His Excellency the Minister | Page 2

living person I borrowed the character of Vaudrey, with its sufferings, its disappointments, its falterings. From whom? An American translator, better informed, it appears, than myself, has, I believe, brought out in New York a key to the characters presented in my book. I should have publicly protested against this Key which unlocks nothing, however, had it been published in France. Reader, do not expect any masks to be raised here--there are no masks; it is only a picture of living people, of passions of our time. No portraits, however, only types. That, at least, is what I have tried to do. And if I expected to find indulgent critics, I have certainly succeeded, and the two special characters which I sought to portray in my romance--in Parisian and political life--have been fortunate enough to win the approval of two critics whose testimony to the truth of my portraitures I have set down here.
An author of rare merit and an authority on Statecraft, Monsieur J.-J. Weiss, was kind enough one day to analyze and praise, apropos of the comedy founded upon my book, the romance which I am to-day republishing. It has been extremely pleasant for me to put myself under the sponsorship of a man of letters willing to vouch for the truth of my portrayals. I must beg pardon for repeating his commendations of my work, so grateful are they to me, coming from the pen of a critic so renowned, and which I take some pride in reading again.
"I had already twice read Monsieur le Ministre," wrote Monsieur J.-J. Weiss in the Journal des Débats the day following the production at the Gymnase, "before having seen the drama founded on the book, and I do not regret having been obliged to read it for the third time. The romance is both well conceived and admirably executed. To have written it, a union of character and talent was necessary. A Republican tried and proved, permitting his ideal to be tarnished and sullied; a patriot wronged by the vices of the times in which he lived; an honest, clean-handed man; the representative of a family of rigid morality; the strict impartiality of the artist who cares for nothing but his ideas of art, and who protects those ideas from being injured or influenced by the pretensions of any group or coterie; a close and long acquaintanceship with the ins and outs of Parisian life; an eye at once inquiring, calm and critical, a courageous indifference, hatred for the mighty ones of the hour, and a loftiness of soul which refuses to yield to the unjust demands of timid friendship: such are the qualities that make the value of this matchless book. Monsieur Claretie has been accused of having gathered together and exposed to the public gaze two or three more or less scandalous episodes of private life, and using them as the foundation of his romance. The fictitious name of Vaudrey has been held to cloak that of such and such a Minister of State. Those, however, who search for vulgar gossip in this book, or who look for private scandal are far astray. They are quite mistaken as regards the tendency and moral of Monsieur Claretie's book. The Vaudrey of the romance is no minister in particular, neither this statesman nor that. He is the Minister whom we have had before our eyes for the last quarter of a century. He is that one, at once potential and universal. In him are united and portrayed all the traits by which the species may be determined. He had been elected to office without knowing why, and to do him this justice, at least without any fault of his; he was deposed from power without knowing the reason, and we have no hesitation in saying, without his having done anything either good or bad to deserve his fall. There he is minister, however; Minister of the Interior, and who knows? in a fair way, perhaps, to be swept by some favorable wind to the post of President of the Council; while not so very long ago to have been made sub-prefect of the first class, would have surpassed the wildest visions of his youth. In Monsieur Claretie's romance it is the old Member of Parliament, Collard--of Nantes--converted late in life to Republicanism, who chose the provincial Vaudrey for his Minister of the Interior; this may, with equal probability be Marshal MacMahon.
"In Monsieur Claretie's romance, Monsieur le Ministre is of the Left Centre or the so-called Moderate Party, he is therefore on the side of Law and Order. He enters into the Cabinet with the determination to reform every abuse, to recast everything; to seek for honest men, to make merit and not faction, the touchstone of advancement. In short, to