The immediate cause which led to the fall of M. Thiers on May 24, 1873, after he had sat for two years and a month in the presidential chair, was a dispute concerning the election of M. Charles de Remusat (son of the lady who has given her memoirs to the world).  M. de Remusat was the Government candidate for a deputyship vacant in the Paris representation.  He was at the time Thiers’ Minister for Foreign Affairs, a personal friend of the president, a distinguished man of letters, and an old Orleanist converted to Republicanism.  The opposing candidate was M. Barodet, a Radical of extreme opinions.  The Monarchists also brought forward their candidate.  He had only twenty-seven thousand votes; but these succeeded in defeating M. de Remusat, who had one hundred and thirty-five thousand, while the Radicals voted solidly for Barodet, giving him one hundred and fifty-five thousand.

The blame of this defeat was thrown on M. Thiers.  The Monarchists, who had once called him “that illustrious statesman,” now spoke of him as “a fatal old man.”  They attacked him in the Assembly; the Radicals supported them.  M. Thiers was defeated on some measure that he wished should pass, and sent in his resignation.  It was accepted by three hundred and sixty-two votes against three hundred and forty-eight.  He had fallen; and yet a plebiscite throughout the country would have given a large popular vote in favor of the man “who had found France defeated, her richest provinces occupied, her capital in the hands of savages, and had concluded peace and restored order, and found the stupendous sum required for the liberation and organization of the country, founding the Republic, and bringing order and prosperity back once more.”  Indeed, the peasants even credited him with their good harvests and the revival of spirit in the army, till they almost felt for him a sentiment of personal loyalty.

Expelled from power when seventy-eight years of age, M. Thiers retired to a little sunny, dusty entresol on the Boulevard Malesherbes, where the noise and glare greatly disturbed him.  At Tours, in the lull of events before the surrender of Paris, he had collected books and studied botany.  As soon as he was installed on the Boulevard Malesherbes he asked Leverrier, the astronomer, to continue with him the astronomical studies with which at Versailles he had indulged himself in brief moments of leisure, remarking that he had seen a good deal of the perversity of mankind, and that he now wished to refresh himself with the orderly works of God.

Shortly after this he removed to better quarters, where his rooms opened on a garden.  In this garden he received his friends on Sunday mornings from seven to nine, attired in a wadded, brown cashmere dressing-gown, a broad-brimmed hat, a black cravat, patent-leather shoes, and black gaiters.  As he talked, he held his magnifying-glass in his hand, ready to examine any insect or blade of grass that might come under observation.