apparently forgotten. Paris was charmed to have got rid of so unlucky
a ruler,--the emperor for whom more than seven millions of Frenchmen
had passed a vote of confidence a few months before. He seemed to
have no longer a single friend, or rather he had _one:_ in the
Assembly an elderly deputy stood up in his place and boldly said that
he had taken an oath to be faithful to the Emperor Napoleon, and
did not think himself absolved from it by his misfortunes.

[Illustration: _JULES SIMON._]

It was almost in a moment, almost without a breath of opposition,
that on the morning of Sept. 5, 1870, the Empire was voted at an
end, and a Republic put in its place. The duty of governing was
at once confided to seven men, called the Committee of Defence. Of
these, Arago, Crémieux, and Gamier-Pagès had been members of the
Provisional Government in 1848, while Léon Gambetta, Jules Favre,
Jules Ferry, and Jules Simon afterwards distinguished themselves.
Rochefort, the insurrectionist, made but one step from prison to
the council board, and was admitted among the new rulers. But the
two chief men in the Committee of Defence were Jules Favre and
Gambetta.

Gambetta, who before that time had been little known, was from
the South of France, and of Italian origin. He was a man full of
enthusiasm, vehement, irascible, and impulsive. The day came when
these qualities, tempered and refined, did good service to France,
when he also proved himself one of those great men in history who
are capable of supreme self-sacrifice. At present he was untried.

Jules Favre was respected for his unstained reputation and perfect