At the height of the popularity of the general his career was very near being cut short by a political duel.  In France, as we have seen in the history of the Duchesse de Berri, it is not an unheard-of thing to get rid of a political adversary by a challenge.  After Boulanger had insulted the Duc d’Aumale while he was Minister of War, a challenge passed between himself and an Orleanist, M. le Baron de Lareinty.  Boulanger stood to receive the fire of his adversary, but did not fire in return.  He was subsequently anxious to fight Jules Ferry; but Jules Ferry declined any meeting of the kind.  After he entered the Chamber, his great enemy, Floquet, who was then in the Cabinet, called him in the course of debate “A Saint-Arnaud of the cafes chantants!” Boulanger challenged him for this, and the duel took place with swords.  Floquet was slightly wounded, but the general’s foot slipped, and he received his adversary’s sword-point in his throat.  It was almost a miracle that it did not sever the jugular vein.  For some time “Le brav’ General’s” life was despaired of; but when he was pronounced out of danger, Paris amused itself with the thought that the most prominent soldier in the French army had nearly met his death at the hands of an elderly lawyer.

Since the funds furnished to Boulanger for the election expenses of his candidates, and even for his own personal expenses, came from the Royalist party, he was more bound to it than ever; but he pretended to be guided by a body that called itself the National Republican Committee, which he assured his friends, the Monarchists, he used only as a screen.  When Madame d’Uzes threw her last million into the gulf, it seemed expedient to the Royalists to exact more definite pledges from Boulanger than his word as a soldier.  “If the present Government of France is overthrown,” they said, “and an appeal made to the people, who will fill the interregnum?  Will General Boulanger, if all power is intrusted to him, consent to give it up, if the nation votes for monarchy?  And with all the machinery of government in his hands, is it certain that a plebiscite would be the free vote of the people?”

A general election was to take place in the summer of 1889, at the height of the Universal Exposition.  Hitherto the various elections in which Boulanger had contended had been for vacant seats in the old Assembly.  He was anxious to test his popularity in Paris by standing for the workman’s quarter of Belleville; and in spite of his being opposed by the Radicals in the Chamber, as well as by the Government, he was elected by a large majority.

The Government then changed its method of attack.  It brought in a bill changing the selection of parliamentary candidates from the scrutin de liste to the scrutin d’arrondissement. Boulanger therefore would be eligible for election only in the district in which he was domiciled.