workest in, that can have worth or
continuance.

But reflect, in any case, what a life-problem this of poor Louis, when
he rose as Bien-Aime from that Metz sick-bed, really was! What son
of Adam could have swayed such incoherences into coherence? Could he?
Blindest Fortune alone has cast him on the top of it: he swims
there; can as little sway it as the drift-log sways the wind-tossed
moon-stirred Atlantic. "What have I done to be so loved?" he said then.
He may say now: What have I done to be so hated? Thou hast done nothing,
poor Louis! Thy fault is properly even this, that thou didst nothing.
What could poor Louis do? Abdicate, and wash his hands of it,--in favour
of the first that would accept! Other clear wisdom there was none for
him. As it was, he stood gazing dubiously, the absurdest mortal extant
(a very Solecism Incarnate), into the absurdest confused world;--wherein
at lost nothing seemed so certain as that he, the incarnate Solecism,
had five senses; that were Flying Tables (Tables Volantes, which vanish
through the floor, to come back reloaded). and a Parc-aux-cerfs.

Whereby at least we have again this historical curiosity: a human
being in an original position; swimming passively, as on some boundless
'Mother of Dead Dogs,' towards issues which he partly saw. For Louis had
withal a kind of insight in him. So, when a new Minister of Marine, or
what else it might be, came announcing his new era, the Scarlet-woman
would hear from the lips of Majesty at supper: "He laid out his ware
like another; promised the beautifulest things in the world; not a
thing of which will come: he does not know this region; he will see." Or
again: "'Tis the twentieth time I hear all that; France will never get
a Navy, I believe." How touching also was this: "If I were Lieutenant of
Police, I would prohibit those Paris cabriolets." (Journal de Madame de
Hausset, p. 293, &c.)

Doomed mortal;--for is it not a doom to be Solecism incarnate! A new
Roi Faineant, King Donothing; but with the strangest new Mayor of
the Palace: no bow-legged Pepin now, but that same cloud-capt,
fire-breathing Spectre of DEMOCRACY; incalculable, which is enveloping
the world!--Was Louis no wickeder than this or the other private
Donothing and Eatall; such as we often enough see, under the name of
Man, and even Man of Pleasure, cumbering God's diligent Creation, for
a time? Say, wretcheder! His Life-solecism was seen and felt of a whole
scandalised worl