His Excellency the Minister

His Excellency the Minister

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Title: His Excellency the Minister
Author: Jules Claretie
Translator: Henri Roberts
Release Date: May 29, 2005 [EBook #15934]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THIS EDITION DEDICATED TO THE HONOR OF THE
ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE IS LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND
NUMBERED AND REGISTERED SETS, OF WHICH THIS IS

NUMBER 358
THE ROMANCISTS JULES CLARETIE HIS EXCELLENCY THE
MINISTER
BIBLIOTHÈQUE DES CHEFS-D'OEUVRE DU ROMAN
CONTEMPORAIN
HIS EXCELLENCY THE MINISTER
JULES CLARETIE
OF THE ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE
PRINTED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY BY
GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PHILADELPHIA COPYRIGHT, 1900,
BY G.B. & SON
THIS EDITION OF HIS EXCELLENCY THE MINISTER HAS
BEEN COMPLETELY TRANSLATED BY HENRI ROBERTS
THE ETCHINGS ARE BY EUGENE WALLET AND DRAWINGS
BY ADRIEN MARIE

TO ALPHONSE DAUDET
My dear friend,
Ideas sometimes float about in the air like the pollen of flowers. For
years past I have been at work collecting notes for this book which I
have decided to dedicate to you.
In one of your charming prefaces, you told us lately that you only
painted from nature. We are both of us, I imagine, in our day and
generation, quite captivated and carried away by that modern society
from which in your exquisite creations you have so well understood

how to extract the essence.
What is it that I have desired to do this time? That which we have both
been trying to do at one and the same time: to seize, in passing, these
stirring times of ours, these modern manners, that society which
perpetuates the antediluvian uproar, that feverish, bustling world
always posing before the footlights, that market for the sale of appetites,
that kirmess of pleasure that saddens us a little and amuses us a great
deal, and allows us romance-writers, simple seekers after truth, to smile
in our sleeves at the constant seekers after portfolios.
This book is true, I have seen the events narrated in it pass before my
own eyes, and I can say, as a spectator greatly interested in what I see,
that I am delighted, my old fellow-traveller, to write your great and
honored name on the first page of my book as a witness to the sincere
affection and true comradeship of
Your devoted,
JULES CLARETIE.

PREFACE
There was once a Minister of State who presented to his native land the
astonishing spectacle of a Cabinet Minister dying whilst in office. This
action was so astounding to the nation at large that a statue has since
been erected to his memory.
I saw his funeral procession defile past me, I think I even made one of
the Committee sent by the Society of Men of Letters to march in the
funeral convoy. It was superb. This lawyer from the Provinces, good
honest man, eloquent orator, honest politician that he was, who came
to Paris but to die there, was buried with the greatest magnificence.
De Musset had eight persons to follow him to the grave; his Excellency
had one hundred thousand.

I returned home from this gorgeous funeral in a thoughtful mood,
thinking how much emptiness there is in glory, and particularly in
political glory. This man had been "His Excellency the Minister" and
not only his own province, but the whole country had placed its hopes
on him. But what had he done? He had left his home to cast himself
into the great whirlpool of the metropolis. It was the romance of a
great provincial plunged in Paris into the reality of contemporary
history, and become as ordinary as the commonplace items of the
Journals. "What a subject for a study at once profoundly modern and
perfectly lifelike!" The funeral convoy had hardly left the church of the
Madeleine when my plot of this romance was thought out, and
appeared clearly before me in this title, very brief and simple: His
Excellency the Minister.
I have not drawn any one in particular, I have thought of no individual
person, I even forgot all about this departed Minister, whose face I
hardly caught even a glimpse of, and of whose life I was completely
ignorant; I had only in my mind's eye a hero or rather a heroine:
Politics with all its discouragements, its vexations, its treacheries, its
deceptions, its visions as fair as the blue sky of summer, suddenly
bursting like