surround him among the Southerners, outside and above the political parties. Very few of our compatriots have seen and heard him, have not experienced the charm which emanates from his great simplicity, his natural goodness and his smiling good-naturedness, beneath which we quickly discover the rarest qualities of the spirit and of the heart.

In this newspaper, of which Mr. Gaston Doumergue was a friend since the first issue, almost twenty years ago, and to which he has never ceased to show his active benevolence, it is undoubtedly superfluous to insist on the unanimity of feelings of affection, as deep as it is deferential, that all his compatriots have for him.

Our Midi recognizes itself with pride in Gaston Doumergue. In him the most precious gifts of our race flourish and it is with a fervent heart that we rejoice to see, in the serious times we live in, the destiny of France placed in his hands.

Adrien Frissant

The new President

Our daily colleagues have already retraced, in detail, the eminent services that the new head of state has rendered in the past. For thirty years, Mr. Gaston Doumergue, a hard worker, has put all his intelligence and activity at the service of the country.

Let's just remember that he was born in Aigues-Vives, in the Gard, and that he is now 61 years old. Lawyer in Nîmes, then magistrate in Indochina, justice of the peace in Algeria, he was elected deputy for Nîmes in 1893. Secretary of the Chamber in 1895, minister of colonies (Combes cabinet) from 1902 until 1905; vice-president of the Chamber in 1905 and 1906, minister of commerce in the Sarrien and Clemenceau cabinets, minister of public education in the reshuffled Clemenceau cabinet; minister of public education (Briand cabinet) in 1910; senator of Gard in 1910, president of the Council and minister of foreign affairs from 1913 to 1914.

During the war, Minister of Colonies in the Viviani cabinet, then in the Briand cabinet, Mr. Doumergue was assigned to Russia in 1917; he was chairman of the Senate Navy Committee.

Elected chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee to replace Mr. Poincaré, his colleagues called him to the presidency of the Senate in January 1923, replacing Mr. Léon Bourgeois, and he was re-elected without a competitor in January 1924.

His home in his native country
But let us not dwell further on his political past, which all our readers know well and which, over the past eight days, all the newspapers have extensively mentioned. Let us instead give, in Provençal Paris, where we are "among ourselves", some intimate details, like those we like to repeat as a family. Of all the ways to welcome his elevation to the highest functions of the State, this is certainly the one to which the new President can be the most sensitive.

The Doumergue family has been based in Aigues-Vives for several centuries, and their house is said to date back more than three hundred years. Topped with red tiles, this house has an austere facade, but its courtyard is full of flowers with roses and hydrangeas. It has two floors. It was in a room on the first floor that Mr. Gaston Doumergue was born. She still has the same furniture as in 1863, this good old room, and the furniture which furnishes the President's office is from the same period and, in a corner of this office, we have piously preserved the grandmother's spinning wheel. .

Nothing is simple like the office where the student worked and where the politician returned to sit: a small walnut table with moleskin square, four rudimentary armchairs, a white wooden reading lamp, a daybed soberly draped and large pine shelves, where books and magazines are piled up; another room, more elegant, serves as a reception room for the President, in another part of the building.

There we see some modern works of art, paintings by Doigneau, a marble by Charpentier, etc. All styles are intertwined in the furniture, from a Louis XVI secretary to art nouveau chairs, including Louis-Philippe armchairs. Each generation left a document from their time in the reception room. Mr. Doumergue spent his entire childhood in this house, as well as all his vacations as a high school student, lawyer and politician, and it has undergone almost no transformation since his birth.

The ancestry of the President
The Doumergue family includes, among its members, a consul, that is to say one of the four notables to whom, before the Revolution, the administration of the country was entrusted. Some were wine growers, others fabric merchants. Most of them reached old age without infirmity.

The father of the President of the Republic, Mr. Pierre Doumergue, was a farmer. He had, like his heir, an affable character, and never sulked at work. But Mrs. Pierre Doumergue, above all, was the great educator of her son, who devoted him a true cult. She was a master woman, gifted with great common sense, and her son always consulted her willingly, even on political questions, of which she kept herself informed. She raised her son with intelligence and dedication, helped in her task by young Gaston's sister, fourteen years older than him. Gastounet", as he was called in Aigues-Vives, and as he is still called there with affectionate familiarity, was first a student in the primary school of his village, and he took after the old teacher who was his first master a moving and grateful memory.

At the age of 12, the young Doumergue became a boarder at the Lycée de Nîmes, showed himself to be a brilliant student and won all the first prizes; then, he studied law in Paris and entered the Nîmes bar. We know the rest of his career, which we traced above.

Gaston Doumergue poet
But we would be remiss if we did not say that, like any cultivated southerner, Mr. Gaston Doumergue participated in the felibrige demonstrations. He is a passionate reader of Mistral, Aubanel, Roumanille and the disciples of our great Provençal poets. Besides, like many young high school students from our region, at the age of his rhetoric, he rhymed very nicely, and here is one of the amusing verses which dates from the moment when, at the end of his humanities, he did his voluntary work. for a year in Aix-en-Provence:

In front of the report room,
Very uncomfortable in their outfit,
They pass the sad review
From the colonel they greatly fear.

And while, as at the fair,
We turn them in all directions,
They can hardly believe
That they are soldiers for so long.

But patience, oh my poor brothers,
You who we call volunteers
With alas! little reason,
Twelve months fly by quickly,
And we think we're dreaming when we leave
The regiment for the house.

Without noise, without fanfare,
Everyone pulls their own way,
Not daring to believe in his freedom,
Carrying suitcase and haversack.

Of course, they regret nothing,
They suffered too much in the army,
And yet by searching carefully,
Deep down, in their thoughts,
We would see a deep regret,
The regret of old comrades
Charming friends, joyful troubadours,
That they loved and who are leaving...

Another handshake,
And everyone quickly takes their place.
The train whistles and, in the distance,
Aix diminishes and then fades away.

It was signed: Gaston Doumergue, simple 2nd class troubadour.

At the Elysée
A final word: Mr. Gaston Doumergue had attached himself, to little Luxembourg, to Mr. Jules Michel, as chief of staff. The new head of state kept him with him at the Elysée, as secretary general of the Presidency. All those who have had dealings with Mr. Jules Michel and have thus been able to appreciate his obliging kindness are delighted to see him occupy these very important positions.