A great event has occurred in Paris. Under circumstances detailed
elsewhere, M. Loubet invited all the Mayors of the thirty:six thousand communes of France to a banquet in the Tuileries Gardens. It was thoroughly understood that all who accepted the invitation announced in doing so their adhesion to the Republic, but to the consternation of the Reactionaries twenty-two thousand Mayors attended the entertainment. Of the remaining fourteen thousand, two thousand at least were, it is said, either sick, or shy, or 'too poor to pay the half railway fares and their own lodgings and maintenance in Paris for two days. The dinner, for which preparations had to be made of a colossal kind, each guest, for one detail, being expected to drink a bottle of wine, passed off without the smallest confusion, and, as few could hear the President's voice, each Mayor was provided with a copy of the speech. They, in fact, checked the scene from the libretto, but the applause at telling passages was none the less enthusiastic. The impression made by the scene is said to have been profound, the presence of the guests, each one of whom was the elected representative of his neighbour. hood, being recognised as an informal plebiscite, and it will, it is believed, encourage the Council of State to restore Colonel Picquart to his grade, that act of bare justice having already been determined on.
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