A MONUMENT TO CLOVIS HUGHES

The Paris City Council has just decided that the bust of Clovis Hugues would be placed in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.

The life of Clovis Hugues, who was at the same time poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and politician, was a real novel where tragedy combined with comedy and the marvellous. His father was a miller, like that of Rembrandt. Very mystical, Clovis Hughes took the cassock. He left the priesthood and joined his parents in Marseilles ; they were in deep embarrassment there ; the mother earned twelve sous a day by working on making shirts, a detail which the brilliant orator was to recall later, in the tribune, when speaking of the social crisis. Shortly after, Clovis Hugues joined a commercial broker as a clerk to pick up samples of wheat around the Stock Exchange, a job for which he was paid 20 francs a month.

One day, Clovis Hugues learned that they wanted an office boy from the newspaper "Le Peuple" ; he presented himself, was accepted ; he was carrying out his new duties with zeal, when the editor learned that he wrote verse ; he ordered an article for the next day. The office boy put down his feather duster, took a pen, immediately wrote a brilliant column, following the publication of which he was attached to the newspaper as an editor with a very honorable salary. It was then that dated the turbulent life of Clovis Hugues, his great successes as a speaker and writer, which his admirers will crown by erecting a monument to him.