His Excellency the Minister | Page 2

soap bubbles; and to the woes of Politics, I naturally
endeavored to add those of the pangs of love.
And this is how my book came to see the light. I have been frequently
asked from what 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