OUR PARIS LETTER.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 4047, 17 December 1881, Page 1

OUR PARIS LETTER.

(7IOM OTTB OWN COBBBSVOVDBNT.)

Pabis, November 3. The Chamber of Deputies having: rerified the election of two. third* of iti members, the House has consequently been declared legally constituted;; and so fit and proper for the despatch of holiness. The contested election are fear and of- no practical importance; the protest is chiefly maintained to annoy the successful candidate, and is kept up till the last moment when the petition committee declares there exists no proofs for quash* ing the election. The protests besides cost nothing. It was in this sense the Badicals endeavored to annoy Gambetta, after pouring out some more venom upon him, they withdrew the opposition.' In the opening of this chambers after the general elections, there were no incidents, * strange to nay, worthy of beiug recorded : the ancient deputies dropped into their old places, and the uew took possession, like tbe sheep of Panurge. The republic . cans hare so increased in numbers that, many of them now hate had to be accomodated among the monarchists.. Bishop Treppel baa for comrade an abbe*, and , these representatives of the church bare in front of them a pastor of the Calvinist percualion, who will theologically and politically say no to their doxy. Tndeed it may be obserred, that nothing so much resembles an old House of Hepresentatives as a new one. Gambetta has played his cards well: he insisted on being elected provisional president of the Chamber* thus he was able toshow, by tbe majority of rotes that he scored, he was still the first man in , France, represented the nation, and was ; hence, as it were, imposed on M. Grevy to select as Prime Minister. Thus Gambetta avoids tbe ordinary course of being sent for. Another significant factwas the complete collapse of tbe radicals. During the vacation they kept up a hurly buily, recalling'a terrified dog. with a tin kettle attached to its .tail. Once in : the House they were as gentle as sucking doves. On their first indulgence in their usual rifle practice, that of vituperation, the entire. House coughed them down ; : this bad more effect than at first could be imagined. Not a few deputies who bad decided to march through Coventry with Louis Blanc and Clemencean, whose programme is all or nothing, coupled with a mortal jealousy of Gambetta, at at once sheered round to the moderates.

It is a out and dry arrangement, the Gambetta Cabinet. His accession: to office will, like charity, cover a mdlti* tnde of sins of the Perry Ministry; the mess and muddle of Tunisia is rapidly -, fading into ancient history; the dead has buried its dead. The soldiers are beder.,, _ off now, and the Tunisiaaa hare vanished on the approach of the French, or demanded pardon, the better to reform, if circumstances favor that, strategy, a ; year or a century hence. In fact, Tunisia must, be occupied, and ports poshed in . > advance. There is the ghost of a greater interest being displayed in the commercial treatynegotiations now that Gambetta is about. , taking the helm. The Prince of Wales. : Sir Chas. Dillce, and Gambetta are reported to have settled the whole matter in an after dinner chat, bat that the glorious uncertainty will be. maintained till the .. new Minister be definitely constituted. -'I

The accession of M. Lissat to the Foreign Office is an excellent nomination. He is •bout 53 years of "age, and has been thirty summers in the diplomatic service : ho is the ugliest, yet one bfttbefmdst afereefable men in France; is a charming cameur, promise! everything, but acfttjrds nothing; he impresses you with the idea that he is devoted to you heart and soul, but he is as false as a flint. He has promised about one thousand persons that if nominated Minister of Foreign Affairs they will be provided, for.■— n0.,, such,, thing;.; they I -will be all forgotten, ' jwf in this sense he has independence of heart. He has the pen of a ready writer which can be used with a Swiss zeal on any side of diplomatic correspondence as his dispatches prove. He ia a distinguished archaeologist, his writings being on this ology so profound that only the Pickwickian elect understand them—a position like every mystery, which enhances his , reputation.;* He isfmore devoted tQ>Gambetta than to the ladies; he captivates the hearts of the latter at will, but none can catch him, and he flirts better than his secretaries. He possesses another marked qualification, he can hate an attack of gout, rheumatism, enlarged liver, the gravel, Ac, on the receipt of a cyphered telegram, and he allows his sufferings to be witnessed in a sulphur or an electric bath. The necessity for the malady having passed, he throws away the crutches as quickly as, a Pope Sixtus. What a marked contrast between Tissot and the poor innocent H. Hilaire whose chief error was that of trying to be honest and truthful —the greatest drawbacks to a successful diplomatist.

The new War Minister will-be ; M. de Freycinet. He is top well known to need observation, and be becomes for the second time Gambetta's Minister of War.. The future President of the Chamber will be M.Henri Brissen, naturally marked for that post. He is, after Gambetta,the most notable man of the day.: He is about 45 years of age, or four more than Gambetta. He made his way rather by his own resources than by independent means. When a student he never associated with the foibles of his companions, but studied the French Revolution, Rousseau, and philosophy. When called to the bar in 1859 he lost ■his Voice from a heavy cold; and for seven years lived by journalism along with Gambetta and his school. In 186$ he published a journal devoted to the phiJosbpiiy' of independent morality, aM his doctrines were denounced by Father Hyacinthe Loyson at Notre Dame, then a Capucin. Brisson predicted that Loyson's doctrine would ultimately compel that divine to secede from the Catholic Church —an event that ensued, and M. Brisson, like a gallant warrior, after converting or conquering the priest, occasionally attends his new church as an intermittent parishioner. M. Brisson was the first to propose the Amnesty of the Communists, and that too when Paris was smoking in the ruins the insurgents had made, and the amnestied return that benevolence by vituperating him a la Gambetta, only they have not yet condemned him to death; it was Brisson also who insisted on bringing. MacMahon's coup d'etat Cabinet to trial: it is he who also; insisted on the decrees for the expulsion of the Jesuits being,applied, and his project is accepted in principle that for secularising all the property of the religious orders in France. He is the only leading Eepubliean that is opposed to divorce - that which has caused him to be accused of holding monarchal ideas. By doctrine he Jis a Girondist; in means a Dantenist; and in action he displays all the coolness and perseverance of a Jacobin, linked to the •entimentalism of J. J. Rosseau. He has a dash of the Puritan in his grave air, and has this advantage over Gambetta, that of never losing his temper. He lives on the fifth story of a very unpreposessing house, in a kind/ of respectable blind alley: the tenant over head is the man who sticks up his electoral addresses: the value of his furniture is set down at 720 francs; he reads old; books only, tempered with parliamentary papery Cpntemporary history has no jotesofshiß to^ record : Jfor him life has not enough of time for serious affairs. It will be with heavy heart he will quit his attic for the official Palais Bourbon.

One matter is deteriorating under the Republic, that of caricature, which appears to be replaced by illustrated obscenity, The skits are invariably limited to representing celebrities with a long nose, or an asseous head, with open mouth, and protruding under lip.. Grill occasionally threw originality into a ■ketch of the moment, till a desire to become hastily rich blunted his powers, and finally landed him where he is—in a public asylum.

Marie Eeuillet, a milliner, was seduced by a young and handsome cook: in time she and her baby were cast aside. She invested her last few francs in a revolver, surprised the false one among! his stew*: pots, fired, and badly wounded him. "Served right" was the verdict-of the jury, and Marie was acquitted. At Belley, in the Am, Ostier and Labade were neighbors and friends: a quarrel ensued, and to evict the latter, Ostier made a Baron Trenck mine into Labade's cellar, laid down a pipe charged with gunpowder and dynamite: it was a case of miss fire, save for Ostier, who has been condemned to ten years' transportation. The French police have made a great capture: they arrested two suspicious Londoners, that insisted on hanging about the movements of the Prince of Wales, and occasionally lounging in a tap room near the lodgings of some of the exiled land leaguers. The men were liberated in the morning, on proving they were only following their natural calling—that of detectives.

The, Fete dcs Morts has been celebrated with every external mark of affectionate regret and pious decorum. The cemeteries were well dressed, and the fine weather induced' crowds of visitors. The aged who cannot go to a graveyard to pray, manage to attend the nearest church, and 'indulge in an in memoriam. There was a marked diminu* tion in free thinking symbols.