At the last moment, just as we were moving off, a lively Parisian journalist tumbled into our compartment with his despatch-box and his portmanteau. He was in the full evening dress in which he had been parading about all day with the Presidential party; his white cravat was loose and awry, and the grey dust of the Calais streets and piers lay thick upon his glossy bottines; but he was in the best of spirits, for he had caught the train and would now reach Paris in the morning.
'But the President is going on to Boulogne, is he not?' I asked.
'Oh, yes! but what of that? It will be just what it was to-day, and I know what he is going to say. He will leave Boulogne early in the afternoon, and we shall have it all, an excellent account. It's not worth while to waste the time on Boulogne.'
He had been with the President ever since the party left Paris, and thought the progression the whole, a success. 'Not at Calais,' that he admitted. There had certainly been no great enthusiasm at Calais. He did not think there had been any cries for Boulanger, but there was no emotion. This he explained by telling me that the people had not been properly '_stylé_.' 'In these cases, you know,' he said with the air of a connoisseur in enthusiasm, 'you must have a certain subtle _stylage_.'
The word was new to me, but not so the thing. For I presently found that by a 'subtle _stylage_' of the people, my companion only meant what in America is known as 'working up a boom,' when the welfare of the Union requires that a President, or a presidential candidate, should perambulate a certain number of 'doubtful' States, or, in the picturesque language of the days of Andrew Johnson, go 'swinging round the circle.' If I am not misinformed, an analogous operation is occasionally performed in England, when some popular idol finds it worth his while to make an unpremeditated political tour.
'The thing was better done at Lens,' said my fellow-traveller. 'Do you know Lens? They are all miners there, you know--very curious people. I suppose they were glad to come up from under the ground and look at us. Some of the women, too, were pretty--really very pretty. It was all very well arranged. There is a good manager there, M.----. He made way, you know, in 1886, for Camescasse, to oblige the Government. The President gave him the Cross. It had a very good effect. At Bapaume, too, the President did a good thing. He decorated ---- there, who had so much trouble with the Christian Brothers.'