Alluding in after days to his experiences on this journey, the
great man said that the earth, as seen by him from the car of the balloon,
looked like a huge carpet woven chance-wise with different coloured wools.
It did not impress him at all, he added, as it was really nothing but "une
vilaine chinoiserie." It was from Rouen, where he arrived on the following
day, that he issued the famous proclamation in which he called on France
to make a compact with victory or death. On October 9, he joined the other
delegates at Tours and took over the post of Minister of War as well as
that of Minister of the Interior.
His departure from the capital was celebrated by that clever versifier of
the period, Albert Millaud, who contributed to _Le Figaro_ an amusing
effusion, the first verse of which was to this effect:
"Gambetta, pale and gloomy,
Much wished to go to Tours,
But two hundred thousand Prussians
In his project made him pause.
To aid the youthful statesman
Came the aeronaut Nadar,
Who sent up the 'Armand Barbes'
With Gambetta in its car."
Further on came the following lines, supposed to be spoken by Gambetta
himself whilst he was gazing at the German lines beneath him--
"See how the plain is glistening
With their helmets in a mass!
Impalement would be dreadful
On those spikes of polished brass!"
Millaud, who was a Jew, the son, I think--or, at all events, a near
relation--of the famous founder of _Le Petit Journal_, the advent of which
constituted a great landmark in the history of the French Press--set
himself, during several years of his career, to prove the truth of the
axiom that in France "tout finit par des chansons.
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