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of the dissolute life whose marks may still be seen in the flaring nostrils of his funeral mask? Here, as everywhere in the city, piety and passion are contrasting neighbors.

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It is he, the Andalusian, who inspires these long Holy Week processions, headed by a great crape-veiled cross and moving forward to tearful music punctuated by the regular beating of drums; these endless files of penitents escorting the great floats or pasos of their brotherhood - each parish has its own - on which are life-size representations of the different scenes of the Passion the Garden of Olives, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion, the Entombment. These are followed invariably by the clergy in black surplices, and finally by a richly garbed Madonna whose mantle, with a long train of velvet and gold, droops to the ground as she rides on a platform lit with a thousand flickering candles and surmounted by a canopy studded with silver and gold.

There is no suggestion of vulgarity in the attitude of the people; a glance is sufficient to remove all doubt as to the piety which moves them. Grave and contained, they jam the streets and spread like a tapestry against walls and windows; and they remove their hats and incline their heads as the stirring images move slowly by. Is it not sincere piety which calls forth at the approach of the images these strange chants, verses of four or five lines in honor of the Virgin or of Jesus, which are suddenly thrown out above the mass of humanity by unknown voices shaken with sobs at the sight of the divine agony? Is it not true piety which moves the ladies of the city to offer their loveliest jewelry to adorn the Madonna of Sorrows? Is it not true piety that makes these fine-looking soldiers march in the procession, mounted or on foot, their faces intent on the more-than-human mission they are fulfilling? Is it not piety which moves these penitents, however droll their garments may seem, some of them barefoot, to accompany the holy figures on the long

HOLY WEEK IN SEVILLE

procession through a city bowed in silent obeisance?

If one prays with the mind, can one not pray also with the lips and with gestures, actions, attitudes? Of course I do not know the thoughts of those who march in the procession and of those who watch it; the fact that they are there, that their attitude indicates the solemnity of their feelings, is sufficient to make me feel that even if there is no spoken prayer, they are praying after their own fashion. Their presence at such a ceremony, sacred or profane, and, more than that, their participation in it, is something at least. Does not one's bodily participation in the ceremony signify that one has lent one's mind to it also? Otherwise, bowing to an acquaintance in the street, offering flowers on

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someone's birthday, kissing someone you love, would all be meaningless. Feeling, though distinct from action, does not exist without action, and this is most true in the case of religious feeling.

That is the lesson taught by Holy Week at Seville, or rather the lesson Seville teaches best during Holy Week; for Seville teaches the same lesson at all times to all who visit her. In piety or in passion, she makes no distinction between feeling and its expression. At once passionate and disciplined -passionate with the Arab blood that still courses in her veins, disciplined by Catholic custom and experience, Seville owes to these two qualities the supreme elegance which marks every moves she makes: mysticism and sensuality in strange alliance.

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T

HE king business' was Ambassa

dor Page's contemptuous description of the sacred and ancient institution of monarchy-in those remote days before the War, when kings still claimed to rule by divine right. It was a typically American phrase, and a

Léon Daudet

The Man Who Would Be King-Maker

By John Bakeless

Written Especially for THE LIVING AGE

"The violence of those who are right,' says Daudet, 'must triumph over the violence of those who are wrong.' The Royalists, of course, are right. The Republicans are wrong. Voilà! It is all so very simple.

typically American attitude; for to the THERE have always been Royalists

American mind there has always been something a little odd about the monarchical system: kings belong in fairy tales and history books; they have no place in the twentieth century.

Even queerer to Americans seems the idea that, in these days when almost all the kings have toppled from their thrones, anyone should want to put them back.

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OW it is possible to disagree with the French Royalists - for an American it is pretty nearly impossible to do anything else. But it is equally impossible not to admire their beautiful frankness; for the Royalists are not in the least backward in avowing their objects and the means whereby they propose to attain them.

'We don't want to upset the Republic,' observes Daudet's sworn ally, sworn ally, Charles Maurras, tranquilly. 'We want to cut its throat.' And again: 'We are not a political party. We are a conspiracy.'

The Royalist creed is simple. It is ardently national and consequently anti

in France. In fact, there never would have been a Third Republic at all if the Royalists in the convention which set it up could have agreed among themselves. But while they were trying to choose between the Bourbon royal line, the Orléans royal line, and the Bonapartes, the Republic was established. Time has somewhat simplified matters. The Bourbon line ended in 1883. Prince Victor Napoleon, the heir to Napoleon's throne, was once described by a cruel wit as 'the eaglet whose whole life is spent in moulting.' No one has ever expected him to ascend a throne of any kind. All the enthusiasts who want a king, therefore, enthusiasts who want a king, therefore, have concentrated their enthusiasm upon the House of Orléans.

or,

Until his death, two years ago, their candidate was the Duc d'Orléans as Daudet, Maurras, and their followers preferred to call him, Philippe VIII the great-grandson of King Louis Philippe. Banished from France as a boy, because of his claim to the throne, he spent his life in exile from the country that his ancestors had ruled; and even when, at the age of twenty-one, he offered himself as a soldier in the French army, he was clapped unsentimentally into prison by a severely practical French Government, which was taking no chances on coups d'état. When he died, a childless exile in Sicily, his claims passed to his brother, Jean d'Orléans, better known as the Duc de Guise, who - if he should ever ascend his wholly theoretical throne would presumably rule as Jean III.

German; but it regards representative flagging in France when, at the turn
NTHUSIASM for a king was slowly

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government in general as ridiculous and the French Republic in particular 'that precious republic of pompous and bloated orators' as the worst disaster that ever befell France. A kingdom,

of the century, a little group led by Henri Vaugeois emerged from among the Nationalists who had been stung into unity by the Dreyfus treason trial a few years before. Only of them, Charles Maurras, an

as possible, and they believed in the rule of a strong man. They set up a little weekly paper, L'Action Française, which, like Vaugeois and his colleagues, drifted slowly into avowed Royalism. Léon Daudet was not yet of this little band.

Then, in 1904, M. Syveton lost his temper and boxed the ears of the War Minister. Now in affairs of state there is certainly something fatal about ears. Several centuries ago some indiscreet Spaniards cut off the ear of one Jenkins, a British sea captain -who turned up in Parliament a little later carrying his ear, neatly pickled, in a box - and thereby brought on war with England. Then there is that legendary Spanish officer who is said to have boxed the ears of the Moroccan chieftain, Abd-el-Krim, provoking that fiery tribesman to revolt in 1921. But worst of all was the deplorable lack of self-control displayed by M. Syveton, who, in the Chamber of Deputies, on the fourth of November, 1904, assailed General André, the Minister of War. For this single boxing of the ministerial ears led to the murder (or suicide) of M. Syveton himself, and to an unsuccessful effort to overthrow the Republic, which led to the downfall of the Ligue de la Patrie Française, which last event finally convinced M. Léon Daudet that it was necessary to do away with the republican form of government.'

In this endeavor he has been wholeheartedly engaged ever since to the no little disturbance of all France. If M. Syveton had withheld his blows from the ears of General André on that fatal day, that erring soldier would have retained his dignity; Léon Daudet might not have been convinced that monarchy was needful; French politics of the last twenty years would have been vastly less lively; le Roi would have even less chance of ascending the throne than he now enjoys; and contemporary French letters would lack some racy pages, seasoned with a wicked French wit, and splashed with a venom which is wholly delightful to all save the victim.

He in

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known as the Duc de Guise, is its

and its ideal. To establish it, any means are justified violence included.

in monarchy; but they all wanted to make the world as unsafe for democracy

tends to have a king. He has been vehemently demanding one for years and years and years; and, all the while, that

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King will never reign in France. Yet the Royalist party exerts an influence out of all proportion to its numbers - mainly because of the talent of its leaders. Daudet's conversion in 1904 was the work of Henri Vaugeois, aided by Charles Maurras and Mme. Daudet, who had been converted to Royalist views before her husband. Three years later, however, it was Daudet who for the first time in modern France set up the defiant cry of Vive le Roi! in spite of the gendarmes, and swept his audience into an outburst of cheering for

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LÉON DAUDET

happened to find, in the mail which it
was his duty to examine, evidence that
officials had taken bribes to put certain
favored soldiers in safe places. The infor-
mation found its way to the Action
Française, whose editors were of course
delighted with such a tidbit of anti-
Republican scandal. But there was one
regrettable difficulty. The censor was a

LÉON DAUDET

433

accusations of treason against M. Malvy, Minister of the Interior. The method which he chose for exploding his bombshell was ostentatiously simple. He wrote his letter, accusing M. Malvy. Then, taking his little boy by the hand, he set off on foot to the presidential palace, where he delivered it in person, like any bourgeois père de famille. A few

hours after he had handed the envelope to M. Poincaré's astonished concierge, the storm broke in the Parisian press. Malvy had no choice but to stand trial, and though acquitted of treason was condemned to five years' banishment.

SINCE the War, Daudet

influence, but his career has been no less colorful and turbulent than before. The reasons for this turbulence are not hard to understand. Daudet has a bitter tongue and small consideration for the feelings of people whom he dislikes. Of no less a personage than Clemenceau he once observed: 'He has always had a profound contempt for human nature probably on account of the specimen he sees in his mirror.' He has described Briand as 'the humpbacked cat,' Ernest Renan as 'the state elephant of the kingdom of unbelief,' and the poet Hérédia as one to whom 'much shall be pardoned because he has written little.' Of the distinguished members of the French Academy, who take themselves seriously, he remarked: "The lower classes consider them to be especially learned.' It is, of course, amusing to make remarks like that, but their author must be ready to support them in personal encounter; and Daudet be it to his credit or not - loves nothing better than a fight.

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Henri Manuel

LEADER OF THE MONARCHIST PARTY in France, who edits from exile in
Brussels his daily newspaper, L'Action Française, and devotes all his
energies to making 'Jean III' King of France.

Then came the War; and - with the exiled King urging his followers to defend the nation and himself volunteering, though in vain the Royalists joined in the general agreement to sink party differences. The Camelots du Roi went off to the front and died heroically - not for the hated Republic, of course, but for France, over which the King might some day rule.

But, through it all, the Action Française never relaxed its lynx-eyed distrust of the Government. There was one amusing deadlock when each side side knew so much about the other's misdeeds that both had to keep quiet. A Royalist censor, so so the story goes,

priest; and his revelation of war secrets
made it possible for the Government to
stir up a wave of anti-clerical feeling.
Worse still, the Government had pro-
cured a list, compiled by the Royalists, Though since the War he has not been
of army officers who had promised to put able to precipitate any earth-shaking
their troops on the King's side against scandals like the Malvy affair, he has
the Republic, should the day of restora- twice had the satisfaction of making the
tion ever come. Each party found that 'absurd régime' more than a little ridic-
the other held so much dynamite that ulous in its own eyes. In spite of his
neither dared light the first match; and waning influence, in spite of his news-
the result of all this plotting and schem- paper's misfortune in being placed
ing was precisely nothing.
on the Index Expurgatorius - which
Daudet claims credit for launching the alienated the more orthodox Catholics

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demurred. The boy, they explained, had become suddenly demented, had tried to join the Anarchists, had been repelled by those ardent but suspicious revolutionists (who found it odd that the son of the Royalist leader should be trying to join them), and had committed suicide. It was not a very convincing explanation. But the father's own explanation is at least as difficult to believe. For even the Continental police can hardly be accused of going about murdering the sons of individuals of whose political views they do not wholly

approve.

But if there is this one great tragedy in Daudet's post-War career, there is abundant light relief, which has ranged from high comedy to outrageous farce. Only two men in the world would have been capable of some of it: Daudet is one; Charlie Chaplin, the other. Take, for example, the preposterous affair of Daudet's condemnation to five months in prison for libeling a taxi-driver (an achievement in itself). In France, a kind of gentleman's agreement applies to political and semi-political convictions. Of course, it is necessary to serve your sentence, sooner or later; but it is regarded as only proper to allow the guilty politician to choose his own time and — guilty politicians are rarely in a hurry for punishment. By the spring of 1927, however, the authorities felt that it was nearly time for Daudet's sentence,

imposed two years before, to be served. M. Poincaré, though willing to pardon Daudet, felt that he really ought to serve at least a few days of his sentence- just to set a good example. Daudet was accordingly 'requested' to go to jail. Instead, with a thousand of his followers, he barricaded himself in the office of the Action Française. There were riots. Ink pots flew, also soda water syphons, tables, chairs. Traffic was completely blocked in front of the office. Then, one morning, just at dawn, M. Jean Chiappe, Prefect of Police, mobilized several hundred of his own men, called out the Garde Républicaine — and three fire engines. They made a half circle in front of the beleaguered newspaper office, as M. Chiappe strode jauntily across the empty street and rapped at the bolted door.

--

to reflect that the puzzled Director would certainly verify such an extraordinary order; and so there was a Camelot conveniently at hand to reassure him when his message came. Having been twice officially instructed to release Daudet, there was nothing for the poor warden to do but bow his prisoner politely out at the iron grating. Daudet shook hands warmly and departed for Brussels.

When the news leaked out, Paris laughed laughed and Paris can be very cruel when it laughs. The police gnashed their teeth. But suddenly it was announced that M. Daudet would address a public meeting. Every possible precaution was taken to make sure of recapturing him. The meeting opened, positively swarming with police. There was an audience, a chairman, a platform, perhaps even a glass of water. But there was no Daudet.

'I wish to speak to M. Daudet,' he Unperturbed, the chairman made his murmured blandly, as it opened.

That doughty individual appeared on the balcony. M. Chiappe addressed him

as a man and a Frenchman' — in moving periods that read very much as if they had been typed out by a stenographer the night before. Daudet observed the fire engines. Not even he and his followers could be expected to hold out against odds like that. The police, of against odds like that. The police, of course. The army, perhaps. But never the fire department.

So he surrendered - 'to avoid bloodshed' and was whirled away to Santé Prison, but not for long. It had been difficult to get him there; it was impossible to keep him. In a day or two the director of the prison received a telephone message 'from the Minister of the Interior,' instructing him to release Daudet. Surprised and suspicious, he telephoned back to the Ministry for confirmation. The message had, as he suspected, been sent without the Minister's knowledge. Camelots du Roi had slipped into the office during the lunch hour and impersonated him. But the hour and impersonated him. But the Royalist clever enough to think of this audacious scheme was also clever enough

speech of introduction. Then the voice of Léon Daudet filled the room. The police were furious. For the voice came from a loud speaker. M. Daudet was broadcasting from Brussels, safely across the international frontier.

Perhaps this comic interlude really marks the high point of Daudet's career. Nobody but a few zealots now believes that le Roi will ever ascend his imaginary throne. The Action Française lies under the ban of the Vatican, despite the Catholicism of its editors; and it is pretty clear that a Republic which can stand secure through a world war is reasonably stable.

The vision of a 'man on horseback' no longer haunts French Republicans. For one thing, horses, for such purposes, are no longer the mode; and you simply can't get people to take seriously a coup d'état stage-managed from a limousine.

So the Republic will stand firm. The 'King' will live abroad in exile and be polite to his little handful of adherents when they come to call. Daudet will shower the 'absurd régime' with epithets and doubtless will continue to have a glorious time doing it.

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Cyrano, Paris

DAUDET IN RECENT CARICATURE

Metropolitana

A Magician of Madrid-Piccadilly Station, London

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-A Post-War Paris Night

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Vanished Royalty-Firecrackers in Singapore-The Restless Horseman of Rome -The Moscow Lottery

A WINTER and draws it out a rich and brilliant

on the Avenida Pi y Margall. Up theemptyavenue comes a wiry little man with his face almost hidden behind a great muffler. In his hand is a small black bag.

He stops, looks suspiciously about him, sets the bag down on the pavement, and draws from it a series of strange objects. Already, during these preliminaries, a small crowd has begun to collect. The little man begins to juggle two red balls and to pronounce an almost unintelligible patter, while he waits for the crowd to grow larger.

Then business begins. He calls for a hat and a coat from the audience, and holds them up where all may see, to show that each has a big grease spot on it. He takes a little lozenge from his black bag, rubs it on the grease spots. Lo! they are gone.

'Now, señores, how many will you want? One for this señor, one for the señor on my left! Ah, one also for the señor I see beckoning me from the back! More? More? Excellent. See, the grease spots, I have cleaned them out!' In reality, it was the buyers who had been cleaned out.

'See!' he went on. 'Here is something else. Here is a flask of crystal pure water, agua del Lozoya. Look at it. Examine it. Taste it if you wish!' (No one offered to do so.) This water, when I add to it the powder contained in the little packet I hold in my hand, acquires mysterious virtues, virtues that no man of science has yet been able to explain. Place in it a ribbon, a piece of cloth, absolutely white. Draw your cloth out again, and it will be stained any color that you desire! Shall we test it?

and draws it out a rich and brilliant green.

'And you, señora, what color would you like to have? Blue? There you are!' he concludes triumphantly, holding up a dripping strip of cloth that has turned a brilliant azure.

Suddenly a man pushes his way forward, holding up a strip of cloth of his own and saying to the magician:

:

'Will you dye this red for me, please?' Expectation. The wizard hesitates. 'Red? The señor said red?' he mumbles, hurriedly beginning to bundle his belongings back into the little black bag. 'Red, the señor says?'

The señor who wanted red realizes what is happening. Before the magician is in full flight, however, he explains in a loud voice that the magic is false, that the strips of cloth, originally colored, had been bleached in acid so that they took on their color again when dipped in an alkaline solution. He has hardly finished when the expected hubbub arises. The magician succeeds in breaking through the angry circle and runs off like a frightened rabbit toward the busy Gran Via with a dozen urchins at his heels, cursing the science of chemistry as he dodges this way and that and finally disappears.

OUR years

FOUR

ago the little statue of Eros with drawn bow which had stood for many decades in the centre of Piccadilly Circus was taken down and exiled to the Thames Embankment Gardens. Into the place which had come to be thought of as the god's had come to be thought of as the god's permanent home a shaft eighteen feet in diameter was driven, some ninety feet straight into the ground. Through this shaft has passed a steady stream of aproned workmen, steel girders, cast iron tunnel segments, cement, and bricks. Traffic has gone on as usual in London's busiest square. The only visible evidence of the great things that were happening beneath its surface was He dips the strip of cloth in the flask, the steady current of men and materials

'Here we have strips of plain white cloth. Let the señoras judge; it is for them that this marvelous invention is intended. With it, each of you may dye cloth any color you desire. Señora! Be kind enough to tell me what color you want this cloth dyed! Green? Bright green? Very well, señora.'

Vienna's

that poured into the shaft, and, more recently, seven new subway entrances which pushed their way above ground at the corners where Piccadilly Square joins Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, Lower Regent Street, and the Haymarket. Finally, last month, after four years of underground labor, these entrances were thrown open, and all London flocked to see the new Piccadilly Circus Underground Railway Station, said to be the most attractive and most elaborate in the world.

One goes down short flights of stairs from any one of the seven entrances to see the main feature of the station, the oval 'booking hall.' The walls are of creamy Italian marble; marching around it is a double row of pinkish columns with bronze capitals, imitating so closely the effect of a cathedral ambulatory that the designers have borrowed this ecclesiastical term to describe it. The lighting is soft; in the walls are set big show windows displaying the latest fashions, designed to make milady miss her train. There is an array of twentysix automatic ticket machines. No officials are needed to run them; the passenger puts in the proper fare, which varies in London according to the distance to be traversed; the machine prints on a ticket the name of the passenger's destination, and delivers it to him through a slot. There are eleven escalators to carry the Underground's patrons up from the Bakerloo line, eighty-six feet below ground, and from the Piccadilly line, one hundred and two feet below ground, to the surface of the Square. And in contrast to all these ingenious contraptions of a machine age is a gigantic pictorial map, nearly a hundred feet long, which was painted by Mr. Stephen Bone, son of Muirhead Bone, in a workshop especially designed for the purpose. On this map, apparently intended to give the traveler a last glimpse of the world of light he has left above him, are depicted the seven continents, inhabited by all the races of men and animals on the globe.

It is typical of the British way of handling such affairs that the new station's opening was made the occasion of official municipal celebrations. The Mayor of the Borough of Westminster presided, and a banquet was given in

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