After studying law at Dijon he went to Paris, where he was called to the bar, and entered into close relations with Gambetta, collaborating with him in 1868 in the foundation of the Revue politique. He had helped Emile Ollivier in his electoral campaign in Paris in 1863, but when in 1869 Ollivier was preparing to "rally" to the empire he supported the republican candidate. During the siege of Paris he escaped from the city with Gambetta, to act as his energetic lieutenant in the provinces.
After the peace he edited his chief's Parisian organ, the République française, until in 1876 he entered the Chamber of Deputies for the department of the Seine. He was minister of foreign affairs during part of the brief Gambetta administration, and subsequently one of the vice-presidents of the chamber, serving also on the budget commission and on a special industrial and agricultural inquiry. His Parisian constituents thought his policy too moderate on the clerical question, and he had to seek election in 1885 in the Côte d'Or, which in later years he represented in the Senate.
He was minister of education, religion and the fine arts in the Rouvier cabinet of 1887; minister of foreign affairs under Tirard (1889-1890), and minister of education in 1894 in the Casimir-Périer cabinet. His published works include some volumes of speeches and well-known studies of Ignatius Loyola (1876) and of Michelet (1876).
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