long survived his reverses. His mind was a strange compound of vague reminiscences and vague aspirations. He was at once a. fatalist and a sceptic. He had a constitution which was Italian and yet Dutch. It may be asked if this phlegmatic utopist ever put to himself questions which no one ever asked him openly. Did he ever know exactly whether here below he discharged a mission or played a part? We shall afterwards reply to these questions. They have a serious interest for contemporary history."

We will add a few extracts from a feuilleton of the Temps, in which Madame Georges Sand eloquently sketched the character of the Emperor:-"This man has been styled chimerical, and the phrase is correct if by it is meant a brain nourished with chimeras, and still more accurate if it implies a being whose character is a riddle, the elements of which cannot be harmonized. For my own part, I shall give only the impression which he produced upon my mind. In the days of Ham, by his correspondence and other writings, he showed himself a young man without energy, dominated by a powerful dream, a dream conceived in infancy and kept alive by those who surrounded him, and to whose influence he submitted with the resignation of lassitude. Without real instruction, he showed great intelligence, and had the rudiments and even the flashes of genius, rather literary than philosophic, rather philosophic than political. Failing health, vitality tottering, unequal, and at times suspended by the reflux of emotions and stifled pain; yet no bitterness, no rancour, very little anger; too contemplative to be passionate; amiable, loving, made to be loved in private life; disinterested with regard to himself-see what formidable contrastscapable of the greatest political crimes, because his notion of the rights of humanity differs from ours. The Napoleonic

Legend and the apprehensions of a Republic destitute of strength or union served the cause of the Empire, despite its own shameless proceedings. The Empire was proclaimed, I cannot say founded— its representative himself sapped its basis by accepting the tarnished shield which was offered him. Born an honest man, he procured himself to be carried in triumph by ambitious men who were devoid of all scruple. All that there was of impure in the French nation went to work for him, and rendered him a sharer in responsibility for all the wrongs committed or to be committed. And then he believed himself to be great and strong. He undertook great things which could not be carried out. A man with faulty principles, he governed a nation which was lacking in principles, and which accepted an ideal of romantic prosperity in the place of true civilization, success and chance in the place of right and justice. It was, therefore, by sentiment alone that it could be led, and he understood that fact at one instant when he wished to save Italy. He had not sufficient confidence in its results, and fell at the first act. From that time his star began to pale, and he saw it no more. Perhaps he ceased to believe in it. Perhaps this member of the illuminati had become a sceptic. His understanding could not survive such a

I

transformation. He began to die during the Mexican war. France had accepted him too thoroughly—like him, it had become sceptical; it shared his decadence while hastening it. France found itself disorganized, anarchical, and devoid of self-consciousness. It cursed him to excess when it found itself lost; implacable rage preventing it from perceiving that it had been too dilatory to be dignified. He had as a private individual some good qualities. I have had an opportunity of perceiving in him truly sincere and generous characteristics. He had also a dream of French grandeur which did not belong to a sound understanding, but which was yet not that of a second-rate mind. Of a truth, France would be too much disgraced if she had submitted for twenty years to the will of a driveller working in his own interest. The fact

is that she took this meteor for a star; this silent dreamer for an astute politician. Then when she saw him succumb under disasters which she should have foreseen and prevented, she took him for a coward. He was no coward; he had a cool courage; and I believe that he did not cling to life. He felt himself crushed; the illusion of his role was gone; perhaps he was weary of himself."

After the funeral at Chiselhurst, it was agreed in the councils of the assembled leaders of the party that the Empress and the Prince Napoleon should undertake the political guardianship of the Prince Imperial. "There will be no manifesto," it was said, "no proclamation. The policy of the deceased Emperor will be carried out by the first Prince of his blood and by the heroic widow who closed his eyes and received his last words. The young Prince will not bear the name of Napoleon IV. excepting in the hearts of his faithful adherents. He will call himself Prince Louis Napoleon, as his father did before France, by her eight millions of votes, set on his head the imperial crown.'

Meanwhile across the Channel the Imperialists affected to be no way disheartened by the loss of their chief. One Emperor was dead, they said, but another had begun to reign. Napoleon IV. would be eighteen years old next year, the age fixed for his majority. No Regency need be nominated for him, for so long no doubt it might take to bring his Empire into readiness for his rule; but the time would surely come. Imperialism was a vital institution; it was la monarchie moderne, the only effective mode of government for France. Had not the death of Cæsar assured the Empire of Augustus?

Such confident boastings, however, found no echo for the present in the mass of the population. On the two other monarchical parties, the Legitimists and Orleanists, Napoleon's death had the effect of inclining them to approximation. A Fusion became again the talk of the day. Every supposed sign or utterance on the part of the leaders was eagerly noted.

The attempts which, ever since the first meeting of the Assembly at Bordeaux, had been made to bring about this mode of settling the rival claims of the two Bourbon houses had been rudely checked

in January, 1872, by the Comte de Chambord's letter, announcing his inflexible adhesion to the White Flag of his ancestors and all that it symbolized. The visit which it had been nearly settled the Comte de Paris should pay to his cousin at Frohsdorf was again postponed, and renewed negotiations still led to no result, owing to the uncompromising attitude insisted upon by the representative of the Capets. But now the Emperor's death made a change in the political horizon; and when the 21st of January came round-the day observed by Royalists of the old type in solemn commemoration of Louis XVI.'s martyrdom-a scene of no small significance was enacted at the Chapelle Expiatoire in the Rue d'Anjou. To persuade the Orleans Princes to be present was no easy task on the part of their supporters. Had not their ancestor, Philippe Egalité, been mainly instrumental in the deed of regicide? The Duc d'Aumale especially wished to compromise by attending a commemorative religious service at Chantilly instead; but the Duc de Nemours overruled his objection, and the sons of Louis Philippe knelt before the monument of the royal victim, joining in the service of penitential deprecation for the deed committed eighty years before. Especially was the tearful devotion noted of the Princess Blanche, daughter of the Duc de Nemours. The Duc d'Aumale, it was said, hesitated and trembled as he wrote his name on the Chapel register.

Scarcely had the mourners for the monarchie vieille dried their eyes, when funereal groups were seen traversing the streets of manyminded Paris, bearing crape bands and bouquets of violets in token of sorrow for the departed representative of the monarchie moderne. It was on the 22nd of January, the day after the service in the Rue d'Anjou, that prayers were offered in ten churches of the metropolis for the repose of the soul of Napoleon III. From six to eight thousand persons were computed to have taken part in these services, the chief concourse being at the Church of St. Augustin. No disturbance or agitation was created.

To take up the thread of working politics, we must now turn to the proceedings of the Committee of Thirty, which formed the main subject of public interest up to the 12th of March, when the last clause of the Bill having reference to the new Constitution, as agreed upon by the Committee and M. Thiers, was carried in the Assembly. The transactions that led up to this final vote exhibited a notable game of finesse between the two contracting parties; the public, amused at first, got thoroughly weary, after a while, of the petty circumventions by which the President and the Majority alternately tried to outwit each other. Originally appointed to prepare a new Constitution for the French Republic, the Committee was careful above all things not to assume the Republic itself to be anything more than a provisional form of Government, based upon that visionary arrangement, the "Pact of Bordeaux," and to take careful heed that in any new regulations requisite to be made for carrying on the actual functions of Government more satisfactorily,

the question of the possible introduction of monarchy at any future time should be left open. Meanwhile, they concentrated their efforts on keeping under control the personal power of the able statesman who for the time represented the chief executive authority. They determined that the victory they had gained over M. Thiers in December, 1872, should not prove fruitless; that he should be debarred from acting otherwise than in harmony with the opinions of the existing majority both in the Assembly and the Committee, and from coquetting with the Radical sections whose interests had in his last message betrayed him into the affirmation of the Republic as the accepted form of Government for the country.

Two questions stood for primary settlement: the relation in which the President should henceforth stand to the Assembly-in current phrase the modus vivendi and the creation of a Second Chamber. Thiers wished mainly to secure the Second Chamber, which he believed, besides being a Conservative institution, would have afforded a strong holdfast to his personal authority: the Committee, on the other hand, desired to postpone the consideration of that question, and decide first how to bind the President's hands and restrict the freedom of his tongue before other matters were proceeded with. What constituted the difficulty of their task was that it was necessary to gain the consent of Thiers himself to any measure they might devise. Now, Thiers was adroit enough to tax their utmost efforts. His object was, while seeming pliant and persuadable, and being in real truth indisposed to come to any rupture with the Right, of whose politics he was less afraid than of those of the Extreme Left, still to prevent the formation of any knot by which his liberty of action might be tied. He had an indomitable trust in his own ability to play the game of bascule, and a great belief in the merits of compromise. What he dreaded above all things was a point-blank collision between the forces of Conservatism and Revolution by which France was ultimately divided, and this especially before such time as his paramount object-the complete evacuation of the French territory by its German invaders-should have been carried out. And so this period of history has but a futile tale to tell of proposed constitutional settlements that ended in nothing. Thiers, while seeming to adopt the recommendation of the Committee, would suggest apparently trifling alterations which just had the effect of undoing all their restrictive power: and when the solution of the riddle seemed really to have been hit upon, it was found that the work had to be done over again. Penelope of old did not keep her suitors at bay more adroitly by the repeated demolition of her web, than Thiers for a while baffled the Committee of Thirty by his manipulations of the modus vivendi. It will be enough here to indicate some of the more marked stages or incidents in this game of check and counter-check.

On the 13th of January two projects were before the Committee;

one framed by their own first Sub-Committee, the other by a private deputy, M. Eugène Tallon. The Bill prepared by the Sub-Committee placed the Presidential relation first in order of consideration, and the Second Chamber afterwards; that of M. Tallon reversed the process. But the modus vivendi was the immediately important point in both. The Sub-Committee required that the President should ordinarily communicate with the Chamber by messages read from the Tribune by a Minister, but allowed him to participate in a debate when he should have previously by message announced his intention of so doing; that then, the discussion in which he desired to take part should be suspended till the following day, when, after his speech should have been delivered, the discussion should be again prorogued, and the division take place in his absence. M. Tallon's scheme allowed of the President's intervention in a debate without the formality of a previous message. Again, the SubCommittee made hampering provisions respecting the President's right of veto; the projét Tallon gave it more scope and freedom. On all accounts, Thiers preferred the Tallon mode of arrangement, and declared himself ready to accept it with certain modifications; at the same time suggesting to the Committee that a satisfactory solution might be arrived at by combining the two schemes. For a few days the projét Tallon was talked of and lauded as the palladium of France, the basis of a Constitution which was to inaugurate a new era of content and prosperity. But before the week was out, a change had come over the vision. M. Thiers had declared himself willing to concede the point of not taking part in a debate till he had announced by message his intention so to do. He was astute enough to see that in certain contingencies this concession might turn to his advantage. But some politicians of the Right saw it too; and in order the more effectually to restrain the oratorical powers they so much dreaded, they proposed by their mouth-piece, the Duc Decazes, that the President's participation in debate should apply to Bills only, and not to "interpellations," which last should be addressed to ministers only, and by them be answered without the intervention of their chief. This was a more dangerous thrust, but it involved consequences, especially in the event of questions concerning foreign policy, which even to the Majority seemed preposterous; and when the Duc Decazes' amendment was accepted, it was agreed to reserve for the moment the point whether the President should not be allowed to speak "on a certain category of interpellations." This, again, was felt to be a vague and unsatisfactory mode of postponing the difficulty; and a few days later sundry solutions were before the Committee. Those of M. Broët and M. Delacour went most to the point. M. Broët devised an elaborate machinery for regulating the appearances of the dreaded orator in the Assembly. M. Delacour suggested that the President should be entitled to speak in debates on interpellations when the interpellation should relate to measures which had been discussed in the Council of Ministers, and countersigned by the