tones of the famous voice, remain with me--as it rang out in the
recurrent phrase: _"Je proteste!--Messieurs, je proteste!"_ It was the
attitude of the statue in the Place du Carrousel, and of the
_meridional_, Numa Roumestan, in Daudet's well-known novel. Every word
said by the speaker seemed to enrage the benches of the Right, and the
tumult was so great at times that we were still a little dazed by it
when we reached the quiet of the Scherers' drawing-room.

M. Scherer rose to greet us, and to introduce us to his wife and
daughters. A tall, thin man, already white-haired, with something in his
aspect which suggested his Genevese origin--something at once ascetic
and delicately sensitive. He was then in his sixtieth year, deputy for
the Seine-et-Oise, and an important member of the Left Center. The year
after we saw him he became a Senator, and remained so through his life,
becoming more Conservative as the years went on. But his real importance
was as a man of letters--one of the recognized chiefs of French
literature and thought, equally at war with the forces of Catholic
reaction, then just beginning to find a leader in M. Bourget, and with
the scientific materialism of M. Taine. He was--when we first knew
him--a Protestant who had ceased to believe in any historical religion;
a Liberal who, like another friend of ours, Mr. Goschen, about the same
time was drifting into Conservatism; and also a man of strong and subtle
character to whom questions of ethics were at all times as important as
questions of pure literature. Above all, he was a scholar, specially
conversant with England and English letters. He was, for instance, the
"French critic on Milton," on whom Matthew Arnold wrote one of his most
attractive essays; and he was fond of maintaining--and proving--that
when French people _did_ make a serious study of England, and English
books, which he admitted was rare, they were apt to make fewer mistakes
about us than English writers make about France.