Félix Faure Félix François Faure ( 30 January 1841 – 16 February 1899 ) was President of France from 1895 until his death . Biography . Félix François Faure was born in Paris , the son of a small furniture maker . Having started as a tanner and merchant at Le Havre , he acquired considerable wealth , was elected to the National Assembly on 21 August 1881 , and took his seat as a member of the Left , interesting himself chiefly in matters concerning economics , railways and the navy . In November 1882 he became under - secretary for the colonies in Ferry ' s ministry , and retained the post till 1885 . He held the same post in Tirard ' s ministry in 1888 , and in 1893 was made vice - president of the chamber . In 1894 he obtained cabinet rank as minister of marine in the administration of Charles Dupuy . In the following January he was unexpectedly elected President of the Republic upon the resignation of President Casimir - Perier . The principal cause of his elevation was the determination of the various sections of the moderate republican party to exclude Henri Brisson , who had had a plurality of votes on the first ballot , but had failed to obtain an absolute majority . To accomplish this end it was necessary to unite the party , and unity could only be secured by the nomination of someone who offended no one . Faure answered perfectly to this description . In 1895 he granted amnesty to the anarchist movements , enabling the return from exile to England of several famous anarchists , such as Émile Pouget . His fine presence and his tact on ceremonial occasions rendered the state some service when in 1896 he received the Tsar at Paris , and in 1897 returned his visit , after which meeting the Franco - Russian Alliance was publicly announced again . The latter days of Faure ' s presidency were infamous for the Dreyfus affair , which he was determined to regard as " chose jugée " ( Latin : res judicata ; English : adjudicated with no further appeal ) . This drew against him the criticism of pro - Dreyfus intellectuals and politicians , such as Émile Zola and Georges Clemenceau . Death . Faure died suddenly from apoplexy in the Élysée Palace on 16 February 1899 , at a critical juncture while engaged in sexual activities in his office with 30 - year - old Marguerite Steinheil . It has been widely reported that Felix Faure had his fatal seizure while Steinheil was fellating him , but the exact nature of their sexual intercourse is in fact unknown and such reports may have stemmed from various " jeux de mots " ( puns ) made up afterward by his political opponents . One such pun was to nickname Mme Steinheil " la pompe funèbre " ( wordplay in French : " pompes funèbres " means " death care business " and " pompe funèbre " could be translated , literally , as " funeral blow - job " ) . George Clemenceau ' s epitaph of Faure , in the same trend , was " Il voulait être César , il ne fut que Pompée " ( another wordplay in French ; could mean both " he wished to be Caesar , but ended up as Pompey " , or " he wished to be Caesar and ended up being blown " : the verb " pomper " in French is also slang for performing oral sex on a man ) ; Clemenceau , who was also editor of the newspaper " l ' Aurore " , wrote that " upon entering the void , he [ Faure ] must have felt at home " . After his death , some alleged extracts from his private journals , dealing with French policy , were published in the Paris press . Opinion on the auto - industry . In 1898 ( and for the first few years of the next century ) the French Auto - industry was the largest in the world . President Faure was not impressed . Invited to address industry leaders at what , in restrospect , is recorded as the first Paris Motor Show , Faure told his audience , " Your cars are seriously ugly and they stink " ( " “ Vos voitures sont bien laides et sentent bien mauvais ! ” " )