sensibly changed; but
the alteration did not yet appear for some time. M. de Chateaubriand
endeavoured to triumph with modesty, and M. de Villele, not very
sensitive to the wounds of personal vanity, treated the issue of the war
as a general success of the Cabinet, and prepared to turn it to his own
advantage, without considering to whom the principal honour might be
due. Accustomed to power, he exercised it without noise or parade, and
was careful not to clash with his adversaries or rivals, who thus felt
themselves led to admit his preponderance as a necessity, rather than
humiliated to endure it as a defeat. The dissolution of the Chamber of
Deputies became his fixed idea and immediate object. The liberal
Opposition was too strong there to allow him to hope that he could carry
the great measures necessary to satisfy his party. The Spanish war had
led to debates, continually increasing in animosity, which in time
produced violence in the stronger, and anger in the weaker party, beyond
all previous example. After the expulsion of M. Manuel on the 3rd of
March, 1823, and the conduct of the principal portion of the left-hand
party, who left the hall with him when he was removed by the gendarmes,
it was almost impossible to expect that the Chamber could resume its
regular place or share in the government. On the 24th of December, 1823,
it was in fact dissolved, and M. de Villele, putting aside the
differences of opinion on the Spanish war, applied his whole attention
to ensure the success of the elections and the formation of a new
Chamber, from which he could demand with confidence what the right-hand
party expected from him, and which, according to his expectation, should
secure a long duration of his influence both with that party and with
the Court.

M. de Chateaubriand had no such objects to contemplate or effect.
Unacquainted with the internal government of the country, and the daily
management of the Chambers, he enjoyed the success of _his_ Spanish
war, as he called it, with tranquil pride,--ready, on provocation, to
become active and bitter. He wanted exactly the qualities which
distinguished M. de Villele, and he possessed those, or rather the
instinct and inclination of those, in which M. de Villele was deficient.
Entering late on public life, and until then unknown, with a mind but
slightly cultivated, and little distracted from business by the force or
variety of his imaginative ideas, M. de Villele had ever