Then follows the menace quoted in my last to the tricky, cowardly deputies who voted against the Government, which was saved by two votes more than once. The memorable slap administered by M. Syveton to General André compelled M. Combes to throw the Minister of War overboard, though the latter protested to the last, “They want my skin, but they shall not have it.” The Minister of Public Instruction also nearly succumbed. He declared that if a certain _ordre de jour_ were not voted he would throw down his portfolio there and then. The votes were not forthcoming but he clung to his portfolio and contented himself with another _ordre de jour_.
All the performances at the Palais Bourbon are indeed a most amazing comedy.
Meanwhile M. Syveton, who negotiated the purchase of the purloined documents from the Grand Orient, and slapped General André on the ministers’ bench, got his quietus in a very mysterious way on the very day on which he was to have retaken his seat in the Chambers (after his thirty days’ punitive exclusion), and on the eve of his appearance before the Cours d’Assise for that famous slap. His defence, carefully prepared by himself, was published in the papers next day. It is a long incisive arraignment of the Government in imitation of Cicero’s _Catalina_. All the witnesses, who were to have appeared in his defence, were also witnesses against the Government. In fact the trial was to have been a great political manifestation, and the Government had every interest in its not taking place. Since two weeks public opinion is on tenter-hooks regarding the death of M. Syveton. It was declared at first to be a vulgar accident by the Ministerial organs. While M. Jaurès, strange to say, published in _Humanity_ a most remarkable brief, establishing clearly the guilt of Madame Syveton, and, still more strange, the latter did not prosecute him for it. Then the suicide theory was adopted, and the most odious, baseless, and unproven calumnies were launched against the memory of the dead man. His widow even accused him of having stolen funds of the Nationalist party. All this in order to explain his suicide on the eve of what was expected to be a great political triumph of the Nationalists, and for which M. Syveton was preparing with the ardour of a fighter by temperament, just forty years old.