o months, and then as special constable at some
Chartist meetings. After the affair at Strasbourg, he did accept fifteen
thousand francs from the government of Louis-Philippe, which he had just
attempted to overthrow, on condition that he should go to America.

A franker chronicler gives us further details. Under the title, _Madame
Cornu et Napoleon III_, M. Eugene d'Eichthal published, in 1897, a
number of fragments translated from a posthumous work, _Conservation_,
by the English economist, Nassau Senior, who had been brought into
contact with a large number of distinguished men of different countries.
In 1854, he first met in a salon the wife of the French painter
Sebastien Cornu, who was a goddaughter of Queen Hortense and had been a
friend from childhood of Louis-Napoleon. She had been able to render him
many services when he was a prisoner at Ham, and they had maintained a
confidential correspondence even after the _Coup d'Etat_, which almost
interrupted their friendship, Madame Cornu being a good republican. In
the course of her acquaintance with the English gentleman, she gave him
much information concerning the then ruler of the French nation, which
he carefully set down, and which M. d'Eichthal translated for the
benefit of his countrymen. On one occasion she said: "The mental
faculties of Louis-Napoleon present many great superiorities and great
deficiencies. He has neither originality nor invention. He neither knows
how to reason nor to discuss. He has very few fixed or general
principles, but he is a very keen observer, noting quickly the
weaknesses and the stupidities of those around him. In the company of
some persons with whom he feels at ease, his wit and his gaiety are
delicious.

"There is an equal want of accord in his moral qualities. He is
extremely mild and amiable; his friendships are durable, but his
passions are not so. He has, in a high degree, decision, obstinacy,
dissimulation, patience, and confidence in himself. He is not arrested
by any scruples. That which we call a sense of good and evil, he calls
prejudices...."

Installed in the Elysee as Prince-President in 1849, he began to prepare
the way for the _Coup d'Etat_ and the zealous republicans saw with alarm
the species of informal court which he was already gathering around him.
To attract the members of the higher society, he instituted a series of
weekly receptions; all the ground-floor of the palace, including three
salons and a g