was quite overshadowed by the prestige of his new recruit, and thenceforth occupied but a secondary place. In that manifesto the hopes of the monarchists found an expression too clear to be misunderstood:
”The logic, as well as the justice of events, would authorize the restoration by the force of arms of the government of Brazil to the place it occupied on the fifteenth of November, 1889, when, in a moment of surprise and national stupefaction, it was overthrown by a military sedition of which the present government is only a continuation. The respect, however, which is due to the will of the nation, freely expressed, demands that it should select, solemnly and on its own responsibility, the form of government to which it wishes to entrust its glorious destinies.“
A few hours later all Brazil knew that the rebels were playing
their last card, and that card was the restoration of the monarchy ;
but the reply that was given by Brazil to Señor Saldanha da Gama
was the same as that it had given to Señor Custodio de Mello.
The answer was that in defence of republican institutions the sup-
port of the nation would be given to the lawful government. The
foreign support on which the new leader counted likewise failed
him, and before the end of December he found himself under the
ridiculous necessity of declaring that it was the government that
had had the seditious manifesto printed, had posted it at the street
corners, and had attributed to him the plan of submitting to the
people the question of a monarchical or a republican form of
government; whereas his purpose was merely to submit the ques-
tion of the form of a republic best fitted to Brazil.
The truth is that the leadership of Saldanha da Gama is no better than that of Señor de Mello, since by his first manifesto he offended the republican rebels, and by his second destroyed the last hope of his monarchist followers. And so that type of military honor from whose mouth we were waiting to hear the words of the cavaliers of Fontenoy—”Tirez les premiers, messieurs les Républicains”—let fall from his gloved hands the báton of command. Now there is nothing left for him to do but what was done in the good old times when men’s words were worth more than the written law, by our ancestors, the stout knights of the battlefields of Aljubarrota, Centa, and India who went and asked their dead sovereigns in their tombs to release them from their vows of allegiance before surrendering to the enemy the positions they were set to guard. But Señor Saldanha da Gama has already two dead lords to awaken : the last emperor of Brazil, to return to him the sword which, without his permission, he put at the ser-
