e way or another, the services and
the paintpots of every house and furniture painter upon whom his people
could lay hands. These were all set to work upon the mail coaches. The
royal arms, with the Charter and the Crown, were painted over, and the
vehicles which, from Paris, carried to all parts of France the news of
the proclamation of the Republic carried everywhere also an outward and
visible sign of the establishment of the new government in the words
'Republique Francaise' brightly blazoned upon their panels.

I recalled this story to Mr. Sumner years afterwards in New York, and he
assured me not only that it was literally correct, but that he had been
consulted himself about it by M. Marrast at the time. This particular
device could not now be used as effectively. But, with the telegraph
wires and the telephones in its control, any government which may get
itself installed to-morrow in Paris would certainly have tremendous odds
in its favour, from one end of France to the other. The immense increase
of the French public debt under the republican administration since 1877
has correspondingly increased, all over France, the number of people
known as _petits rentiers_, who, having invested their savings, in part
or wholly, in the public securities, will be as quick to acquiesce in
any revolution which they believe to have been successful at Paris, as
they are slow to promote any revolution, no matter how desirable
otherwise a change in the government may seem to them to be. So long as
it is not shaken out of the public offices at Paris, the government of
the Republic may probably count upon this vast body of quiet people, as
confidently as the Empire counted upon it twenty years ago, or as the
monarchy or the dictatorship might count upon it to-morrow, were the
king or the dictator acclaimed in the capital.

M. Fleury cites one of General Boulanger's most active supporters, M.
Mermieix, as saying to him during the election in 1888, 'with a few
millions of francs, the liberty of the press and of public billsticking,
and three thousand rowdies, I can change the government of this country
in less than a year.'

The remark is slightly cynical. But the extreme anxiety of the
government of the Republic to get General Boulanger either into a prison
or out of Paris certainly goes far to justify the boast of M. Mermeix.

'I told General Boulanger at Doullens,' said M. Fleury, after going
thither in company with him from A