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PARTISAN REVIEW
The phrase was addressed
to
me. The man looked at me out of
the corner of his eye and began to laugh, this time aloud, in a fatuous,
fidgety manner, as though he himself were Olivier Blevigne.
Olivier Blevigne did not laugh. He stuck his receding jaw and
protruding Adam's apple out at us.
There was a moment of silence and rapture.
"You'd think he wa.S about to move," said the woman.
The husband obligingly explained. "He was a big cotton mer–
chant. Mterwards he went into politics and became a Deputy."
I knew him. Two years ago I consulted on this subject the "Little
Dictionary of the Great Men of Bouville," by Abbe Morellet. I had
copied the article.
"Blevigne, Olivier-Martial, son of preceding, born and died in
Bouville ( 1849-1908), studied law in Paris and took degree in 1872.
Deeply impressed by the insurrection of the Commune, which had
forced him, like so many Parisians, to take shelter in Versailles under
the protection of the National Assembly, he swore, at an age when
young people think only of pleasure, "to devote his life to re-establish–
ing Order." He kept his word: on his return to our city he founded
the famous Order Club, which brought together every evening, for
many years, the principal merchants and shipowners of Bouville.
This aristocratic circle, of which it has been said jokingly that it was
harder to get into it than into the Jockey, exercised up until 1908 a
wholesome influence on the destiny of our great commercial port.
Olivier Blevigne married in 1880 Marie-Louise Pacome, eldest daugh–
ter of the merchant Charles Pacome (see this name) and founded
at the death of the latter, the house Pacome-Blevigne and Son. Shortly
afterwards he turned to active politics and announced his candidacy
for membership in the Chamber of Deputies.
" 'The country,' he said in a famous speech, 'suffe'rs from the
gravest of illnesses: the ruling class no longer wishes to rule. And who
then will rule, gentlemen, if those whom heredity, education, experi–
ence, have rendered the best trained for the exercise of power, push it
aside in resignation or weariness? I have often said: to rule is not a
right of the elite, it is its principal duty. Gentlemen: I entreat you:
let us restore the principle of authority!'
"Elected for
his
first term October 4, 1885, he was constantly
re-.elected thereafter. He gave numerous and brilliant speeches, full
of rough and powerful eloquence. He was in Paris in 1898 when
the terrible strike broke out. He rushed back to Bouville, where he
organized resistance to the strike and took the initiative in negotiating
