THE SKETCHES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1509, 31 January 1901, Page 13

THE SKETCHES.

HENIiI ROCHEFORT

A CHARACTER SKETCH.

(Condensed from "M.A.P.")

AN EVENT. I have seen. Rochefort at Anteuil. There were many other things during my visit to the races of Anteuil last Sunday which might well have taken their places in my memory as events. But they were all submerged in the one great fact—l had seen, and had had some opportunity of studying, one of the most remarkable, one of the strangest personalities of my time, and especially of my profession. For there is scarcely any spot in the world richer m sights to impress, instruct, perchance horrify and disgust, than the paddock of me races at Auteuil. Let me say at once, however, that this French racecourse —luce many other French racecourses, I believe—is entirely free from most of the objectionable features' of the English racecourse. All the hideous passions of the turf ave doubtless present, and there is one painful feature of modern life, and especially of the modern life of Paris, which obtrudes itself after a fashion which' even the loose ethics of the racecourse do not yet permit in England. But everything is on the surface, quiet self-rrstrained; it is rather the subdued atmosphere of- the elegant drawing room than the raucous-throated air of the gambling ring. Those carefully-dressed men, these women in superb and rayishing costumes—with their eyes, their cheeks, their hair made up as though they bad come out of the .green. room and were going before the footlights—may be among the worst of men and women; but externally they are quite perfect in their conduct, gentle and soft in voice, caressing in manner; above all things, bright and sunny in temperament and manner. THE. PADDOCK. But to return to Auteil; es I have said, nothing could be more agreeable. And everything about the paddock is arranged in the same spirit. You get a good seat or you stand up on the stand, and you see a, good part of the race without crush, without difficulty, without the smallest approach to rudeness on the part of anybody. And if you walk across the_lawn you have an opportunity unique almost in the world. Paris is still the magnet for the lovers of pleasure everywhere; and whatever be its dynasty, or circumstances, or politics for the time being, its attractions are not to be resisted. It is. at the same time, essentially the city of equality —and to some extent of anonymity. You have more perfect freedom in Paris than almost anywhere else. Most of the men, for instance, wore tall hats last Sunday: but there were plenty with low-crowned hats, and nobody took the least notice of them. CELEBRITIES INCOGNITO. And nobody took any particular notice of even the celebrities. That gentleman sitting on a chair on the lawn with the long, white beard, the.curiously long nose, the expression of gentle cynicism, is none other than the King of the Belgians. But except that now and then a. Belgian subject makes a ceremonious bow to him. nobody takes the least notice. People, indeed, don't look after him half so much as they do after a strange old gentleman with whiskers, longer and more sweeping than ever Dundreary wore, and perfectly white, who, you are toid, is the owner of that vast concern, the shops of the Louvre. A WHIFF FROM TUB EAST. Look at that extremely tall giant, with tremendous square shoulders, a huge frame, a look that somehow or other seems at once familiar and strange to you; familiar as recalling a face and figure you have often seen in portraits and illustrated papers—unfamiliar, because somehow or other, there is about its hugeness, its somewhat (strong expression and strong features, a little of the still untamed primitiveness and savagery of the Eastern man. He is smoking a cigarette; nobody speaks to him, nobody notices him, though, if you watch him, you may observe that he has a sly look for the beautiful women who are passing by him. The reason the figure is familiar to you is that it bears a atriking resemblance to the last Czar of all the Russias—that mighty potentate who had the destinies of millions, the slave® fiis very breath, and yet who perished of the disease that is produced by solitude, by want of air, and by terror. It is the Grand Duke Alexis whom you see nassing, unnoticed, through the crowd. ' A TRAGIC NOTE. Nor is the tragic note—which, somehow or other, always doe® seem to haunt you under ©Ven the loudest paeans of Parisian joy—nor is the tragic'note wanting. Right in front of the grand stand is the chief and most dangerous jump of the steeplechase. Literally ©very man who tries it takes his life in his hands. I had been delayed when the third race was announced, and had no time to ascend to the topmost heights of the Grand Stand—the place from which you ceji see the race perfectly throughout—and so I accompanied my friend to the lawn. He proposed that we should go right opposite this terrible water fence. I had not time to more than just get to the fence when the horses with the jookeys wore lushing like a whirlwind to it. In fact, I arrived at the fence just as they did; and suddenly my heart almoststopped, and there arose from all that vast crowd of pleasure-seekers—frivolous, perhaps heartless, as most of them were—one of the strangest, wildest, most terrorstricken shouts I ever heard. It was all in the twiwnkling of an eye. One of the horses fell; then the jockey fell; and immediately and right on top of him tumbled the horse; and one could almost hear—as one imagined—the crash of his chest—of his heart, and of all his internal organs. The poor wretch lay there, quite still, without a move, while thq poor horse, riderless, continued its course; and, in

fact, never stopped! till the race was over.

There is always something pathetic about a riderless horse. Perhaps it is because it brings back to you your early memory of a soldier’s funeral, perhaps because of familiar pictures of the battle field; but it always suggests distress, los3, death. And this poor horse, wild, embarrassed, rushing after other horses, and, indeed, usually in front of them, had something that made the tragedy in which it had taken part appear even more tragic. And, meantime, everybody was under the spell of this sudden interruption of all the gaiety of the day—this whisper of death in the midst of a song of joy—and for a while you could see that people were distressed, anxious, distracted, from all the turmoil and tumult of the race.

AND LIFE GOES ON. But life does not stop a second for death in this ever-whirling world, and even as the policemen"came np with their ambulance and took away the still, the silent, and, apparently, dead body of the one jockey, ail the oftsers were careering around at full speed, with that stem look of resolution and of terror combined which is the characteristic expression of the iockey in the midst of a race. The poor riderless horse continued careering along beside the others all the time—lost, embarrassed, terrified, but faithful to its purpo.se and its training. As a matter of fact the jockey. whom everybody took for dead, was up and about within an hour; and is, I am told, not much the worse for that awful crash. But it was a terrible moment for him, and for every body who saw his dreadful fall.

DREYFUS AGAIN. And a few minutes later there stalked right on to- that brilliant racecourse yefc another tragic form. The next race was the steeplechase for French officers. When the officers came out on their horses, I observed that one entirely separated himself from the others, and that instead of accompanying them up to- the startingpoint, he turned his back upon them and rode, right in front of the Grand Stand. I did not understand this, nor did I unerstand a scene which followed. I thought when the race was over that I heard sounds very much like hisses, but I believed I must nave been mistaken. As a matter ot fact, I was right. There was Ms si noand a good deal of it. too. Among the officers was a Captain Coblentz. Captain Co bleu tz is a Jew, and ha© been mixed up with some one of the thousand and -one cases of persecution to which Jewish officers ha ve been subjected since the Dreyfus case stirred up all the hideous pcs--0l x2 ce religion. The appearance or this officer in the race. Afcting, of course quite within his rights—had been the sublet of ferocious philippics in the antibemitio press for some days, and this was the reason of the hissess. There was, besides, some very unpleaant controversies even before the race began. The unfortunate officer had been subjected to insets just at the moment when he was saddling his horse. Just fancy a scene like t|* a t a preparation for a steeplechase—that terrible ordeal which tries the verystoutest nerves', the very same kind of race which had resulted in the removal of the poor, silent, and apparently wrecked bit or humanity a few moment® before! ENTER ROCHEFORT.

Of that scene of anti-Jewish passion M. Erochefore had been, among the spectators and it was within half an hour of its occurrence that I saw him. It was quite bv accident. After the races at Auteuil there is always a long and trying wait while people are finding their carriages, their automobiles, their cabs. And M. Rochefort, like the rest of the world, had to stand for nearly half an hour waiting. It was then that I saw him. I cannot give an adequate idea of the strange fascination this man exercises over my imagination. Just fancy what he has seen, what he has done, what he has suffered what suffering he has made! He has haunted my imagination for nearly forty years; for I can remember his first beginnings, when he was shaking the tottering Empire to its final fall. And then his presence in the French capital during the siege, and his membership of the Government that sprang into existence on the wreck of the Empire—that strangest of all Ministries where men were taken from the penny a-lining desk and the tavern and the briefless bag to govern a mighty nation in the agony of a great war. Then the same figure rose before me during the awful Commune.

Amid all the wholesale slaughterings, the mad outburst of anarchy and devilry in which it culminated, the form of this man again mounted up above all the smoke and carnage/ I remember as distinctly as though it were yesterday the journey he made as a prisoner to Versailles, when at every step and at every second* he was in danger ox being lynched, and when he passed through a cyclone o„f execration which ought to have turned the mad to madness or to stone. And then the days or imprisonment with .execution by the knift the bullet as' the everpresent possibility for every morning of many months; and then the, transportation to New Caledonia, and the escape, and the return from exile, and then Boulangism, and then exile again ; and now again permanent residence in Paris, with a paper circulating by the two hundred thousand every morning, and dependent for all that hpge hold of the public on the pen of this one man. Is there in history

anything comparable to such achievements by no other weapons than the point of a pen and a bottle of ink?

THAT POTENT PEN!

How many reputations, how many lives, how many careers have perished under that pen ! What days and nights of agony and bloody sweat has this man caused to that vast multitude of men who are trying to clamber to the top in this land of equality of voracious ambition .and of all sibilities, from a dictatorship to a guillotine! As I stand here this Sunday afternoon looking at Rochefort, I can scarcely realise that I am looking at the man who has done all this, has been all this,. For, indeed, there is nothing in the moment to suggest the presence of the author of more tragedies of real (life than any living; being. He stands alone; nobody speaks to him;

nobody seems even to notice him; he is just as deserted amid all this vast multitude as though he were in some far African solitude. It may be accident; it is more probable that he has made too many enemies to have any friends. Whatever the reason, Rochefort, the best known man in France, the darling of the masses of Paris, stands all this half hour absolutely by himself, speaking to nobody, spoken to by nobody, except, indeed .a beggar. I watch him with that fascinated gaze with which one looks at some portent, and I note that he counts out carefully and slowly five penny pieces and hands them to the beggar; soft-hearted you see, but not careless.

I hear one or two gentlemen as they pass utter some words of reproach, but thev are far away from Rochefort; he neither hears nor lic-eds them. Indeed, I never saw a man look more unconscious. Ami now let me try to describe the man as he looked at this moment. At onoe I say that you scarcely ever saw an instance where the exterior corresponds so exactly with the mind and the temperament The one word which seems to describe the whole apoearauee of the man is th'e word 'livid." Not only would I describe the complexion as livid, but 1 had almost said that the hair and eyes are livid. The hair is snow white; but snow-white not after the soft fashion of placid and subdued old age, but with a crispy white that turns to a rebellious top-knot, and to thick and thistlelike benches. And the eyes—how shall I convey the impression of eombreness unfathomable which they made upon me? They seemed to speak of black night and devastating fires somewhat spent, but still ready to burst into black flame. - Let mo add that the sombre suggestivenets of M. Rochefort's face waws increased by the clothes. He is smaller in size than I expected, and more thick set; and instead of being a dandy—as so many radical leaders have been —he is dressed in quiet, and as j. thought not very new. or very well-cut black clothes. If I had seen him outside France I would have taken him for one of those Chicago multi-millionaires who have crushed thousands of competitors. have played with a million of human destinies, and in the process have lost all hope, all heart, all joy, and become that modern brother to Midas of old—the rich American whose health is gone, and whose wealth has been but Dead Sea fruit. WHAT IS HE?

•Such, then, is Rochefort as I saw him on that Sunday. What is he? Self-deluded prophet or conscious charlatan, the grim Cato, or grimmer Diogenes, that goes about smiting thieves and ' revealing rogues; or a brilliant interpreter of the ru*ing passion of the mob and the hour? I cannot say. But thafi Sunday at Auteuil remains in m~ memory and imagination for ever, for on that day I saw Rochefort.