"Sister Theoneste! Sister Theoneste!"
"What is it, M. Clemenceau?"
"My Sister, will you make me a promise?"
"Mais, oui."
"Then listen. When I am dead they must not place a cross above me. They shall not! . . ."
The nun, the same who nursed Georges Eugene Benjamin Clemenceau back to life when he was shot during the peace conference, made a low reply.
"Bear witness!" cried the Tiger of France to his doctors, to his son Michael, his daughter Mme. Jacquemaire. "The Sister has promised that no cross will be placed above me when I die. You must help her keep that promise!"
A little later, perfectly composed, the tough old patient said to Dr. de Gennes as though speaking of the weather, "I am suffering atrociously in my intestines." Pain quickened into torture. "Let me take off your outer clothing!" pleaded Sister Theoneste. But the Tiger was obstinate. For years he has gone to bed fully dressed, merely kicking off his slippers and loosening his collar. "Because how do I know at what moment I may get up and write?" The iron will had begun to melt when at last he let the Sister put him into night clothes.
Then came merciful periods of stupor, some natural, some induced by morphine. To keep the great heart beating, Sister Theoneste injected hot camphorated oil. When he coughed and choked she gave a little oxygen.
"He is no longer the same man," said Dr. de Gennes to reporters waiting in the rain. "What lassitude! The kidneys of Monsieur le President du Conseil have not functioned for 18 hours. Nothing can save him now except a miracle."
Through night, another day, and far into the next night, the indomitable Father of Victory lived on. With groping motions he made clear, in his lucid moments, that he wished his hands—the famous Tiger claws, cased day and night in kitten-soft grey gloves—to be held by the two men who were perhaps his closest, dearest, most faithful friends, Albert, his valet, Francois, his chauffeur.
"I want no women and I want no tears," were almost his last words.* "Let me die before men!"
Last act: With his grey paws he drew the hands of Albert and Frangois to his lips and kissed them. It lacked five minutes of midnight then.
Two hours later, a full hour after the Tiger had found oblivion in total stupor. Death came. Correspondents quarreled and kept on quarreling over whether Mme. Jacquemaire and Sister Theoneste were present at the end. They were not present when Clemenceau of France lost consciousness.
"Please put no words into my mouth," begged Prime Minister Andre Tardieu, onetime political lieutenant of Clemenceau, as he issued from a last homage to his chief at 3 a. m. "All that I have to say is that in Death he lies magnificent and calm."