The French Republic dying of Gas.--Good Sense for Gambetta. TOURS,
SIXTH WEEK OF THE REPUBLIC, 1870.
Dear PUNCHINELLO:
There is gloom everywhere; applications to serve in the ranks have
diminished, and the price of pocket-handkerchiefs has increased. JULES
FAVRE writes, under cover of confidence, to the _prefect_ here, that
since the interview of which I gave you an account he has had a severe
attack of gumboils, and despairs of softening the heart of BISMARCK. I
stole the letter for the purpose of copying it, but it was stolen from
me in turn by a nefarious emissary of the London _Times,_ who has not
however, dared to use it. The greatest activity is manifested in the
making of balloons. The administration labors under the delusion that
gas and oiled silk may yet prove the Palladium of French liberty. I have
remonstrated unavailingiy against this singular infatuation. I held up
to the Rump Council now sitting in this city the example of VICTOR HUGO
as a fearful warning. He came from Guernsey under a pressure of gas; he
entered Paris with the volatile essence oozing from every hair on his
head; he loaded the artillery of his rhetoric with gas; he blazed, away
at the Germans with gas, and yet, unable to get rid of such afflatus
fast enough, he exploded in the very midst of his pyrotechnics, and now
lies high and dry on "this bank and shoal of time" like a venerable
rhinoceros extinguished by its own snorting. I am sorry to say it, but
the great peril of France at this moment is gas. Touching GAMBETTA. Ah!
yes, touching GAMBETTA. You may have heard that he has issued a
proclamation or two. There are depths in the soul of a Frenchman, where
the inspiration of mighty words breeds like "flies in the shambles."
Such a soul has GAMBETTA. He is all language. If you were to cut him up
in little bits and put each atom under a microscope, you would find in
every molecule the text of some proclamation. The genii of syntax and
prosody are his guardian angels, and the love of "gabble" is the be-all
and the end-all of his political existence. He loves not GARIBALDI. He
would have done violence to his grandmother rather than consent to the
invitation of the Italian liberator. For short, he calls him "GARRY."
Standing in front of the Hotel de Ville, talking to a group of eager
listeners, with his arms wildly gesticulating and his nose
contemptuously curling towards the empyrean, he asks:
"Who is this GARRY? What is he? Why is he--?"
"Stop," I calmly interpollate, "profane not the high calling of the
Italian hero with frivolous conundrums."
"Jerk that monster out of my sight!" roared GAMBETTA to a _sergent de
ville_, and pointing his long, skinny fore-finger full at me.