The New York herald., 1870-07-21
Suicide Of the French Minister at Wash-
ingt0n.


suicide Of the French Minister at WASH
The startling news that NJ Provost Paradol,
the newly arrived French Minister at Wash
ngton, had committed suicide early yesterday
morning at once awakened universal sympathy
and regret. All sympathize with his two
young children, who accompanied him to New
York. and whom he was intending g joih in q
few days at Newport ali deeply regret this
abrupt fatal termination of the diplomatic
career on which the distinguished publicist
and academician had entered at juncture
of circumstances that lent extraordinary
Importance to his mission to Wash
ington and promised rare opportunities
for the display OF his brilliant genius. The
sketch which we elsewhere present of the life
and works of NJ Provost Paradol shows how
much he had done during his comparatively
brief existence to earn ready and full recogni-
ton Of his remarkable gifts and attainments,
from his early successes at college and as
competitor for academical prizes to his celebrity
as an author and as q journalist, his election
as member of the French Academy and his
appointment as Minister to the United States.
Many conjectures are rife as to the causes Of
the melancholy suicide Of M. Prevost-Paradol.
1t is supposed that he may have been one
more victim to the overwork to which the
exigencies of modern journalism expose an
intensely active brain The mental toll Of
which his elaborate and powerful articles in
the Presse, the Journal des Dibats and the
Courier du DinaancAe, as well as his
numerous pamphlets and books, were the fruit
must have been prodigious. His wit and
sarcasm were no less marvellous than his
erudition and his ''large discourse Of reason"
And all his fine intellectual faculties were
employed, not merely in the "stil air Of
delightful studies" in the leisure and seclusion
of a scholars closet, but in rapid, incessant,
exhausting work at the editorial desk. More
over, it is thought that keen sense of the
responsibilities of his new diplomatic position,
by comforting which upon him the Emperor
intended, through him, to honor the press, as
well as to attest the sincerity of his own recent
adhesion TO the theories Of parliamentary
liberty which M Prevost-P -Parodol had always
persistently advocated; modest conscious
ness Of his inexperience in diplomacy, coupled
with an eager ambition to fulfil its duties in
an exemplary manner; sensitive, nervous
organization stung to the quick by bitter,
brutal and unjust animadversions which
his appointment ELECTED from the extreme
left and the extreme right, from IRE
concilables and implacables, from Orlean-
lists who insinuated that it was the
recompense of his alleged desertion of their
cause as well as their party, and from
old Bonapartists who were jealous of this pro-
motion of new conner in their ranks; the
sudden shock on his arrival in New York of
the news Of an impending European war; the
fatigue of his voyage across the Atlantic his
surprise at finding that the old-fashioned COM
monplaces about Washington aud Lafayette
and the amicable relations between France
and America had been replaced by very
general expressions of partiality for Prussia
in preference to France, which has never
sent to our shores 1.-THE of the
number of voters who annually arrive here
from all the German States; the blazing sun
at Washington and the fierce blasts of heat
that sweep up the Potomac and through wide,
sbadeless avenues as through fiery furnace,
dangerous even to native residents and almost
necessarily fatal to an unacclimated foreigner,
whose first seven days and nights in the coun-
try had been unremittingly devoted to his new
and trying duties; that, in fine, all these
causes co-operated in weakening his body,
Grazing his brain and impelling him to suicide.
Whatever may have been the cause or the
combination of causes that led to this tragical
result, we repeat that it has awakened profound
and universal regret.