Does camaraderie survive greatness?

This is a question that is answered by the anecdotes of history. Thus, all our Presidents of the Republic, except one, have kept their familiar manners with their friends. Mr. Gaston Doumergue provided us with new proof of this yesterday. Messrs. Raoul Péret, Georges Leygues and Cruppi had gone to the Elysée to present the office of the work of the French idea abroad. When these gentlemen had filed past, as was customary, in front of the President who shook their hands, Mr. Gaston Doumergut noticed one of his former colleagues.

Ah! it's you, he said to him, how long it has been since we last saw each other! I So you have to be President of the Republic for us to meet.

Thiers, who by the way did not address many people informally, had kept his same habits when he was Head of State; Likewise, Marshal MacMahon with his former army comrades. All the other Presidents of the Republic acted in the same way, with the exception of Félix Faure, who, from the very day of his election, demanded the official vous. The anecdote that Etienne told is well known. As soon as the election was won and the parliamentary congratulations addressed, when the entry of the new President into the Elysée was announced, Etienne, who had been a colleague for many years and who was also the one who introduced the use of the familiar form of address in Parliament, telephoned Félix Faure to repeat the compliments he had addressed to him at Versailles an hour before.

You know, dear friend, he told him over the line, I am very happy.

But the new President pointed out to him that the representative of France should be treated differently from the simple deputy and that the vous was now de rigueur. Etienne could not believe it. Oh! then... And he let out a curse into the phone. The two men were reconciled only much later.

If I may be allowed a personal impression, I remember that the first time I visited Mr. Millerand after his presidential election, despite forty years of camaraderie, I remembered Etienne's adventure and addressed him in the third person. He burst out laughing.

What's gotten into you? he asked; what's changed in me?

"The familiarity of early years only fades away in mediocre souls," said Chateaubriand. This was the opinion of Pope Benedict XV, and the Revue mondiale recently reported that, when he was a simple monsignor, Mgr Della Chiesa was on friendly terms with a few young men of his age, notably with Baron Monti (today director of religious funds); when the latter presented himself, after the election to the pontificate, the pope "expressly wanted Baron Monti to continue to address him informally as before" Benedict XV had perhaps not read Chateaubriand, but he followed his precepts on this point.

JEAN-BERNARD.