IX. conferred upon you. Use it to raise wise institutions, the СНАР. bases of which the people have consecrated by their votes. Re-establish in France the principle of authority, which has been so rudely shaken by our continued agitations through sixty years. Combat without ceasing those anarchical passions which arise at the foundation of society. . On December 2, Prince, you took for symbol France regenerated by the Revolution of 1789 and organised by the Emperor-that is to say, a wise and well-ordered liberty, authority strong and respected by all. Let your wisdom and patriotism realise this noble idea. Give back to this noble country, so full of life and promise, the greatest of all blessings-order, stability, confidence. Put down with energy the spirit of anarchy and revolt. You will thus have saved France, preserved Europe from an immense peril, and have added to the glory of your name a new and imperishable renown.' These were the words with which the Consultative Commission-the composition of which has already been described-handed to Prince Louis Napoleon the power transferred to him by more than seven millions of his countrymen. In his reply the Prince used the famous phrase, 'Je n'étais sorti de la légalité que pour rentrer dans le droit; and said that France had shown that she understood and approved the step. More than seven million suffrages have absolved me, by justifying an act which had only one object, that of saving France, and perhaps Europe, years of disorder and of misery. I thank you for having officially declared this manifestation to have been thoroughly national and spontaneous.' Then the Prince added: I hope to secure the destinies of France by establishing institutions which shall satisfy at once the democratic instincts of the nation and the unanimously expressed desire to have a powerful and VIII. BOOK respected Government. In short, to satisfy the demands. of the present by creating a system which shall re-establish authority without wounding the spirit of equality or closing any avenue to progress, is to lay the solid foundations of the only edifice which will in the future guarantee a wise and beneficial liberty.' On the morrow-that is, on New Year's Day, 1852— the Prince went in state to Notre Dame, to pray, as he said, for God's protection for the fulfilment of his task. Invested by France,' he remarked, with the right which comes from the people,' he prayed for the power which is derived from God.' CHAPTER I. THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE. IN 1867 M. Ponson du Terrail, who had just received the cross of the Legion of Honour, sent to the Emperor, through M. Corti, the outline of a romance, in which the benefits that France had derived from the Second Empire were set forth in a dramatic form. The romance was to be called After Eighteen Years.'1 The principal figure was an aged Paris bourgeois whose business had kept him away from his country since 1852. He returned to find his old quarters vanished, and, in the place of narrow streets, cavernous unhealthy old houses, redolent of sewage and dirt and darkness, spacious avenues, stately palaces, and light and cleanliness everywhere. He came upon a prosperous city, and found himself one of a nation growing rich at home and honoured and powerful abroad. His beloved France was indeed at the head of the civilisation of the world! On the morrow of the solemn ceremonial in Notre Dame with which Prince Louis Napoleon entered actively upon his mission'-that mission which, as we 6 The nominees of the Government of September 4, who were charged with the publication of the Tuileries papers, published the note of this work, which they found among them, as the plot of a romance by the Emperor. M. Auguste Vitu exposed the blunder in the Peuple fran çais of October 19, 1870. M. Ponson CHAP. I. |