It is often the case in France — it has been so for more
than a hundred years — that suspicion does the work of
proof. The readiness of the French to believe ill of
each other is a stain upon their national character and
upon the race, but it is a trait which ever since the
Revolution has passed from the atmosphere of courts,
where it was bred, into the life of the people. Let loose
a calumny and it will run its course. Few are the men
who can stand against it. M. Carnot was one. He
had been already for five years a target for the poison-
ous malevolence of the most licentious press in the
world. Yet so complete was the conviction of his up-
rightness that scandal was a useless weapon against
him, and Messrs. Drumont and Detaille and their con-
federates perceived that they must allege something in
the nature of evidence if they were to shake the popu-
lar belief in the President. They produced what they
had, and it was nothing. It was instantly confuted,
though it needed no confuting, and when this had col-
lapsed Paris stood waiting breathless for what was to
follow. People could not believe the danger over, or
that a conspiracy so infamous had been hatched out of
such rotten eggs as these. But there was nothing more.
The Republic was safe, and it was the stainless and un-
stainable name of its Chief Magistrate which had been
the salvation of the State. He has rendered many other



PKESIDENT CAENOT 265

services to France, great services which will live in his
memory. But this was greatest of ail.
