equally fortunate; but a choice was indispensable, and on that point the opposite party resumed its advantages.

Thus equivocation lay at the base of the attempt of the 24th of May, from whichever side it was contemplated. So near to success, and yet so far off. The drama was thrilling.

III

The Duc de Broglie was about to employ the most skilful tactics, and the most refined verbal ingenuity in order to prolong this crisis, to justify it, and to endeavour to find a solution for it in conformity with the somewhat confused views of the majority.

His art often gave the illusion of strength. If his position was false, his thoughts were upright ; his convictions were based on his personality, and this adds yet more to the interest of the game which he played.

The Duc The name of the Duc de Broglie domide Broglie nates this short but breathless period in the history of France. The Broglie, originating from Italy, won their French titles by a long series of eminent services. We notice, however, in the mind of each generation of the family, a certain singularity, whether exampled in that roué, the friend of the Duke of Orleans, of whom his enemy, Saint Simon, says that he was "full of artifices, intrigues and contrivances"; or in that Duc de Broglie, the father of our present subject, whose conduct was at once bold and timorous, reasonable and despotic-a chief and perfect type of those doctrinaires, whose place would never seem to be so near the parties of the Left, if there were not in their intellectual pride

something of the quality which makes the Whig, the Puritan, and the Political Nonconformist.

Educated by this father, whose lofty and reticent personality measured virtue by austerity, and by a mother, Albertine de Staël, whose hereditary faculties were persistently strained in an effort of moral edification, in which she herself recognised that there was a little "priggishness," Albert de Broglie only knew noble examples, and inflexible rules.1

Liberal His mother was a Protestant, his father a Catholicism Catholic; religious preoccupations haunted the young mind, whose natural inclination was developed and ripened betimes by such an education. He attached himself spontaneously to the doctrine which at that time captivated so many young imaginations: Liberal Catholicism. The present generations are ignorant, or very nearly so, of this combination, which was, however, the expression of ardent and noble aspirations, at the time when the eloquent soul of Montalembert lulled youth with that shortlived song. How far off are those times! . .

Albert de Broglie, brought up in society, heir to a great name, destined for politics, made his début with a translation of the Systema theologicum of Leibnitz. In 1843, he entered the Foreign

1 I have been told a story which depicts the relations between the father and the son. When Albert de Broglie thought of marriage, he opened himself to his father on the subject of his plans, not without fear. The latter listened to him without saying a word and staring all the while at the tip of his shoe, as was his habit. When the son had finished, the father said to him gravely, "My son, you may marry; I see no objection." That was all.