第197章

With the Judas, who was by far the best actor in the whole performance, I became still better acquainted. Visiting his workshop, after ordering of him two carved statuettes Isaid to him: ``You certainly ought to have a double salary, as the Judas had in the miracle-plays of the middle ages;this was thought due him on account of the injury done to his character by his taking that part.'' At this the Oberammergau Judas smiled pleasantly, and said: ``No;I am content to share equally with the others; but the same feeling toward the Judas still exists''; and he then told me the following story: A few weeks before, while he was working at his carving-bench, the door of his workshop opened, and a peasant woman from the mountains came in, stood still, and gazed at him intently. On his asking her what she wanted, she replied: ``I saw you in the play yesterday; I wished to look at you again; you look so like my husband. He is dead. HE, TOO, WAS A VERY BADMAN.''

Occasionally, under leave of absence from the State Department, I was able to make more distant excursions, and first of all into France. The President during one of these visits was M. Grvy. Some years before I had heard him argue a case in court with much ability; but now, on my presentation to him at the palace of the lyse, he dwelt less ably on the relations of the United States with France, and soon fell upon the question of trade, saying, in rather a reproachful way, ``Vous nous inondez de vos produits.''

To this I could only answer that this inundation of American products would surely be of mutual benefit to both nations, and he rather slowly assented.

Much more interesting to me was his minister of foreign affairs, Barthlemy-Saint-Hilaire, a scholar, a statesman, and a man of noble character. We talked first of my intended journey to the south of France; and on my telling him that I had sent my eldest son to travel there, for the reason that at Orange, Arles, Nmes, and the like, a better idea of Roman power can be obtained than in Italy itself, he launched out on that theme most instructively.

The conversation having turned toward politics, he spoke much of Bismarck and Moltke, pronouncing the name of the latter in one syllable. He said that Bismarck was very kind personally to Thiers during the terrible negotiations; that if Bismarck could have had his way he would have asked a larger indemnity,--say, seven milliards,--and would have left Alsace-Lorraine to France;that France would gladly have paid a much larger sum than five milliards if she could have retained Alsace-Lorraine; that Bismarck would have made concessions; but that ``Molkt'' would not. He added that Bismarck told ``Molkt'' that he--the latter--had, by insisting on territory, made peace too difficult. Saint-Hilaire dwelt long on the fearful legacy of standing armies left by the policy which Germany finally adopted, and evidently considered a great international war as approaching.[16]

[16] December, 1880.

Dining afterward at the Foreign Office with my old friend Millet, who was second in command there, I met various interesting Frenchmen, but was most of all pleased with M. Ribot. Having distinguished himself by philosophical studies and made a high reputation in the French parliament, he was naturally on his way to the commanding post in the ministry which he afterward obtained. His wife, an American, was especially attractive.

It is a thousand pities that a country possessing such men is so widely known to the world, not by these, but by novelists and dramatists largely retailing filth, journalists largely given to the invention of sensational lies, politicians largely obeying either atheistic demagogues or clerical intriguers; and all together acting like a swarm of obscene, tricky, mangy monkeys chattering, squealing, and tweaking one another's tails in a cage. Some of these monkeys I saw performing their antics in the National Assembly then sitting at Versailles; and it saddened me to see the nobler element in that assemblage thwarted by such featherbrained creatures.[16]

[16] December, 1880.

Another man of note, next whom I found myself at a dinner-party, was M. de Lesseps. I still believe him to have been a great and true man, despite the cloud of fraud which the misdeeds of others drew over his latter days. Among sundry comments on our country, he said that he had visited Salt Lake City, and thought a policy of force against the Mormons a mistake. In this I feel sure that he was right. Years ago I was convinced by Bishop Tuttle of the Protestant Episcopal Church, who had been stationed for some years at Salt Lake City, that a waiting policy, in which proper civilization can be brought to bear upon the Mormons, is the true course.

On the following Sunday I heard Pre Hyacinthe preach, as at several visits before; but the only thing at all memorable was a rather happy application of Voltaire's remark on the Holy Roman Empire, ``Ni Saint, ni Empire, ni Romain.''

At the salon of Madame Edmond Adam, eminent as a writer of review articles and as a hater of everything Teutonic, I was presented to a crowd of literary men who, though at that moment striking the stars with their lofty heads, have since dropped into oblivion. Among these Iespecially remember mile de Girardin, editor, spouter, intriguer--the ``Grand mile,'' who boasted that he invented and presented to the French people a new idea every day. This futile activity of his always seemed to me best expressed in the American simile: ``Busy as a bee in a tar-barrel.'' There was, indeed, one thing to his credit: