The Sun.
London, England, 1870-05-06 00:00:00

FLOURENS, THE REVOLUTIONIST.

M. Gustave Flourens, whose name has been mentioned
so prominently in connection with the Paris plot, and who
recently fled from France after an attempt to get up an
insurrection in Paris, has a remarkable history. Many
of the French democrats can boast of adventures, but few
have passed such a strange life of revolution abetting.
M. Flourens is eldest son to a peer of France,
that eminent scholar and teacher at the Sorbonne
who maintained that
.to reach the limits of human
life, which is five times the growth period of man, and
therefore a hundred years, periodic recourse should be
had neither to the fountain of youth nor to Parr's Invigo-
rating Pills, but simply to the observance of the good old
rule of sober living. His son was first heard of in connec-
tion with the Polish insurrection of 1863. In the pre-
ceding year M. Gustave Flourens went over to help
the Poles. He was then about four-and-twenty years of
age. When he got to Craco* he discovered that the re'
volution was one of aristocrats, " nothing but counts and
marquises and barons," and he turned his democraticback
on it in disgust. In 1863 his father's health failing, he
took his place in the College de France and delivered
a course of lectures on " the Human Races," which
had a great success with the youth of the schools, the
boisterous, full-blooded, budding Atheists, but won no
favour with the then Ministry of the friends of order.
He had to give up lecturing, and came to London in 1864,
but passed from this over to Belgium, and mounted the
rostrum as political teacher at Brussels and
Lidge. He wrote, too, for l'Espiegle and La Rive
Gauche. When the insurrection in Crete started
M. Flourens immediately started too. He campaigned
with the island mountaineers for an entire year, and at
its close was sent as one of their deputies to Athens,
where he was arrested by order of the Greek Ministry, at
the desire of the French Embassy, and deported to Mar-
seilles. France soon let him go, and the first use he made
of his liberty was to sail for Athens to help on still the
cause he had adopted. But the Greek police hunted him
with much more assiduity than they hunt brigands, and
the cosmopolitan revolutionist soon found it needful to
retire. Arrived at Naples on his westward route, he set
foot to soil, and commenced writing again, of course in a
Republican journal, Il Popolo Italia. Here he contrived
to rouse the ire of the authorities by an article inveigh-
ing against the clerical despotism of the Menabrea
Ministry. Italy accordingly became too hot to hold him.
Flourens got home to Paris just at the era when the law
on public meetings had come into operation. He became
a frequent speaker at the clubs, and made himself notable
by the violence of his attacks against the Empire. At
Rocheehouart, and again at Belleville, he refused to
give way to the commissary of police when the
latter declared the assemblies dissolved, and in
March 1861 was arrested under a charge of con-
spring against the security of the State. Brought before
the tribunal of Correctional Police, he was sentenced to
four months' imprisonment—not for conspiracy, but for
verbal attacks against the Empire. No sooner had he
got out of prison than he challenged M. Paul de
Cassagnac, of the Pays, for insulting the Republicans,
his friends. The duel took place, and Flourens who fought
most persistently, after receiving two wounds, was much
injured. Recovered from his wounds, M. Flourens set
himself heart and soul to the advocacy of Rochefort's can-
didature in the First Circumscription of Paris and when
the'Count Victor-Henri became the Deputy,Henri, and
started the Marseillaise. he joined his staff, and inaugu-
rated a new feature in journalism, la tribune militaire a de-
partment into which the troops might drop their com-
plaints against their officers as into a poor box, and they were
sure to be thankfully -received. When Victor Noir was
buried, Flourens tried to get up an insurrection. When
Rochefort was arrested he tried again. For this offence
he had to fly, and has since resided in London.
Such is the man to whom the Standard, of all papers,
sent a reporter for interviewing purposes. The journalist
missionary found the Republican after some difficulty, and
very surprising the sight was. There was nothing revolu-
tionary either about the man or his residence. "On the
table were three books—' Les Chatiments ' of Victor
Hugo ; the History of the Revolution of '4B,' by Louis
Blanc ; and the Crimes of the Second December,' by
Victor Schcelcher. There were newspapers about, too,
the ll
of
the faeiwrsindlltse,oawssate
thaF igar n
gentleman
o ad
rtehe Standard,
ad
in the aby
International.one
He rose to receive us—a lithe figure rather overthemiddle
hthei4nh, tr,e4ua fiacare,
af
nd do f franknessy
t nd
abald high-arched
for
head, with light brown hair behind, long aquiline nose,
advanced 'post to a small forest of silken sandy beard.
Such was the man ; when he spoke his voice was clear,
unhesitating, and musical, and his manner in perfect
keeying with look and voice, unreserved, manly, modest,
We spoke with him—of revolutions, assassination,
treasons, and stratagems ? No ; we came solely to see
the man, to take his portrait and his mental measures
We would be unjust to him if we did not confess he im-
pressed ms as an honest enthusiast, unconscious of fear
and incapable of falsehood, but evidently of temperament
most sanguine and imbued with a blind devotedness to Ora
extremest of political theories.".

OPAL STRAND THEATRE.
J-I) Sole Lessee and Manageress, Mrs Swanborough.
THIS EVENING, at 7 o'clock, WIDOWS' WEEDS. Messrs
Crouch, Turner, and Mesdames E. Bufton and Anstiss.
Followed by SIR GEORGE AND A DRAGON. 3Tessrs.
James, Terry, Fenton; Mesdames Santley, Dashwood, Goodall,
Hughes, Anstiss, and Metcalfe.
And A FISH OUT OF WATER.