In the Elysee Palace a small golden clock tinkled ten. Jovial, florid Gaston Doumergue was settling contentedly to the digestion of his late presidential dinner. From the clock a low, rapid tik-tik-tik. From the President of France a contented, sleepy sigh. Felicity! Then a door yawned and in strode busy, kinetic M. Raymond Poincaré, the man who saved and stabilized the franc, the grizzled "Lion of Lorraine."
Wide awake in an instant, M. le President sprang up with beaming face. For a whole week he had tried to get M. Poincaré to form a new ministry in succession to the Poincaré Cabinet...