clouds of systems, of passions, and of theories. These appearances
and disappearances have been designated as movement and resistance.
At intervals, truth, that daylight of the human soul, can be descried
shining there.

This remarkable epoch is decidedly circumscribed and is beginning to
be sufficiently distant from us to allow of our grasping the principal
lines even at the present day.

We shall make the attempt.

The Restoration had been one of those intermediate phases, hard to
define, in which there is fatigue, buzzing, murmurs, sleep, tumult,
and which are nothing else than the arrival of a great nation at a
halting-place.

These epochs are peculiar and mislead the politicians who desire to
convert them to profit. In the beginning, the nation asks nothing but
repose; it thirsts for but one thing, peace; it has but one ambition,
to be small. Which is the translation of remaining tranquil. Of great
events, great hazards, great adventures, great men, thank God, we
have seen enough, we have them heaped higher than our heads. We would
exchange Caesar for Prusias, and Napoleon for the King of Yvetot. "What
a good little king was he!" We have marched since daybreak, we have
reached the evening of a long and toilsome day; we have made our first
change with Mirabeau, the second with Robespierre, the third with
Bonaparte; we are worn out. Each one demands a bed.

Devotion which is weary, heroism which has grown old, ambitions which
are sated, fortunes which are made, seek, demand, implore, solicit,
what? A shelter. They have it. They take possession of peace, of
tranquillity, of leisure; behold, they are content. But, at the same
time certain facts arise, compel recognition, and knock at the door in
their turn. These facts are the products of revolutions and wars, they
are, they exist, they have the right to install themselves in society,
and they do install themselves therein; and most of the time, facts
are the stewards of the household and fouriers[32] who do nothing but
prepare lodgings for principles.

This, then, is what appears to philosophical politicians:--

At the same time that weary men demand repose, accomplished facts demand
guarantees. Guarantees are the same to facts that repose is to men.

This is what England demanded of the Stuarts after the Protector; this
is what France demanded of the Bourbons after the Empire.

These guarantees are a necessity of the times. They must be accorded.
Princes "