The same may be said of his successors, MM.

Faure and Loubet.

Sensible, businesslike men of bourgeois origin, they typify the new France that has grown up since the age when military adventurers could keep their heels on her neck provided that they crowned her brow with laurels.

That age would seem to have passed for ever away.

A well-known adage says: "It is the unexpected that happens in French politics." To forecast their course is notoriously unsafe in that land of all lands.