is Napoleon then had to select
inferior men for his ministers, who also soon discovered that they were
expected to be his clerks, not his advisers. At first he was regarded by
the leading classes with derision rather than fear,--so mean was his
personal appearance, so spiritless his address, so cold and dull was his
eye, and so ridiculous were his antecedents. "The French," said Thiers,
long afterward, "made two mistakes about Louis Napoleon,--the first,
when they took him for a fool; the second, when they took him for a man
of genius." It was not until he began to show a will of his own, a
determination to be his own prime minister, that those around him saw
his dangerous ambition, his concealed abilities, and his unscrupulous
character.

Nothing of importance marked the administration of the President, except
hostility to the Assembly, and their endless debates on the
constitution. Both the President and the Assembly feared the influence
of the ultra-democrats and Red Republicans,--socialists and anarchists,
who fomented their wild schemes among the common people of the large
cities. By curtailing the right of suffrage the Assembly became
unpopular, and Louis Napoleon gained credit as the friend of order
and law.

As the time approached when, by the Constitution, he would be obliged to
lay down his office and return to private life, the President became
restless, and began to plot for the continuance of his power. He had
tasted its sweets, and had no intention to surrender it. If he could
have been constitutionally re-elected, he probably would not have
meditated a _coup d'etat_, for it was in accordance with his indolent
character to procrastinate. With all his ambition, he was patient,
waiting for opportunities to arise; and yet he never relinquished an
idea or an intention,--it was ever in his mind: he would simply wait,
and quietly pursue the means of success. He had been trained to
meditation in his prison at Ham; and he had learned to disguise his
thoughts and his wishes. The power which had been developed in him in
the days of his obscurity and adversity was cunning. As a master of
cunning he saw the necessity of reserve, mistrust, and silence.

The first move of the President to gain his end was to secure a revision
of the Constitution. The Assembly, by a vote of three-fourths, could by
the statutes of 1848 order a revision; a revision could remove the
clause which prohibited his re-election, and a re-elect