CHAPTER XI.

DEATH AND RESURRECTION.

If the traveller sauntering through the noisy crowd of a populous town, full of life, found himself suddenly in the midst of a silent graveyard, he could not help being startled. Although prepared to meet with the traces of death where there is so much life, he would be struck by the close proximity of these two most formidable contrasts in nature.

Such a contrast of life and death forms one of the greatest curiosities of Imperial Paris. Not that Père la Chaise or the Cimetière of Montmartre has been transplanted into the Rue de Rivoli or to the Boulevards. The contrast is a psychological one, political lethargy, surrounded by exuberance of every other kind of life and movement—a people which has thrown itself, with all the vigour and energy of youth, into every sphere of activity except the one which seems more adapted than any other for the display and employment of all faculties. The impression is painful-something like that produced on us by persons afflicted with some natural defect, and trying to remedy the loss of one faculty by a violent and unnatural use of all the others. The impression in such a case will be doubly painful if

the affliction is not a misfortune of birth, but the result of accident, or is caused by the person's own fault, and if we remember the person when in possession of all the faculties. And this is the case here.

Paris sunk in political lethargy, is Paris turned deaf and dumb. Paris, which was so long the model for political life all over the Continent, that great hotbed of the most astonishing political and social theories-it lies fallow and barren: that eloquent tongue, which electrified half Europe with every word it uttered-it is mute and silent; that colossal brain, which seemed to have taken upon itself the task of reforming mankind-it is paralysed; and the bold pen, before which the mightiest have trembled-it has scarcely power left to trace meaningless flourishes.

The transformation is so violent, that we at first scarcely believe our senses; but soon indignation seizes us against the Imperial sway as against those wicked rulers of Byzanz, who sought their safety in blinding their adversaries. Willingly would we give all those marvels which surround us for one spark of the old genius. Immense pity seizes us at the sight of such calamity.

But no; we cannot believe that the sacred fire is extinct. It is smouldering under the mass of rubbish which has been heaped upon it to stifle it. If public thought be fettered, so much the more active will be the movement of private opinion and convictions. If the tribune be mute and the press gagged, the echo of their voices is still repeated by the people, the thousandtongued. If it is the fashion and mot d'ordre to deride and blaspheme liberty in public, so much the more fervent must be the secret worship of the persecuted god

dess. Such is our consolation; and being ourselves devotees of the goddess, we courageously start on our pious pilgrimage to search for the scattered embers of the sacred fire which has been banished from public altars.

The longer the search, and the more earnest the seeker, the deeper will be the feeling of disappointment and sadness. Ten short years, and all is forgotten, or remembered only to be cursed or laughed at. It seems incredible, and yet it is true. The artisan and workman, who once listened with devotion to the public reading of the papers in his atelier, and who might have given lessons in politics to many a silent or talking member of the Chamber of Deputies, cares no more about politics than the tool he handles. He has a vague sympathy for Italy, because he admires the man of the people, Garibaldi the pure, and because it is the French army which "made" Italy. The bourgeois is frightened at the very word politics, and reads piously his semiofficial paper, from which he tries to gather what the Emperor is going to do next. Of the great mass care only for telegrams from abroad, and announcements of the 'Moniteur,' as influencing the quotations of the Exchange. Politics imply change and disturbance, hence risks and losses; they have been already the cause of much misery in the world, and above all in France. Let us guard ourselves against further temptation. Besides, politics are a social " bore," freedom a dangerous illusion, which is easily caught by the mob, and turned against their betters. Rather the rule of one man than that of the masses.

Of the upper classes, the

Worship of success, a comfortable feeling of evergrowing material prosperity, daily satisfaction of na

tional vanity by the commanding position taken up by France, and, above all, utter want of faith in liberal institutions, have produced a state of quiescence and apathy in the great majority of all classes, such as the country has not possessed for the last hundred years. There are indeed, here and there, voices in the desert; some of them sincere, but they are neither listened to nor believed in, for they represent in the eyes of the sceptic crowd the cries of disappointed ambition. Having no faith themselves, the multitude believe little in the faith of others.

The more we examine and the better we know this psychological phenomenon, the milder are we inclined to judge Imperialism. Whatever the opinion be about the origin of it, never did power understand better the temper of the people it has to deal with. It had little if any share in producing the scepticism in liberal institutions; it took merely advantage of it to give a vent to energy in another direction, and to compensate for lost illusions by promoting the national wellbeing and satisfying national vanity. It is not in vain the Emperor has studied the 'Commentaries of Cæsar;' he has learned to know the "infirmitatem Gallorum quod sunt in consiliis capiendis mobiles, et novis plerumque rebus student." This "infirmitas," as well as the other weakness, that "non solum in omnibus civitatibus atque in omnibus pagis partibusque, sed pene etiam in singulis domibus factiones sunt,"-they were as true in 1848 as they had been nineteen centuries before.

This restlessness, always prone to extremes, and knowing no moderation, and party spirit, fiercer than ever before, had exhausted themselves in the wild

struggle from 1848 to 1851, and placed France at the feet of the new Cæsar.

More unrelenting and savage was the strife than any that ever raged between Gallic chieftains, for it was no more a strife of individuals, but of classes, a social and not only a political war.

So far remote is the origin of it, and so constant and implacable the antagonism pervading the different layers of society in France, that one would be almost tempted to see in it the vestiges of the hatred of race which conquest has aroused, and which reappears after centuries under another form. The Roman colonist and master who ruled the Celt with iron hand, the Frankish lord who succeeded and held under his foot both Roman and Celt, and the Celtic mass which hated both its oppressors however much assimilated these elements may be in appearance, there seems to exist a repulsion between them which has become an obstacle to their amalgamation. While in England, Celt, Saxon, Dane, and Norman combined to break the royal power; here royal power found always the seigneurs ready to help in oppressing the towns, the towns anxious to assist royalty against the lords, and both combining against the people, until all three were reduced into servitude.

The weakness of the royal power in 1789 became the signal for the first great social outburst. The aristocracy tries to isolate itself, and claims a privileged position. The bourgeois, calling in the assistance of the people, sweeps away the privileged class. The bourgeois in turn attempts to monopolise power, and, falling under the resentment of the masses and of demagogues, opens the road for the 18th Brumaire and military despotism. After the Restoration the aristocracy again attempts the old