress, not uniform, came 

 forward to receive us (Lacretelle has just been painting his portrait 

 for the Salon) and gave us each a hand, and when he heard who I 

 was, led me with some pomp and made me sit on a gigantic Louis XIV 

 chair beside him. Lacetelle began to compliment him as " l'homme 

 du destin," a bit of flattery which the General took very much as a 

 matter of course, saying that there were moments when people were 

 obliged to act, and that the wave was rising now, and that whether he 

 liked it or not it would carry him on to whatever was intended — just 

 the same words of pleasant fatalism I remember in Arabi's mouth 

 seven years ago at Cairo. 



1 The General is a man of about fifty, fair-haired, turning gray, a 

 fresh complexion, a good but not especially military figure, a very 

 pleasant voice, and a quite frank manner. He gave one the impression 

 at once of simplicity and sincerity and of a sort of manly self-reliance 

 which is doubtless his power. There was nothing of the general de 

 cafe chantant in what I saw of him. After a little desultory conversa- 

 tion I asked him to allow me to put him a serious question. ' It has 

 been much debated,' I said, ' in our Peace Societies, how the quarrel 

 between France and Germany could be settled without war. Is it 

 possible to arrange for the neutralization of the ceded Provinces?' 

 To this he replied, that such a solution might possibly be in the future, 

 but that he could not say now it was his own ; the German Government 

 had made it impossible by their policy in Alsace-Lorraine for any 

 inhabitant of the Provinces to do otherwise than call himself a French- 

 man ; the only way one had of knowing the opinion of districts was 

 by the ballot, and the Provinces had universally elected deputies who 

 demanded restoration to France ; while this was the case neutralization 

 was hardly a practical question ; still he did not say it might not be- 

 come one. As for war, he, Boulanger, knew war too well to take 

 the responsibility of rushing into it without absolute necessity. War 

 is so largely a matter of chance, chose aleatoire, that a man must be a 

 traitor who would risk the fortunes of his country on it ; therefore I 

 must not doubt him when he told me he was a man of peace. Lacretelle 

 then explained to him my connection with Arabi and Egypt, and his 

 manner became extremely cordial, and he told me that he had English 

 or rather Welsh blood in his veins through his mother [her name, 

 Lacretelle told me, was Griffiths] and begged me when I returned to 

 Paris to come and see him again. I said I would do so and that I 

 might be able to influence public opinion in England somewhat in his 

 favour, at which he was much pleased and we parted the best of friends. 

 Lacretelle tells me that he has never heard him talk so well or so 

 amiably to a stranger, especially an Englishman, as he hates the English 

 in common now with all Frenchmen. My impression of the General 



