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of a gentleman, and a man of culture. But I feel sure that it would almost wholly lose its attractions in this respect and become narrow and sectarian if once it were separated from the State. Its Bishops, too, would probably decline in social status, and by consequence in their acceptability to the world of fashion.

WILB. Why do you address that argument so pointedly to me, my lord?

WEST. I must apologize for addressing an argument of so worldly a nature to your lordship at all; but you cannot, I know, be insensible to the consideration that high social popularity must greatly enlarge a bishop's sphere of usefulness, and that there is nothing unworthy of his Apostolic mission in courting it.

WILB. I know not, my lord, whether you say that in good faith or in irony; but, in any case, I hold it to be true.

WEST. Irony, Bishop! Never, I trust, shall I use that weapon so unskilfully, and I may add so profanely, as to blunt its edge against the informations of Holy Writ.

WILB. St. Paul was made all things to all men, that he might by all means save some.

WEST. Your lordship has anticipated my quotation. Social success is in this sense a proof of Apostolic succession, and was doubtless sought by you only for such evidential purpose. But be that as it may, the Pauline descent of your lordship's versatility was unmistakable, and it must indeed have been gratifying to you to reflect that the display of those accomplishments which so charmed our dinner-tables was indirectly tending to establish the validity of Anglican orders.

DE MORNY. GAMBETTA. BLANQUI

DE M. Welcome, dear M. Gambetta, to the Shades: too soon no doubt for your ambition, but at the best of moments, perhaps, for your fame.

GAM. You should know me well, Monsieur, since you seem prepared to write my biography. The more should I apologise for not recognising you.

DE M. Oh, no apologies, pray. A face is easily forgotten in a score of years; and a young law-student fresh to his Paris need not have been very familiar with mine. As you see, and say, however, I well know you.

GAM. As well as the Fates knew me apparently; since you are pleased to approve of their decree.

DE M. The terms of my welcome appear to have nettled you. It is not unnatural. Politicians are actors, and have all the actor's qualities. They are as vain, as ambitious, as incapable of self-criticism, as irrationally unsatisfied with past achievements, as childishly confident of surpassing them in the future. When did ever actor think that the public had had enough of him? or that his powers were failing? or that his rôles were limited, and the best of them played already? No, my dear M. Gambetta, of course think you died too soon. You would have been more

you

than the mortal you were proving yourself, if you had thought otherwise. Yet very few men do really die too soon for their fame, though hundreds live too long for it. GAM. I am waiting to learn the name of my candid critic.

DE M. Forgive me if I divert myself a little with your guesses.

GAM. You must give me some clue then. Your language stamps your calling, and you yourself have fixed the period of your career. You were a politician of the. Second Empire: so much I know. But how are you to be distinguished-excuse my frankness—from any other shallow cynic who flourished among the rank growths of that ignoble time?

DE M. By a most honourable distinction: as you at any rate should account it. A coincidence of official position has associated my name with yours.

GAM. With mine?

DE M. Indeed yes. You may think it impossible that you could have followed in my footsteps: but you did. GAM. I cannot believe it. They would have led to no goal of mine.

DE M. I don't know that. fortable berth at any rate,

They led to a devilish comand report said that you

thoroughly enjoyed it. Why, you started for Hades from my house, and I am not sure that you did not begin the journey in my hearse.

GAM. Ha!. . . M. de Morny?

DE. M. At your service. How capricious is fame! To think that a posthumous immortality should have been

reserved for me as the predecessor of the great M. Gambetta in the Chair of the Chamber and the salons of the Palais Bourbon ! I shall go down to posterity in your company; I, and my silver bath, which, en attendant, dear Republican, I believe you found to your liking.

No

GAM. M. de Morny! So this is the philosophiser on the vanity of ambition! But you were right, Monsieur. one should know better than you that there are men who live too long for their fame—and for their country's welfare.

DE M. Candour of criticism seems to be as much your forte as mine. Pray indulge it if you wish. I retired from the scene of life, you may perhaps remember, in 1865. I gather that you consider that too late an exit. May I ask at what earlier date you think I should have been better advised to have taken my departure?

GAM. I know too little of your younger days, Monsieur, to determine that point with exactitude. Your death, for aught I know, might have been fixed with advantage to yourself and your fellow-men at a much earlier date than 1851. But you should certainly have died at some time before the month of December in that year.

DE M. For my fame, you mean?

GAM. And for your country's happiness.

DE M. My dear M. Gambetta, you would deprive me of my sole achievement.

GAM. What? you glory in your shame! But after all, why not? Infamy has always seemed better than obscurity to certain minds: and but for the crime of December who would ever have heard of you?

DE M. Or of you, my good friend? You are a little

ungrateful. I prepared the way for you. You will admit, I suppose, that it was the Empire which made you a possibility.

GAM. No doubt: but it is the first time I ever heard that the surgeon owed gratitude to the cancer. You prepared the way for me, as disease prepares the body for the knife. It was the thrice-accursed poison of your Empire, working in the veins of France, which begot those monstrosities of morbid tissue-the administration of Rouher, and the army of Lebœuf. For eighteen years the vocabulary of the hospital might have served for the sole language of politics. He who said "corruption" said "government;" and to say "government" has always been to say "France." For eighteen years of a vile existence the Imperial system had been converting our very life-blood into germ-cells of malignant growth; in 1870 it was draining the last drops of healthy fluid from the veins of the country to discharge it upon her body in the suppurations of prodigality and fraud. What wonder that it needed the scalpel of Von Moltke to extirpate it, and the cautery of the Commune to burn away its roots? Gratitude, you say? You are under a slight mistake, Monsieur. The founders of the Republic do not even owe you the thanks due from the physician to the "interesting case." You were not the patient, but the disease.

DE M. Let me congratulate you on a pretty piece of declamation. And now to the facts. That the Empire became corrupt, and, like most corrupt things, corrupting, is a fact that it represented the principle of corruption is not fact but rhetoric. Judge it and me by what it was,

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