“My friend, if you had come to see me about the affairs of France, and not about your own business, we should have had a conversation long ago.”
Precedence was always given by M. Thiers to journalists, however obscure they might be. Ambassadors had to wait while these favored ones walked in. A journalist himself, the quondam leader-writer of the _National_ extended the most generous recognition to the brethren of his craft, but he also did this because he was wide awake to the power of the press, and had generally some service to ask of those whom he addressed as “my dear companions.” He had such a facility for writing that when a journalist came to him “for inspiration” he would often sit down and dash off in a quarter of an hour the essential paragraph of a leader which he wished to see inserted. At the time of the Paris election of April, 1873, when his friend the Comte de Rémusat, then foreign secretary, was the Government candidate with the insignificant M. Barodet opposing him, a writer on the _Figaro_ called at the Elysée and M. Thiers wrote a whole article of a column’s length for him. It was printed as a letter in leaded type with the signature “An old citizen of Paris;” and a very sprightly letter it was, which put the issue lying between M. de Rémusat and his radical adversary in the clearest light. However, the electors of Paris acted with their usual foolishness in preferring an upstart to a man of note, and within a month of this M. Thiers resigned in disgust.
Marshal MacMahon accepted the presidency without any desire to retain it. If anything seemed certain at the time of his accession, it was that Legitimists and Orleanists would soon patch up their differences and that a vote of the Assembly would offer the crown to Henri V. The Ministry formed under the auspices of the Duc de Broglie labored to bring about this consummation, and the Marshal was prepared to enforce the decrees of the Assembly whatever they might be. At the same time he established his household at once on a semi-royal footing, as though he intended there should be at least a temporary court to remind French noblemen of old times, and to give them a foretaste of the pomps that were coming. M. Thiers had been a _bourgeois_ president; the Marshal-Duke of Magenta was a _grand seigneur_. Under Madame Thiers’ frugal management the £36,000 a year allowed to the president sufficed amply to cover all expenses; under the Duchess de Magenta’s management the presidential income did not go half way toward defraying outlay. The Marshal had a comfortable private fortune (not equal to M. Thiers’), but he was only enabled to hold such high estate in his office by means of the assistance pressed upon him by wealthy relatives.