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Not a second too soon M. Herriot's insistence prevailed. As the earth began to heave firemen scattered, ran for their lives, but the Mayor did not move a muscle, stood puffing his common briar pipe,* until he thought all the firemen were safe, then dashed down the hill to safety just as the second slide came. Fire Chief Nightingale was injured by falling masonry.
As the day wore on, renewed digging brought to light no bodies, so deeply were the two apartment houses buried, but a count of missing persons made it certain that at least 31 had perished. By this time election returns were pouring in, the swing from Right Centre to Left Centre was a nationwide fact, and Lyonese reporters told their heroic Mayor that beyond a doubt he would be the nation's next Premier.
"Our success at the polls," said M. Herriot shortly, "is magnificent, but I can think of nothing else tonight than the tragedy that is happening here before my eyes."
Sternly the Mayor's friends took him in hand, bundled him off on the midnight train to Paris, where he found these
Election Results: The Right Centre parties supporting Premier Tardieu hold 43 less seats in the new Chamber than in the old, a stinging setback which caused the Cabinet to announce their resignation, effective when the National Assembly should meet next day at Versailles to elect the new President of France.
Strongest in the new Chamber is Edouard Herriot's Radical-Socialist Party with 157 seats—a thumping gain of 44. Next are the Socialists led by Jewish Deputy Lèon Blum with 129 seats, a gain of 23, while former Premier Paul Painleve's Republican Socialists hold 37 seats, a gain of five. On the extreme Left the Communists have twelve seats, a gain of two; and on the extreme Right the Conservatives hold five seats, a loss of three.
Thus it seemed that the next French Cabinet must be of the Left Centre with Edouard Herriot as Premier. But the situation remained complex. To form a Cabinet with a working majority of some 350 in the Chamber of 615, M. Herriot would have to draw other parties into coalition with his own, turning for that purpose either to his immediate Left or Right or both.
If M. Blum would lead his Socialists* into the wigwam well and good, otherwise M. Herriot would have to pitch his Cabinet in such a way as to encompass both the moderate Republican Socialists and some such moderates of the Right Centre as André Tardieu, if the outgoing Premier would consent to serve.
To Frenchmen such complexities in building a Cabinet are commonplace. The great fact last week was that Edouard Herriot had been placed by French voters in a position to sway the destiny and mold the policies of France.
Herriot of Lyon. Not a hard, pragmatic go-getter but a brilliant, busy man of romantic enthusiasms and tireless work is Edouard Herriot. Born just 60 years ago, son of an Army officer far from rich but proud, Edouard spent his childhood all over France as his father was shifted from post to military post. Destined by his mother for the church, he barely escaped wearing long black skirts. Youthful scholastic brilliance won him a scholarship which took him to Paris and the famed Ecole Normale Supérieure. The first book penned by unknown Edouard Herriot was crowned by the French Academy.