'The Boulangist revelations in the Figaro are continued this week.
The Wednesday instalment describes a visit paid by General Boulanger, while in command of a French army orps at Clermont Ferrand, to Prince Jerome, then living in exile at Prangins, in Switzerland. The General was followed by detectives as far as Lyons, but there they lost him, and his movements were thus kept secret, though he had the imprudence to carry a stick with his name engraved on the silver top. The interview must have been a very curious piece of fencing. The would-be Dictator did not exactly offer to play the part of General Monk, but apparently insinuated that all those who were for revolution and change might work together, for the Prince is said to have replied :—" We shs11 be in accord till the day when, the Constitution of the Republic having been reformed, the moment will have come for the election of the Chief of the State. I do not say I shall present myself as candidate at the plebiscite, but neither do I say I shall not. On that day I shall be free." Paris is naturally much excited by the revelations, and many of the General's old henchmen are making farther disclosures. It was said by the Figaro :—" With the object of reassuring General Boulanger as to his safety in France, the leading Boulangists proposed to make it public that they held MM. Carnot, Tirard, Constans, Clemenceau, and Ferry as hostages for the life of their chief." M. Poignant, who was the author of that proposal, declares it to be absolutely correct. "Thou-
sands of citizens," he says, "would certainly have signed that dramatic pact. It is needless to add that this Trehmgerieht would never, I hope, have had to execute its sentence. It was simply a device to reassure our friends, and to deprive General Boulanger of all pretext for a departure which we have always regretted." Can anything more thoroughly characteristic of the French nation be imagined
