February 26th

Two days after the “half-wit” fired his shots at M. Clemenceau (February 19th) as he was leaving his house in the Rue Franklin for a conference with Balfour and House at the Crillon, I was detailed to remain in constant attendance on the French Premier. Everybody took a serious view of the incident and the resulting wound except Clemenceau himself. Seven shots had been fired deliberately and at close quarters; fortunately, only one took effect. (The bullet, never extracted, had lodged very close to vital organs and caused him great pain throughout the ten years he was yet to live.) Clemenceau refused to allow the incident to be dignified as an attempt at assassination, and when he did speak of it he called it an “accident.”

After the preliminary hearings of the would-be assassin were over, the prosecutor called upon the Tiger, bringing with him several legal luminaries who were engaged upon the investigation. They assured him that all the facts had been brought to light: that the man had no accomplices, that he was unbalanced in mind, and a menace to the community; then they asked the victim of the “accident” what he thought the sentence should be.

“How complicated are your duties!” exclaimed the Tiger. “Of course I’ll help you all I can, but I’m glad I’m not a judge. When I think of the men who are continually sniping at me from ambush, I am tempted to say that this brave fellow who faced my walking stick with nothing in the way of a weapon save a machine-gun revolver should have conferred upon him some prize of valor, some Grand Cross or other. But I must not be impulsive, the women and the children and all the innocent bystanders who might have been hurt while the fellow was aiming at my miserable old carcass should be considered. Then his poor marksmanship must be taken into account. We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who at point-blank range misses his target six times out of seven. Of course the fellow must be punished for the careless use of a dangerous weapon and for poor marksmanship. I suggest that he be locked up for about eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery.”

The prosecutor and his assistants withdrew in some bewilderment and the “half-wit” was later given a ten-year sentence.

In the following ten days I was sent by Colonel House, during the absence of Mr. Wilson in America, the ranking member of our delegation, almost every evening to lay before M. Clemenceau the developments of the day and to receive any communications he might care to make to his fellow negotiators. The Tiger had turned the sickroom topsy-turvy with his eccentricities. To the complaining sisters who nursed him with such devotion, he had an answer that turned away their wrath:

“Before the ‘accident’ I was only a tired old patient and had to knuckle under; now I’m a martyr, and you’ve got to put up with me.”

One of these eccentricities was to sleep from nine in the evening until midnight; then, bright as a button, he was ready for business, and, despite the protests of the doctors, his sickroom was thronged.

“I must make a peace,” said M. Clemenceau to me in one of these midnight sessions, “based upon my belief and upon my own experience of the world in which we have to live. My responsibility is personal and non-transferable. When called to the bar of history, I cannot say, ‘Well, I made these arrangements to conform to Mr. Wilson’s viewpoint.’ Mr. Wilson has lived in a world that has been fairly safe for Democracy; I have lived in a world where it was good form to shoot a Democrat. After a few weeks of sparring I became convinced that your President wanted the same things that I did, although we were very far apart as to the ways and the means by which we could reach the desired end.

“When he first developed his program, it seemed to me perfectly Utopian. I said to him, ‘Mr. Wilson, if I accepted what you propose as ample for the security of France, after the millions who have died and the millions who have suffered, I believe, and indeed I hope, that my successor in office would take me by the nape of the neck and have me shot at daylight before the donjon of Vincennes.’ After that we began to get together.

“Once I said to him, ‘Mr. Wilson, have you ever seen an elephant cross a swinging bamboo bridge? ’ Mr. Wilson said he had not. ‘Well, I’ll tell you how he goes about it. First, he trots down into the stream to see if the foundations are all right; then he comes back and puts one foot on the bridge. If the result is reassuring, he ventures its mate. Then he gives the bridge a sharp jolt. If it stands that, he gives it his trust and advances. Now that’s my idea about your bridge leading to the New Jerusalem. I may be, as they say I am, a springing tiger where my personal fortunes are concerned, but where the safety of France is at stake— Well, there never was an elephant more careful or more cautious than I am going to be.’”

Last evening, four days after the “accident,” I came to the Tiger’s lair with several memoranda from the Big Three, about Dalmatia and the Saar, and their best wishes for an early and complete recovery. Sister Theoneste was in charge of the sickroom. She had been brought hurriedly from another case, it being well known from experience in a previous illness that she was the only person who could “handle” the Tiger. Even she could not tame him, but handle him she could. She was a middle-aged woman with a grave, intelligent face.

“So intelligent,” said the Tiger in a quite audible aside to me, “and yet she believes in prayer, c’est insense!”

“And you, M. le President, you are a good man, but you would be a better one if only you would say your prayers.”

“Copycat!” shouted the Tiger. “Renan said that years ago.”

“I can’t make you say your prayers,” continued the Sister. “If I even tried to, your government would probably expel me from France, but I can and will make you take your medicine.” And now she advanced toward his wheel chair with a glass filled with a very unpleasant-looking syrup. The Tiger tried to roll away, but she followed him full of menace.

“My Sister,” he bleated, “how can you be so cruel?”

“Georges!” whimpered the Sister, in mock despair, “if you don’t take it, the doctor will make a bad mark on my certificate.”

“Give it to me; give me still another dose. Never shall it be said . . .”

Ah yes. It was not to be doubted Sister Theoneste knew how to handle the Tiger.

After he had been given a glass of sugared water to take the horrid taste out of his mouth, the Sister inquired:

“And what kind of night did you have?”

“A terrible night it was,” he answered plaintively.

“But your temperature is almost normal.”

“Perhaps, but I have had mentally and morally a great shock. Should I tell you about it?”

“Pour sur; to whom else should you tell it if not to your nurse?” “Well, last night in my dream I walked to the gate of Heaven and there was St. Peter on guard as usual. He was chatting with an old woman outside the gate and she was in great distress. I could not but overhear their conversation, and soon I had a chance to take part in it. You know how I love to chatter.

“ ‘I fear you cannot come in,’ said St. Peter. ‘As you frankly admit, you do not come with a clean bill of health. Good woman, we have to be very careful as to whom we admit; in extremis, you failed to confess.’

“ ‘Death came so suddenly, my good St. Peter; when I sent for the curé, they could not find him, and soon I was on my way here.’

“ ‘Of course I’m sorry to refuse you, but there are the regulations. Clearly you are not in shape to be admitted.’

“Then I intervened, as anyone would have done in the circumstances.

“ ‘Good St. Peter,’ I pled, ‘this is but a little irregularity. Her curé was absent, sans doute, engaged upon some pious work . . .’

“ ‘But the law says even the faithful must confess before they can enter the Kingdom of Heaven,’ said St. Peter.

“ ‘All you have to do,’ I persisted—the poor woman was in such distress—‘is to call to the gate one of the curés who here must abound, and then in a jiffy the letter as well as the spirit of the law can be complied with.’

“St. Peter was vexed and he gave me an ugly look, but I was so eloquent that he could not ignore my plea. He summoned an angel messenger—I think it was Seraphim—but I am not quite sure, and in a surly voice he said:

“ ‘Go fetch me a curé.’

“This one, whoever he was, came back in a few minutes and whispered something to St. Peter which did not please him, and he closed the door with a slam right in our faces. He peeped at us rather contemptuously now through the little Judas, and I heard him give another order to the angel messenger and heard him prance off with a hop, skip, and a jump. He was gone a long, long time, and when he came back, what he said made St. Peter still more angry.

“ ‘Well, well,’ I said, for standing at the gate of the Promised Land so long had made me nervous.

“ ‘Well, I find there are no curés in Heaven,’ snarled St. Peter; and then he snapped to the peephole and was gone.

“I turned to the distressed woman. But, really, what could I do, invite her to go with me to the other place? I was indeed in a baffling quandary. And then I woke up. Now, dear Sister, what do you augur from that dream?”

Sister Theoneste kept a straight face, but not without effort.

“If M. le Président would only say his prayers, good St. Peter would not keep him outside the blessed gate.” Then in an aside to me, “Georges (no longer M. le Président) is impayable. He is such good company and such a good man that perhaps they will let him in anyhow. At least I hope so; and that hope I never fail to include in my prayers.”