Félix Faure
Félix François Faure (; 30 January 1841 – 16 February 1899) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1895 until his death in 1899. A native of Paris, he worked as a tanner in his younger years. Faure became a member of the Chamber of Deputies for Seine-Inférieure in 1881. He rose to prominence in national politics up until unexpectedly assuming the presidency, during which time France's relations with Russia improved. Writer Émile Zola's famous "J'Accuse…!" open letter was written to Faure in "L'Aurore" in 1898 in the course of the Dreyfus affair . Faure's state funeral at Notre-Dame Cathedral on 23 February 1899 was the scene of an attempted coup d'état led by French nationalist poet Paul Déroulède, who was later exiled to Spain. Biography. Félix François Faure was born in Paris, the son of a maker of small furniture pieces Jean-Marie Faure (1809–1889) and his first wife, Rose Cuissard (1819–1852). Having started as a tanner and merchant at Le Havre, Faure 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 that 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 such unity could be secured only by the nomination of someone who offended no one. Faure answered this description exactly. He granted amnesty to the anarchist movements in 1895, enabling the return from exile in England of several famous anarchists, such as Émile Pouget. In 1897, he met Marguerite Steinheil, who subsequently became his mistress. This scandalous high-profile liaison has been the subject of  works of fiction such as "The President's Mistress", aired on Eurochannel, with Cristiana Reali in Steinheil's role. In 1898 (and for the first few years of the following century), the French automobile industry was the largest in the world. President Faure was not impressed. Invited to address industry leaders at what, in retrospect, is recorded as the first Paris Motor Show, Faure told his audience, "Your cars are very ugly and they smell very bad" (""). His fine presence and his tact on ceremonial occasions rendered the state some service when he received the Tsar at Paris in 1896 , 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 consumed by the Dreyfus affair, which he was determined to regard as (, 'adjudicated with no further appeal'). This drew against him the criticism of pro-Dreyfus intellectuals and politicians, such as Émile Zola and Georges Clemenceau. Freemasonry. Félix Faure was initiated in Le Havre, at "L'aménité", a lodge of Grand Orient de France, on 25 October 1865. Death. Faure died suddenly at the age of 58 from apoplexy in the Élysée Palace on 16 February  1899, 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 performing oral sex on him, but the exact nature of their sexual activities is unknown and such reports may have stemmed from various (puns) made up afterward by his political opponents. One such pun was to nickname Madame Steinheil (wordplay in French: means 'death care business' and could be translated, literally, as 'funeral pump'). Georges Clemenceau's epitaph of Faure, in the same trend, was "" (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 in French is also slang for performing oral sex); Clemenceau, who was also editor of the newspaper , 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. Ship. The French barque "President Felix Faure", named for the President, was involved in a 1908 case of shipwreck at the Antipodes Islands, south of  New Zealand, the survivors being stranded for sixty days before being rescued. External links.