Chapter VI: Part 6

Thiers was not far short of seventy years old when, in 1863, he entered upon a new chapter of his public life as one of the deputies for Paris in the Imperial Corps Legislatif. A new generation had meantime arisen. Men were growing into fame as orators and politicians who were boys when Thiers was last heard as a parliamentary debater. He returned to political life at an eventful time and accompanied by some notable compeers. The elections which sent Thiers to represent the department of the Seine made the venerable and illustrious Berryer one of the delegates from Marseilles. I doubt whether the political life of any country has ever produced a purer, grander figure than that of Berryer; I am sure that an obsolete and hopeless cause never had a nobler advocate. The genius and the virtues of Berryer are indeed the loftiest claims modern French legitimacy can offer to the respect of posterity. I look back with a feeling of something like veneration to that grand and kingly form, to the sweet, serene, unaffected dignity of that august nature. Berryer belonged to a totally different political order from that of Thiers. As John Bright is to Disraeli, as John Henry Newman is to Monsignore Capel, as Montalembert was to Louis Veuillot, as Charles Sumner is to Seward, so was Berryer to Thiers. Of the oratorical merits of the two men I shall speak hereafter; now I refer to the relative value of their political characters. With Thiers and Berryer there came back to political life some men of mark and worth. Garnier-Pages was one, the impulsive, true-hearted, not very strong-headed Republican; a man who might be a great leader if fine phrases and good intentions could rule the world. Carnot was another, not much perhaps in himself, but great as the son of the illustrious organizer of victory (oh, if France had lately had one hour of Carnot!), and personally very popular just then because of his scornful rejection of Louis Napoleon's offer to bring back the ashes of his father from Magdeburg in Prussia to France. Eugene Pelletan, who had been suffering savage persecution because of his fierce attack on the Empire in his book, "The New Babylon"; Jules Simon, a superior sort of French Tom Hughes--Tom Hughes with republican convictions and strong backbone--and several other men of name and fibre, were now companions in the Corps Legislatif. All these, differing widely in personal opinions, and indeed representing every kind of political view, from the chivalrous and romantic legitimacy of Berryer to the republican religion or fetichism of Garnier-Pages, combined to make up an opposition to the Imperial Government. Up to that time the opposition had consisted simply of five men. For years those five had fought a persevering and apparently hopeless fight against the strength of Imperial arms, Imperial gold, and the lungs of Imperial hirelings. Of the five the leader was Jules Favre. The second in command was Emile Ollivier, whose treason to liberty, truth, and peace has since been so sternly avenged by destiny. The other three were Picard, a member of the Republican Government of September, and MM. Darimon and Henon. Numerically the opposition, now strengthened by the new accessions, became quite respectable; morally and politically it wholly changed the situation. It was no longer a Leonidas or Horatius Cocles desperately holding a pass; it was an army encountering an army. The Imperialists of course still far outnumbered their opponents; but there were no men among the devotees of Imperialism who could even pretend to compare as orators with Berryer, Thiers, or Favre. Of these three men, it seems to me that Berryer was by far the greatest orator, but Thiers left him nowhere as a partisan leader. Thiers undoubtedly pushed Jules Favre aside and made him quite a secondary figure. Thiers delighted in worrying a ministry. He never needed, as Berryer did, the impulse of a great principle and a great purpose. He felt all the joy of the strife which distinguishes the born gladiator. He soon proved that his years had in no degree impaired his oratorical capacity. It became one of the grand events of Paris when Thiers was to speak. Owing to the peculiar regulations of the French Chamber, which required that those who meant to take part in a debate should inscribe their names beforehand in the book, and speak according to their turn--an odious usage, fatal to all genuine debate--it was always known in advance through Paris that to-morrow or the day after Thiers was to speak. Then came a struggle for places in what an Englishman would call the strangers' gallery. The Palais Bourbon, where the Corps Legislatif held its sittings, opposite the Place de la Concorde, has the noble distinction of providing the least and worst accommodation for the public of any House of Assembly in the civilized world. The English House of Commons is miserably defective and niggardly in this respect, but it is liberal and lavish when compared with the French Corps Legislatif. Therefore, when M. Thiers was about to speak, there was as much intriguing, clamoring, beseeching, wrangling, storming for seats in the public _tribunes_ as would have sufficed to carry an English county election. The trouble had its reward. Nobody could be disappointed in M. Thiers who merely desired an intellectual exercise and treat. Thiers never was heavy or dull. He is, I think, the most interesting of all the great European debaters. I do not know whether I convey exactly the meaning I wish to express when I used the word "interesting." What I mean is that there is in M. Thiers an inexhaustible vivacity, freshness, and variety which never allows the attention to wander or flag. He never dwells too long on any one part of his subject; or if he has to dwell long anywhere, he enlivens the theme by a lavish copiousness of novel argument, application, and illustration, which is irresistibly piquant and fascinating. Reentering public life in his old age, M. Thiers had physically something like the advantage which I have known to be possessed by certain mature actresses, who, never having had any claim to personal beauty in their youth, were visited with hardly any penalty of time when they began to descend into age. Thiers always had an insignificant presence, a dreadfully bad voice, and an unpleasant delivery. Time added nothing, and probably could add nothing, to these disadvantages. Already John Bright has lost, already Gladstone is losing, those magnificent qualities of voice and intonation which till lately distinguished both from all other living English orators. One of the only fine passages in Disraeli's "Life of Lord George Bentinck" is that in which he describes the melancholy sensation created in the House of Commons when Daniel O'Connell, feeble and broken down, tried vainly to raise above a mumbling murmur those accents which once could thrill and vibrate to the furthest corner of the most capacious hall. But the voice and delivery of Thiers at seventy were no whit worse than those of Thiers at forty; and in energy, vivacity, and variety, I think the opposition leader of 1866 had rather gained upon the Minister of 1836. In everything that makes a great orator he was far beneath Berryer. The latter had as commanding a presence as he had a superb voice, and a manner at once graceful and dignified. Berryer, too, had the sustaining strength of a profound conviction, pure and lofty as a faith. If Berryer was a political Don Quixote, Thiers was a political Gil Blas. Thiers was all sparkle, antithesis, audacity, sophistry. His _tours de force_ were perfect masterpieces of fearless adroitness. He darted from point to point, from paradox to paradox, with the bewildering agility of a squirrel. He flashed through the heavy atmosphere of a dull debate with the scintillating radiancy of a firefly. He propounded sentiments of freedom which would positively have captivated you if you had not known a little of the antecedents of the orator. He threw off concise and luminous maxims of government which would have been precious guides if human politics could only be ruled by epigram. His long experience as a partisan leader, in and out of office, had made him master of a vast array of facts and dates, which he was expert to marshal in such a manner as often to bewilder his opponents. His knowledge of the mechanism and regulations of diplomatic and parliamentary practice was consummate. He was singularly clear and attractive in statement; his mode of putting a case had something in it that was positively fascinating. He was sharp and severe in retort, and there was a cold, self-complacent _hauteur_ in his way of putting down an adversary, which occasionally reminded one of a peculiarity of Earl Russell's style when the latter was still a good parliamentary debater. M. Thiers had the great merit of never talking over the heads, above the understandings of his audience. His style of language was of the same character perhaps as that of Mr. Wendell Phillips. Of course no two men could possibly be more unlike in the manner of speaking, but the rhetorical vernacular of both has a considerable resemblance. The diction in each case is clear, incisive, penetrating--never, or hardly ever, rising to anything of exalted oratorical grandeur, never involved in mist or haze of any kind, and with the same habitual acidity and sharpness in it. I presume M. Thiers wrote the greater part of his speeches beforehand, but he evidently had the happy faculty, rare even among accomplished orators, which enables a speaker to blend the elaborately prepared portions of his discourse with the extemporaneous passages originated by the impulses and the incidents of the debate. Some of the cleverest arguments, and especially some of the cleverest sarcastic hits in M. Thiers's recent speeches, were provoked by questions and interruptions which must have been quite unexpected. But a strange peculiarity about the whole body of the speeches, the written parts as well as the extemporaneous, was that they bore no resemblance whatever to the glittering and gorgeous style which is so common and so objectionable in the pages of the author's history of the French Revolution, and of the Consulate and the Empire. I must say that I think M. Thiers's historical works are decidedly heavy reading. I think his speeches are more interesting and attractive to read than those of any political speaker of our day. As an orator I set him below Berryer, below Gladstone and Bright, below Wendell Phillips, and not above Disraeli. But as an interesting speaker--I can think of no better qualification for him--I place M. Thiers above any of those masters of the art of eloquence.

I have not compared M. Thiers with Jules Favre. Any juxtaposition of the two ought rather perhaps to be in the way of contrast than of comparison. Jules Favre is probably the most exquisite and perfect rhetorician practising in the public debates of our time. No one else can lend so brilliant an effect, so delightful an emphasis to words and phrases by the mere modulations of his tone. I once heard a French workingman say that Jules Favre _parlait comme un ange_--talked like an angel; and there was a simple appropriateness in the expression. An angel, if he had to address so unsympathetic and uncongenial an audience as the Imperial Corps Legislatif, could hardly lend more musical effect to the meaning of his words than was given by Jules Favre's consummate rhetorical skill. But I must acknowledge that to me at least there never seemed to be much in what Jules Favre said. It seemed to me too often to want marrow and backbone. It was an eloquence of fine phrases and splendid vague generalities. "Flow on, thou shining river," one felt sometimes inclined to say as the bright, broad, shallow stream glided away. If Thiers spoke for half a day, and the discourse covered a dozen columns of the closely-printed "Moniteur," yet the listener or reader came away with the impression that the orator had crammed quite a surprising quantity of matter into his speech, and could have found ever so much more to say on the same subject. The impression produced on me at least by the speeches of Jules Favre was always of the very opposite character. They seemed to be all rhetoric and modulation; they were without depth and without fibre. The essentially declamatory character of Jules Favre's eloquence received its most complete illustration in that remarkable document--so painful and pathetic because of its obvious earnestness, so ludicrous and almost contemptible because of its turgid and extravagant outbursts--the report of his recent interviews with Count von Bismarck at the Prussian headquarters near Versailles. One must keep constantly in mind the awful seriousness of the situation, and the genuine suffering which it must have imposed upon Jules Favre, not to laugh outright or feel disgusted at the inflated, hyperbolical, and melodramatic style in which the Republican Minister describes his interview with the Prussian Chancellor. Now, whatever faults of style M. Thiers might commit, he never could thus make himself ridiculous. He never allows himself to be out of tune with the occasion and the audience. You may differ utterly from him, you may distrust and dislike him; but Thiers, the parliamentary orator, will not permit you to laugh at him.

Thiers was always very happy in his replies and retorts, and he never allowed if he could an interruption to one of his speeches in the Corps Legislatif to pass without seizing its meaning and at once dissecting and demolishing it. He rejoiced in the light sword-play of such exercises. He would never have been contented with the superb quietness of contempt by which Berryer in one of his latest speeches crushed Granier de Cassagnac, the abject serf and hireling of Imperialism. While Berryer was speaking, Granier de Cassagnac suddenly expressed his coarse dissent from one of the orator's statements by crying out, "That is not true." Berryer was not certain as to the source of this insolent interruption. He gazed all round the assembly, and demanded in accents of subdued and noble indignation who had dared thus to challenge the truth of his statement. There was a dead pause. Even enemies looked up with reverence to the grand old orator, and were ashamed of the rude insult flung at him. De Cassagnac quailed, but every eye was on him, and he was compelled to declare himself. "It was I who spoke," said the Imperial servant. Berryer looked at him for a moment, and then said, "Oh, it was _you_!--then it is of no consequence," and calmly resumed the thread of his discourse. Nothing could have been finer, nothing more demolishing than the cold, grand contempt which branded De Cassagnac as a creature incapable of meriting, even by insult, the notice of a man of honor. But Thiers would never have been satisfied with such a mode of crushing an adversary; and indeed it needed all the majesty of Berryer's presence and the moral grandeur of his character to give it full force and emphasis. Thiers would have showered upon the head of the Imperial lacquey a whole fiery cornucopia of sarcasm and sharp invective, and De Cassagnac would have gone home rather proud of having drawn down upon his head the angry eloquence of the great Orleanist orator.

Thiers threw his whole soul into his speeches--not merely as to their preparation, but as to their revision and publication. According to the Imperial system, no independent reports of speeches in the Chambers were allowed to appear in print. The official stenographers noted down in full each day's debate, and the whole was published next day in the "Moniteur Universel." These reports professed to give every word and syllable of the speeches--every whisper of interruption. Sometimes, therefore, the "Moniteur" came out with twenty of its columns filled up with the dull maunderings of some provincial blockhead, for whom servility and money had secured an official candidature. Besides these stupendous reports, the Government furnished a somewhat condensed version, in which the twenty-column speech was reduced say to a dozen columns. Either of these reports the public journals might take, but none other; and no journal must alter or condense by the omission of a line or the substitution of a word the text thus officially furnished. When Thiers had spent the whole day in delivering a speech, he was accustomed to spend the whole night in reading over and correcting the proof-sheets of the official report. The venerable orator would hurry home when the sitting was over, change his clothes, get into his arm-chair before his desk, and set to work at the proof-sheets according as they came. Over these he would toil with the minute and patient inspection of a watchmaker or a lapidary, reading this or that passage many times, until he had satisfied himself that no error remained and that no turn of expression could well be improved. Before this task was done, the night had probably long faded and the early sun was already lighting Paris; but when the Corps Legislatif came to assemble at noon, the inexhaustible septuagenarian was at his post again. That evening he would be found, the central figure of a group, in some salon, scattering his brilliant sayings and acrid sarcasms around him, and in all probability exercising his humor at the expense of the Imperial Ministers, the Empire, and even the Emperor himself. After 1866 he was exuberant in his _bons mots_ about the humiliation of the Imperial Cabinet by Prussia. "Bismarck," he once declared, "is the best supporter of the French Government. He keeps it always in its place by first boxing it on one ear and then maintaining the equilibrium by boxing it on the other."

If one could have been present at the recent interviews between Count Bismarck and M. Thiers, he would doubtless have enjoyed a curious and edifying intellectual treat. Bismarck is a man of imperturbable good humor; Thiers a man of imperturbable self-conceit. Thiers has a tongue which never lacks a word, and that the most expressive word. Bismarck has a rare gift of shrewd satirical humor, and of phrases that stick to public memory. Each man would have regarded the other as a worthy antagonist in a duel of words. Neither would care to waste much time in lofty sentiment and grandiose appeals. Each would thoroughly understand that his best motto would be, "_A corsaire, corsaire et demi_." Bismarck would find in Thiers no feather-headed Benedetti; assuredly, Thiers would favor Bismarck with none of Jules Favre's sighs and tears, and bravado and choking emotions. Thiers would have the greater part of the talk, that is certain; but Bismarck would probably contrive to compress a good deal of meaning and significance into his curt interjected sentences. Thiers assuredly must have long since worn out any freshness of surprise or thrilling emotion of any kind at the political convulsions of France. To him even the spectacle of the standard of Prussia hoisted on the pinnacles of Versailles could hardly have been an overpowering wonder. He had seen the soldiers of Prussia picketed in Paris; he could remember when a fickle Parisian populace, weary of war, had thronged into the streets to applaud the entrance of the conquering Czar of Russia. He had seen the Bourbon restored, and had helped to overthrow him. He had been twice the chief Minister of that Louis Philippe of Orleans, who in his youth had had to save the Princess his sister by carrying her off in her night-gown, without time to throw a shawl around her, and whose long years of exile had led him, in fulfilment of the prophecy of Danton, to the throne of France at last. He had helped towards the downfall of that same King his master, and had striven vainly at the end to stand between him and his fate. He had seen a second Republic rise and sink; he had now become the envoy of a third Republic. He had refused to serve an Imperial Napoleon, although his own teaching and preaching had been among the most effective agencies in debauching the mind and heart of the nation, and thus rendering a second Empire possible. People say M. Thiers has no feelings, and I shall not venture to contradict them--I have often heard the statement from those who know better than I can pretend to do. It would have been personally unfortunate for him in his interview with Count von Bismarck if he had been burthened with feelings. For he must surely in such a case have felt bitterly the consciousness that the misfortunes which had fallen on his country were in great measure the fruit of his own doctrines and his own labors. If the public conscience of France had not been seared and hardened against all sentiment of obligation to international principle, where French glory and French aggrandizement were concerned; if France had not learned to believe that no foreign nation had any rights which she was bound to respect; if she had not been saturated with the conviction that every benefit to a neighbor was an injury to herself; if she had not accepted these views as articles of national faith, and followed them out wherever she could to their uttermost consequences, then M. Thiers might be said to have written and spoken and lived in vain.

It is probable that a new career presents itself as a possibility to the indomitable energy, and, as many would say, the insatiable ambition of M. Thiers. Certainly, there seems not the faintest indication that the veteran believes himself to lag superfluous on the stage. It is likely that he rushed into the recent peace negotiations with the hope of playing over again the part so skilfully played by Talleyrand at the time of the Congress of Vienna, by virtue of which France obtained so much advantage which might hardly have been expected, and Germany got so little of what she might naturally have looked for. I certainly shall not venture to say whether M. Thiers may not even yet have an important official career before him. His recent enterprises and expeditions give evidence enough that he has nerve and physique for any undertaking likely to attract him, and I see no reason to doubt that his intellect is as fresh and active as it was thirty years ago. Thiers deserves nothing but honor for the unconquerable energy and courage which refuse to yield to years, and will not acknowledge the triumph of time. He would deserve far greater honor still if we could regard him as a disinterested patriot; highest honor of all if his principles were as wise and just as his ambition was unselfish. But charity itself could hardly hope to reconcile the facts of M. Thiers's long and varied career with any theory ascribing to the man himself a pure and disinterested purpose. That a statesman has changed his opinions is often his highest glory, if, as in the case of Mr. Gladstone, he has thereby grown into the light and the right. Nor is a change of views necessarily a reproach to a politician, even though he may have retrograded or gone wrong. But the man who is invariably a passionate liberal when out of office, and a severe conservative when in power; who makes it a regular practice to have one set of opinions while he leads the opposition, and another when he has succeeded in mounting to the lead of a ministry; such a man cannot possibly hope to obtain for such systematic alternations the credit of even a capricious and fantastic sincerity. No one who knows anything of M. Thiers would consent thus to exalt his heart at the expense of his head. When the late Lord Cardigan was, rightly or wrongly, accused of having returned rather too quickly from the famous charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava, his lordship, among other things, alleged that his horse had run away with him. A bitter critic thereupon declared that Lord Cardigan could not be allowed thus unfairly to depreciate his consummate horsemanship, I am afraid we cannot allow M. Thiers's intelligence and shrewdness to be unjustly depreciated by the assumption that his political tergiversations were the result of meaningless caprice.

M. Thiers is one of the most gifted men of his day. But he is not, in my judgment, a great man. He wants altogether the grand and stable qualities of principle and judgment which are needed to constitute political greatness. His statesmanship is a sort of policy belonging apparently to the school of the Lower Empire; a Byzantine blending of intrigue and impudence. He has never had the faculty of reading the signs of the times, or of understanding that to-day is not necessarily like yesterday. But for the wonderful gifts of the man, there would seem to be something positively childish in the egotism which could believe that it lay in the power of France to maintain, despite of destiny, the petty princes of Germany and Italy, to arrange the political conditions of England, and prescribe to the United States how far their principle of internal cohesion should reach. Victor Hugo is undoubtedly an egotistic Frenchman. Some of his recent utterances have been foolish and ridiculous. But the folly has been that of a great soul; the folly has consisted in appealing, out of all time and place, to sublime and impracticable sentiments of human brotherhood and love which ought to influence all human souls, but do not and probably never will. Far different is the egotism of Thiers. It is the egotism of selfishness, arrogance, and craft. In a sublime world, Victor Hugo's appeals would cease to be ridiculous; but the nobler the world, the more ignoble would seem the doctrines and the policy of Thiers. My own admiration of Thiers extends only to his skill as a debater and his marvellous intellectual vitality. The man who, despite the most disheartening disadvantages of presence, voice, and manner, is yet the most fascinating political debater of his time, the man who at seventy-three years of age can go up in a balloon in quest of a new career, must surely command some interest and admiration, let critical wisdom preach to us never so wisely. But the best days will have arisen for France when such a political character and such a literary career as those of M. Thiers shall have become an anachronism and an impossibility.

PRINCE NAPOLEON.

Some few years ago, seven or eight perhaps, a certain sensation was created among artists, and journalists, and literary men, and connoisseurs, and critics, by one of Flandrin's best portraits. Undoubtedly, the portrait was an admirable likeness; no one who had ever seen the original could deny or question that; but yet there was an air, a character, a certain depth of idealized expression about it which seemed to present the subject in a new light, and threw one into a kind of doubt as to whether he had ever truly understood the original before. Either the painter had unduly glorified his sitter, or the sitter had impressed upon the artist a true idea of his character and intellect which had never before been revealed to the public at large. The portrait was that of a man of middle age, with a smooth, broad, thoughtful brow, a character of command about the finely-formed, somewhat sensuous lips; chin and nose beautifully moulded, in fact what ladies who write novels would call "chiselled;" a face degenerating a little into mere flesh, but still dignified and imposing. Everywhere over the face there was a tone of dissatisfaction, of disappointment, of sullenness mingling strangely with the sensuous characteristics, and conveying somehow the idea of great power and daring ambition unduly repressed by outward conditions, or rendered barren by inward defects, or actually frustrated by failure and fate. "A Caesar out of employment!" exclaimed a celebrated French author and critic. So much there was of the Caesar in the face that no school-boy, no Miss in her teens could have even glanced at it without saying, "That is the face of a Bonaparte!" Were not the features a little too massive, it might have passed for an admirable likeness of the victor of Austerlitz; or, at all events, of the Napoleon of Leipzig or the Hundred Days. Probably any ordinary observer would at once have set it down as a portrait of the great Napoleon, and never thought there could be any doubt about the matter. It was, in fact, the likeness of Napoleon-Jerome, son of the rattle-pate King of Westphalia--Prince Napoleon, as he is ordinarily called, the Plon-plon whom soldiers jeer at, the "Red Prince" whom priests and Legitimists denounce, the cousin of the Emperor of the French, the son-in-law of the King of Italy.

It was only somewhere about, or a little before the time of the Flandrin portrait, that Prince Napoleon had the honor of becoming a mystery in the eyes of the public. Up to 1860, his character was quite settled in public estimation, just as that of Louis Napoleon had been up to the time of the _coup d'etat_. Public opinion generally settles the characters of conspicuous men at first by the intuitive process--the most delightful and easy method possible, dispensing, as it does, with any necessity for studying the subject, or even knowing anything at all about it. When the intuitive process has once adjusted a man's character, it is not easy to get people to believe in any other adjustment. Still, there are some remarkable instances of a change in popular opinion. The case of Louis Napoleon, the Emperor, is one illustration; that of Prince Napoleon, his cousin, is another, not so remarkable, certainly, but still quite worthy of some attention.

Prince Napoleon had been before the world more or less since he appeared as representative of Corsica, in the Constituent Assembly of 1848. He was made conspicuous, in a negative sort of way, by having had no hand in the _coup d'etat_, or having even opposed it, although he did not scruple to profit by its success and enjoy its golden advantages. He had a command in the Crimean war; he was sent into Tuscany during the Italian campaign. All that time public opinion in Europe was unanimous about him. He was a sensualist, a coward, an imbecile, and a blockhead. He was a fat, stupid, muddle-headed Heliogabalus. Dulness, cowardice, and profligacy were his principal, perhaps his only characteristics. When the young Clotilde, of Savoy, was given to him for a wife, a positive cry of wonder and disgust went up from every country of Europe. In good truth, it was a scandalous thing to marry a young and innocent girl to a man nearly as old as her father; and who, undoubtedly, had been a _mauvais sujet_, and had led a life of dissipation so far. But Europe cried aloud as if three out of every four princely alliances were not made on the same principle and endowed with the same character. Had the Princess Clotilde been affianced to a hog or a gorilla, there could hardly have been greater wonder and horror expressed, so clear was the public mind about the stupidity and brutality of Prince Napoleon.

Certainly, if one looked a little deeper than mere public opinion, he would have found, even then, that here and there some men, not quite incapable of judging, did not accept the popular estimate of the Emperor's cousin. All through the memorable progress of the Congress of Paris--out of which sprang Italy--we find, by the documents subsequently made public, that Cavour was in close and frequent consultation with Prince Napoleon. Once we find Cavour saying that Prince Napoleon complains of his slowness, his too great moderation, and thinks he could serve the cause better by a little more boldness. "Perhaps he is right," says Cavour, in words to that effect; "but I fear I lack his force of character, his daringness of purpose." Richard Cobden makes the acquaintance of Prince Napoleon, and is surprised and delighted with his advanced opinions on the subject of free trade; and deliberately describes him (I heard Cobden use the words) as "one of the best informed, if not the very best informed, of all the public men of Europe." Kinglake observes the Prince during the Crimean campaign--where Napoleon-Jerome got his reputation for cowardice and his nick-name of Plon-plon--and finds in him a genius very like that of his uncle, the great Napoleon, especially a wonderful power of distinguishing at a glance between the essentials and the accidentals of any question or situation--and any one who has ever studied politics and public men will know how rare a faculty that is--and finally declares that he sees no reason to believe him inferior in courage to the conqueror of Marengo! Edmond About, not a very dull personage, and not quite given up to panegyric, bursts into a strain of almost lyrical enthusiasm about the wit, the brilliancy, the culture, the daring ambition of Prince Napoleon, and declares that the Prince is kept as much out of the way as possible, because a man endowed with a soul of such unresting energy, and the face of the great Emperor, is too formidable a personage to be seen hanging about the steps of a throne. To close this string of illustrations, Prince Napoleon is in somewhat frequent and confidential intercourse with Michel Chevalier, a man not likely to cultivate the society of heavy blockheads and dullards, even though these might happen to wear princely coronets. Clearly, public opinion here was even more directly at odds than it often is with the opinion of some whom we may call experts; and the difference was so great that there seemed no possible way of reconciling the two. A man may be a profligate and yet a man of genius, and even a patriot; but one cannot be a profligate blockhead and a man of genius, a Cloten and an Alcibiades, a Caesar and a Pyrgopolinices at once.

It was in the early part of 1861 that Prince Napoleon contributed something of his own spontaneous motion to help in the solution of the enigma. That was the year when the Emperor removed the restriction which prevented both Chambers of the Legislature from freely debating the address, and the press from fully reporting the discussions. There was a remarkable debate in the Senate, ranging over a great variety of domestic and foreign questions, and one most memorable event of the debate was the brilliant, powerful and exhaustive oration delivered, with splendid energy and rhetorical effect, by Prince Napoleon. _Mon ane parle et meme il parle bien_, declares the astonished Joan, in Voltaire's scandalous poem, "La Pucelle." Perhaps there was something of a similar wonder mingled with the burst of genuine admiration which went up first from Paris, then from France, and finally from Europe and America, when that magnificent democratic manifesto came to be read. Certainly, I remember no single speech which, during my time, created anything like the same sensation in Europe. For it took the outer world wholly by surprise. It was not a case like that of the sensation lately created by the florid and fervid eloquence of the young Spanish orator, Castellar. In this latter case the public were surprised and delighted to find that there was a master of thrilling rhetoric alive, and arrayed on the side of democratic freedom, of whose very existence most persons had been previously ignorant. But, in the case of Prince Napoleon, the surprise was, that a man whom the public had long known, and always set down as a stupid sensualist, should suddenly, and without any previous warning, turn out a great orator, whose eloquence had in it something so fresh, and genuine, and forcible that it recalled the memory of the most glorious days of the French Tribune. I write of this celebrated oration now only from recollection; and, of course, I did not hear it spoken. I say "of course," because the rules of the French Senate, unlike those of the Corps Legislatif, forbid the presence of any strangers during the debates. But those who heard it spoke enthusiastically of the force and freedom with which it was delivered; the sudden, impulsive fervor of occasional outbursts; and the wonderful readiness with which the speaker, when interrupted, as he was very frequently, passed from one topic to another in order to dispose of the interruption, and replied to sudden challenge with even prompter repartee. No one could read the speech without admiring the extent and variety of the political knowledge it displayed; the prodigality of illustration it flung over every argument; the thrilling power of some of its rhetorical "phrases;" the tone of sustained and passionate eloquence which made itself heard all throughout; and, perhaps above all, that flexible, spontaneous readiness of language and resource to which every interruption, every interjected question only acted like a spur to a generous horse, calling forth new and greater, and wholly unexpected efforts. In the French Senate I need, perhaps, hardly tell my readers, it is the habit to allow the utmost license of interruption, and Prince Napoleon's audacious onslaught on the reactionists and the _parti pretre_ called out even an unusual amount of impatient utterance. Those who interrupted took little by their motion. The energetic Prince tossed off his assailants as a bull flings the dogs away on the points of his horns. "Our principles are not yours," scornfully exclaims a Legitimist nobleman--the late Marquis de la Rochejaquelein, if I remember rightly. "Your principles are not ours!" vehemently replies the orator. "No, nor are your antecedents ours. Our pride is that our fathers fell on the battle-field resisting the foreign invaders whom your fathers brought in for the subjugation of France!" The speech is studded with sudden replies equally fervid and telling. Indeed, the whole material of the oration is rich, strong, and genuine. There seems to be in the eloquence of the French Chambers, of late, a certain want of freshness and natural power. I do not speak of Berryer--he had no such want. But Thiers--by far the ablest living debater who speaks only from preparation--with all his wonderful science and skill as an artist in debate, appears to be always somewhat artificial and elaborate. Jules Favre, with his exquisitely modulated tones, and his unrivalled choice of words, hardly ever appears to me to rise to that height where the orator, lost in his subject, compels his hearers to lose themselves also in it. Now, I cannot help thinking that the two or three really great speeches made by Prince Napoleon had in them more of the native fibre, force and passion of oratory than those of almost any Frenchman since the days of Mirabeau.

However that may be, the effect wrought on the public mind was unmistakable. Plon-plon had startled Europe. He entered the palace of the Luxembourg on that memorable day without any repute but that of a dullard and a sensualist; he came out of it a recognized orator. I have been told that he lay back in his open carriage and smoked his cigar, as he drove home from the Senate, to all appearance the same indolent, sullen, heavy apathetic personage whom all Paris had previously known and despised.

One notable effect of this famous speech was the reply which a certain passage in it drew from Louis Philippe's son, the Duc d'Aumale. Prince Napoleon had indulged in a bitter sneer or two against former dynasties, and the Duc d'Aumale, a man of great culture and ability, took up the quarrel fiercely. The Duke assailed Prince Napoleon in one of the keenest, most biting pamphlets which the political controversy of our day has produced. Among other things, the Duke replied to a supposed imputation on the weakness of Louis Philippe by admitting, frankly, that the _bourgeois_ King had not dealt with enemies, when in his power, as a Bonaparte would have done. "_Et tenez_, Prince," wrote the Duke, "the only time when the word of a Bonaparte may be believed is when he avows that he will never spare a defenceless enemy." The pamphlet bristled with points equally sharp and envenomed. But the Duc d'Aumale was not content with written rejoinder. He sent a challenge to the Prince, and in serious earnest. The Prince, it need hardly be said, did not accept the challenge.

Yes, like enough, high-battled Caesar will
Unstate his greatness, and be staged to the show
Against a sworder!

Our Caesar, though not "high-battled," was by no means likely to consent to be "staged against a sworder." The Emperor hastened to prevent any disastrous consequences, by insisting that the Prince must not accept the challenge--and there was no duel. People winked and sneered a good deal. It is said that the martial King Victor Emmanuel grumbled and chafed at his son-in-law; but there was no fight. Let me say, for my own part, that I think Prince Napoleon was quite right in not accepting the challenge, and that I do not believe him to be wanting in personal courage.

From that moment, Prince Napoleon became a conspicuous figure in European politics, and when any great question arose, men turned anxiously toward him, curious to know what he would do or say. In three or four successive sessions he spoke in the Senate, and even with the impression of the first surprise still strong on the public mind, the speeches preserved abundantly the reputation which the earliest of them had so suddenly created. He might be the _enfant terrible_ of the Bonaparte family; he might be utterly wanting in statesmanship; he might be insincere; he might be physically a coward; but all the world now admitted him to be an orator, and, in his way, a man of genius.

Then it became known to the public, all at once, that the Prince, whatever his failings, had some rare gifts besides that of eloquence. He was undoubtedly a man of exquisite taste in all things artistic; he had an intelligent and liberal knowledge of practical science; he had a great faculty of organization; he was a keen humorist and wit. He loved the society of artists, and journalists, and literary men; he associated with them _en bon camarade_, and he could talk with each upon his own subject; his _bon mots_ soon began to circulate far and wide. He was a patron of Revolution. In the innermost privacy of the Palais Royal men like Mieroslawski, the Polish Red Revolutionist, men like General Tuerr, unfolded and discussed their plans. Prince Gortschakoff, in his despatches at the time of the Polish Rebellion, distinctly pointed to the palace of Prince Napoleon as the headquarters of the insurrection. The "Red Prince" grew to be one of the mysterious figures in European policy. Was he in league with his cousin, the Emperor--or was he his cousin's enemy? Did he hope, on the strength of that Bonaparte face, and his secret league with Democracy, to mount one day from the steps of the throne to the throne itself? Between him and the succession to that throne intervened only the life of one frail boy. Was Prince Napoleon preparing for the day when he might play the part of a Gloster (without the smothering), and, pushing the boy aside, succeed to the crown of the great Emperor whom in face he so strikingly resembled?

At last came the celebrated Ajaccio speech. The Emperor had gone to visit Algeria; the Prince went to deliver an oration at the inauguration of a monument to Napoleon I., at Ajaccio. The speech was, in brief, a powerful, passionate denunciation of Austria, and the principles which Austria represented before Sadowa taught her a lesson of tardy wisdom. Viewed as the exposition of a professor of history, one might fairly acknowledge the Prince's speech to have illustrated eloquently some solid and stern truths, which Europe would have done well even then to consider deeply. Subsequent events have justified and illuminated many of what then seemed the most startling utterances of the orator. Austria, for example, practically admits, by her present policy, the justice of much that Prince Napoleon pleaded against her. But as the speech of the Emperor's cousin; of one who stood in near order of succession to the throne; of one who had only just been raised to an office in the State so high that in the absence of the sovereign it made him seem the sovereign's proper representative, it was undoubtedly a piece of marvellous indiscretion. Europe stood amazed at its outspoken audacity. The Emperor could not overlook it; and he publicly repudiated it. Prince Napoleon resigned his public offices--including that of President of the Commissioners of the International Exhibition, which undertaking suffered sadly from lack of his organizing capacity and his admirable taste and judgment--and the Imperial orator of Democracy disappeared from the public stage as suddenly, and amid as much tumult, as he had entered upon it.

Prince Napoleon has, indeed, been taken into favor since by his Imperial cousin, and has been sent on one or two missions, more or less important or mysterious; but he has never, from the date of the Ajaccio speech up to the present moment, played any important part as a public man. He is not, however, "played out." His energy, his ambition, his ability, will assuredly bring him prominently before the public again. Let us, meanwhile, endeavor to set before the readers of THE GALAXY a fair and true picture of the man, free alike from the exaggerated proportions which wondering _quid nuncs_ or parasites attribute to him, and from the distortions of unfriendly painters. Exaggeration of both kinds apart, Prince Napoleon is really one of the most remarkable figures on the present stage of French history. He is, at least, a man of great possibilities. Let us try to ascertain fairly what he is, and what are his chances for the future.

Born of a hair-brained, eccentric, adventure-seeking, negligent, selfish father, Prince Napoleon had little of the advantages of a home education. His boyhood, his youth, were passed in a vagrant kind of way, ranging from country to country, from court to court. He started in life with great natural talents, a strong tendency to something not very unlike rowdyism, an immense ambition, an almost equally vast indolence, a deep and genuine love of arts, letters, and luxury, an eccentric, fitful temper, and a predominant pride in that relationship to the great Emperor which is so plainly stamped upon his face. Without entering into any questions of current scandal, everybody must know that Napoleon III. has nothing of the Bonaparte in his face, a fact on which Prince Napoleon, in his earlier and wilder days, was not always very slow to comment. Indolence, love of luxury, and a capricious temper have, perhaps, been the chief enemies which have hitherto prevented the latter from fulfilling any high ambition. It would be affectation to ignore the fact that Prince Napoleon flung many years away in mere dissipation. Stories are told in Paris which would represent him almost as a Vitellius or an Egalite in profligacy--stories some of which simply transcend belief by their very monstrosity. Even to this day, to this hour, it is the firm conviction of the general public that the Emperor's cousin is steeped to the lips in sensuality. Now, rejecting, of course, a huge mass of this scandal, it is certain that Prince Napoleon was, for a long time, a downright _mauvais sujet_; it is by no means certain that he has, even at his present mature age, discarded all his evil habits. His temper is much against him. People habitually contrast the unvarying courtesy and self-control of the Emperor with the occasional brusqueness, and even rudeness, of the Prince. True that Prince Napoleon can be frankly and warmly familiar with his intimates, and even that, like Prince Hal, he sometimes encourages a degree of familiarity which hardly tends to mutual respect. But the outer world cannot always rely on him. He can be undiplomatically rough and hot, and he has a gift of biting jest which is perhaps one of the most dangerous qualities a statesman can cultivate. Then there is a personal restlessness about him which even princes cannot afford safely to indulge. He has hardly ever had any official position assigned to him which he did not sometime or other scornfully abandon on the spur of some sudden impulse. The Madrid embassy in former days, the Algerian administration, the Crimean command--these and other offices he only accepted to resign. He has wandered more widely over the face of the earth than any other living prince--probably than any other prince that ever lived. It used to be humorously said of him that he was qualifying to become a teacher of geography, in the event of fortune once more driving the race of Bonaparte into exile and obscurity. What port is there that has not sheltered his wandering yacht? He has pleasant dwellings enough to induce a man to stay at home. His Palais Royal is one of the most elegant and tasteful abodes belonging to a European prince. The stranger in Paris who is fortunate enough to obtain admission to it--and, indeed, admission is easy to procure--must be sadly wanting in taste if he does not admire the treasures of art and _vertu_ which are laid up there, and the easy, graceful manner of their arrangement. Nothing of the air of the show-place is breathed there; no rules, no conditions, no watchful, dogging lacqueys or sentinels make the visitor uncomfortable. Once admitted, the stranger goes where he will, and admires and examines what he pleases. He finds there curiosities and relics, medals and statues, bronzes and stones from every land in which history or romance takes any interest; he gazes on the latest artistic successes--Dore's magnificent lights and shadows, Gerome's audacious nudities; he observes autograph collections of value inestimable; he notices that on the tables, here and there, lie the newest triumphs or sensations of literature--the poem that every one is just talking of, the play that fills the theatres, George Sand's last novel, Renan's new volume, Taine's freshest criticism: he is impressed everywhere with the conviction that he is in the house of a man of high culture and active intellect, who keeps up with the progress of the world in arts, and letters, and politics. Then there was, until lately, the famous Pompeiian Palace, in one of the avenues of the Champs Elysees, which ranked among the curiosities of Paris, but which Prince Napoleon has at last chosen, or been compelled, to sell. On the Swiss shore of the lake of Geneva, one of the most remarkable objects that attract the eye of the tourist who steams from Geneva to Lausanne, is La Bergerie, the palace of Prince Napoleon. But the owner of these palaces spends little of his time in them. His wife, the Princess Clotilde, stays at home and delights in her children, and shows them with pride to her visitors, while her restless husband is steaming in and out of the ports of the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, or the Baltic. Prince Napoleon has not found his place yet, say Edmond About and other admirers--when he does he will settle firmly to it. He is a restless, unmanageable idler and scamp, say his enemies--unstable as water, he shall not excel. Meanwhile years go by, and Prince Napoleon has long left even the latest verge of youth behind him; and he is only a possibility as yet, and is popular with no political party in France.

Strange that this avowed and ostentatious Democrat, this eloquent, powerful spokesman of French Radicalism, is not popular even with Democrats and Red Republicans. They do not trust him. They cannot understand how he can honestly extend one hand to Democracy, while in the other he receives the magnificent revenues assigned to him by Despotism. One might have thought that nothing would be more easy than for this man, with his daring, his ambition, his brilliant talents, his commanding eloquence, his democratic principles, and his Napoleon face, to make himself the idol of French Democracy. Yet he has utterly failed to do so. As a politician, he has almost invariably upheld the rightful cause, and accurately foretold the course of events. He believed in the possibility of Italy's resurrection long before there was any idea of his becoming son-in-law to a King of Italy; he has been one of the most earnest friends of the cause of Poland; he saw long ago what every one sees now, that the fall of the Austrian system was an absolute necessity to the progress of Europe; he was a steady supporter of the American Union, and when it was the fashion in France, as in England, to regard the independence of the Southern Confederacy as all but an accomplished fact, he remained firm in the conviction that the North was destined to triumph. With all his characteristic recklessness and impetuosity, he has many times shown a cool and penetrating judgment, hardly surpassed by that of any other European statesman. Yet the undeniable fact remains, that his opinion carries with it comparatively little weight, and that no party recognizes him as a leader.