Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1877-07-14
NJ. THEIRS IN TIE PLACE SAINT.
GEORGES.


out of place. 1t belongs to one o.
the NJ. Haussmann's BOulevards
Think of a new Park-lane mansion
planted by some accident in TOtten.
ham-cOurt-rOad. The old dirty house
of the DOsne family, in which "the
VOltaire of politics" was wont tC
polish his spectacles at the first peep
of day when he was an Opposition
deputy of NapOleon's legislative
body, was in keeping with its sur
roundings. The tawdry and trump
cry old prints and casts that have
been ranged along the opposite walls
for many a long year; the streams
of dingy 60TTiere folk passing to and
fro, enliVened by laughing art-stu-
dents and grisettes become tOretteS ;
the cheap provision and art and GU
riOsity shops; the dark passages
leading to the houses ); the many
tinted walls prOclaiming the odd
tumble of trades carried on under
one roOf-made up an unfashiona-
bic, but eminently amusing and
! characteristic, quarter, where an old
bourgeois might love to settle with
his money-bags, and gossip and
angle away the evening of his life.
Monsieur Louis Adolphe ThierS
was thoroughly comfortable in the
! spacious old place, which came to
/ him with his bride, MademOiselle
4 DOsne, and in which, like a dutiful
sOn-in-law, he held sacred the two
/ rooms in which the mother of his
wife had lived TO her death. Through
all the troubles of his extraordinary
public life he had kept the old house
| intact, as his domestic, literary, and
| antiquarian sanctuary. In it he had
worked with his pen for many long
/ years when Fate denied him Il ting-
er in the political pie of his country.
In it he had received his troops Of
friends and political partisans; and
| scores upon scores of times, within
its walls, the deStinieS of France had
been embodied in an epigram. In
it too he had massed such a cOllec-
ton Of objects of art and UertH as few
men of leisure, much less of affairs,
have been able to get together.
M. Thiers had been just fifty
years in Paris--fOrty-nine Of which
he had been a marked figure in the
intellectual ranks Of his country
when Citizens Fontaine and Jules
AndrieuX, delegates of the Com
mune, directinga horde Of cOn1AlitJ2-
ards, gutted his home, and proceed
to raze it to the ground. They had
hardly got the walls down when the
Versailles troops delivered the capi-
tai from their fangs, and when the
National Assembly at Versailles
voted the owner something over a
million of francs to rebuild and re-
furnish his home. The present white
mansion, in the purest Louis XIV.
style, is the splendid result of the
| ASsembly'S most honorable act; so
that, even out Of the catastrophe of
1871, which covered so many men
with ruin, NJ. Thiers came at any
rate no loser. The magnificent Ii
brary in which he is now writing
an account of his prodigiOus career,
and finishing his lOng-prOjected his
tory of the Medici, is not the old Ii
brary, it is true; but it is on the old
spot, and is filled with the treas
ures of the ancient place, which NM.
FOntaine and AndrieuX were good
enough, having carried them away
in carts amid the yells of frantic
mob, not to destroy. The 6ibelOts
were, no doubt, to have been sold for
the good of the Committee of Public
Safety, and as punishment for the
part 9 lie Sieur Thiers" was taking
in the salvation of this country; but
| Fortune did not betray their owner
| even in the aimee terrible.
NJ. ThierS deScends from a Mar
seillais family of clOth-merchants
who were ruined by the first ReVO-
luton. Fate owed the family some
! compensation, and made the son the
! successful historian Of the event
| which wrecked their fortunes. Fame
in letters, and in craftsmanship and
wealth also, has come to NJ. Theirs
out of the thrOeS and cOnvulsiOns of
revolution; and he is now in his old
! age secure in superb retreat, COW
| cred with hOnOrS, consulted by kings
albeit eX-president, with more in
fluence over political events than the
! great gendarme at the ElySee, be-
cause he has been cunning enough
to avoid the responsibility Of the
revolution he has helped to make,
and has managed to reappear again
and again as at once the champion of
! freedom and of society. His debut
in life is a plain key to this career.
| In 1920, the year in which he
passed as an advocate at AK, the
| Academy of that town offered a prize
! for panegyric on NauVenargueS.
The young advocates paper was
! deemed the best; but the majority
Of the judges being ROyalistS, and
| the writer being regarded as a JacO-
bin, the competition was declared to
be adjourned to the following year.
! The judges had their match in
| AdOlphe Theirs. lie not only sent
in his original paper a second time,
| but he wrote another, which he
caused to be posted in Paris in order
to hide the authorship effectually.
This new paper gained the first prize,
and the old one the second. 1t was
on this success that he went to Paris,
and within year became marked
man a star of the Constitutional.
Bright and keen-Witted, with a
sharp tongue, swift and true in
sight, and method and cunning Civ
ing pOise and purpose to his ardent
southern temperament, the panegy-
riSt of NauVenargue5 has kept the
world busy with his name for half a
century, and has not done with this
world yet. AS for the events of NJ.
ThierS, life, he has seen and known
and acted with everybody worth
seeing, knowing, and acting with
during the last half century. The
most adventurous, slilful, and elO-
quent promoter of the Monarchy of
July, he was, in its declining years,
its most effective enemy. With short
intervals of power, he has passed
his life in opposition. In 1916 he
asked the regime of July whether
the country was to be reduced to Il
fiction of reprepresentatiVe govern
ment, saying that he should have
been warned of this in 1880. In 1913
he was the most eloquent denuncia-
tor OF the doomed monarchy, and
declared himself to be of the rGvO-
lutionary party of Europe. But he
kept away from the banquets and
out Ofthe fight. Hewas under shelter
throughout the storm. 1t was only
when the sky was clearing that the
bright sharp eyes behind the big
sDGGtacleS were seen looking up and
down the street for another clear
coast and more opposition triumphS.
When the fortunes of Louis NapO-
leon rose, and he was candidate for
the presidency, NJ. Thiers voted for