Page:The Paris Commune - Karl Marx - ed. Lucien Sanial (1902).djvu/94

 Rh of a theft of 300,000 francs, while manager of one of the branches of the Société Générale, rue Palestro, No. 5. This Arthur Picard was made by Ernest Picard the editor of his paper, l'Électeur Libre. While the common run of stockjobbers were led astray by the official lies of the Home Office paper, Arthur was running backwards and forwards between the Home Office and the Bourse, there to discount the disasters of the French army. The whole financial correspondence of that worthy pair of brothers fell into the hands of the Commune.

Jules Ferry, a penniless barrister before the 4th of September, contrived, as the mayor of Paris during the siege, to job a fortune out of famine. The day on which he would have to give an account of his maladministration would be the day of his conviction.

These men, then, could find, in the ruins of Paris only, their tickets-of-leave: they were the very men Bismarck wanted. With the help of some shuffling of cards, Thiers, hitherto the secret prompter of the Government, now appeared at its head, with the ticket-of-leave men for his Ministers.

Thiers, that monstrous gnome, has charmed the French bourgeoisie for almost half a century, because he is the most consummate intellectual expression of their own class-corruption. Before he became a statesman he had already proved his lying powers as an historian. The chronicle of his public life is the record of the misfortunes of France. Banded, before 1830, with the Republicans, he slipped into office under Louis Philippe by betraying his protector Lafitte, ingratiating himself with the king by exciting mob-riots against the clergy, during which the Church of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois and the