A curious personal sketch of M. Deschanel, contributed by the
Paris correspondent of the Daily News, will be found in Thursday's issue of that journal. M. Deschand, Recording to the writer, won his election not by his politics so much as by his gifts as a host, his genuine amiability, and his mastery of the art of pleasing every- body. He not only entertains lavishly, but even sends presents of game to the Deputies. Though not a Clerical, he conforms, outwardly at least, to the ritual of Roman Catholicism, he is the intimate friend of many wealthy Clericals, and would not do anything in Parliament to wound their feelings. " He is all things unto all men. If be went to Rome he would kiss the Pope's slipper." Though enjoying a sybaritic existence, he lays himself out in the provinces to captivate the common people as well as the local magnates ; and though sneeringly alluded to by his detractors as " un arriviste "—the man who always con- trives to be on the winning side—and bracketed, for his patronage of gastronomy, with De Béchamel, the inventor of a sauce, it is noted that the higher he has climbed, the more be has been at pains to disarm envy. M. Deschanel's use of the culinary art to control and keep in good humour the Assembly over which be presides recalls a saying of Charles Buller's. Speaking of the first Reformed Parliament, he used to declare that the excellence of the Speaker's cook in two years turned all the aggressive Radicals from the provinces into Moderate Whigs. The country escaped from revolution by the soothing influences of Manners-Sutton's chef,
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