dueling-pistols; for every French politician of importance must
fight duels, and Gambetta had already done so. Unfortunately, one
cartridge remained unnoticed in the pistol which Gambetta cleaned.
As he held the pistol-barrel against the soft part of his hand the
cartridge exploded, and the ball passed through the base of the
thumb with a rending, spluttering noise.

The wound was not in itself serious, but now the prophecy of
Bismarck was fulfilled. Gambetta had exhausted his vitality; a
fever set in, and before long he died of internal ulceration.

This was the end of a great career and of a great romance of love.
Leonie Leon was half distraught at the death of the lover who was
so soon to be her husband. She wandered for hours in the forest
until she reached a convent, where she was received. Afterward she
came to Paris and hid herself away in a garret of the slums. All
the light of her life had gone out. She wished that she had died
with him whose glory had been her life. Friends of Gambetta,
however, discovered her and cared for her until her death, long
afterward, in 1906.

She lived upon the memories of the past, of the swift love that
had come at first sight, but which had lasted unbrokenly; which
had given her the pride of conquest, and which had brought her
lover both happiness and inspiration and a refining touch which
had smoothed away his roughness and made him fit to stand in
palaces with dignity and distinction.

As for him, he left a few lines which have been carefully
preserved, and which sum up his thought of her. They read: