was absolute and
unchangeable; the second admitted of some variations if the ruler did
not enhance the glory of France, and also (as some cynics said)
recognise the greatness of M. Thiers. For the many gibes to which his
lively talents and successful career exposed him, he had his revenge.
His keen glance and incisive reasoning generally warned him of the
probable fate of Dynasties and Ministries. Like Talleyrand, whom he
somewhat resembled in versatility, opportunism, and undying love of
France, he might have said that he never deserted a Government before it
deserted itself. He foretold the fall of Louis Philippe under the
reactionary Guizot Ministry as, later on, he foretold the fall of
Napoleon III. He blamed the Emperor for not making war on Prussia in
1866 with the same unanswerable logic that marked his opposition to the
mad rush for war in 1870. And yet the war spirit had been in some sense
strengthened by his own writings. His great work, _The History of the
Consulate and Empire_, which appeared from 1845 to 1862--the last eight
volumes came out during the Second Empire--was in the main a
glorification of the First Napoleon. Men therefore asked with some
impatience why the panegyrist of the uncle should oppose the supremacy
of the nephew; and the action of the crowd in smashing the historian's
windows after his great speech against the war of 1870 cannot be called
wholly illogical, even if it erred on the side of Gallic vivacity.

In the feverish drama of French politics Time sometimes brings an
appropriate Nemesis. It was so now. The man who had divided the energies
of his manhood between parliamentary opposition of a somewhat factious
type and the literary cultivation of the Napoleonic legend, was now in
the evening of his days called upon to bear a crushing load of
responsibility in struggling to win the best possible terms of peace
from the victorious Teuton, in mediating between contending factions at
Bordeaux and Paris, and, finally, in founding a form of government which
never enlisted his whole-hearted sympathy, save as the least
objectionable expedient then open to France.

For the present, the great thing was to gain peace with the minimum of
sacrifice for France. Who could drive a better bargain than Thiers, the
man who knew France so well, and had recently felt the pulse of the
Governments of Europe? Accordingly, on the 17th of February, the
Assembly named him Head of the Executive Power "until it