his best friends after having probed
the wound and seen the necessity of curative measures, which were not
sustained by those for whose sake he put himself into the breach."

"Ah! monsieur," cried Gerard, "you are frank; you go straight to your
thought without disguise, and I won't contradict you. Napoleon in his
Russian campaign was forty years in advance of the spirit of his age;
he was never understood. The Russia and England of 1830 explains the
campaign of 1812. Charles X. has been misunderstood in the same way. It
is quite possible that in twenty-five years from now his ordinances may
become the laws of the land."

"France, too eloquent not to gabble, too full of vanity to bow down
before real talent, is, in spite of the sublime good sense of its
language and the mass of its people, the very last nation in which two
deliberative chambers should have been attempted," said the _juge de
paix_. "Or, at any rate, the weaknesses of our national character should
have been guarded against by the admirable restrictions which Napoleon's
experience laid upon them. Our present system may succeed in a country
whose action is circumscribed by the nature of its soil, like England;
but the law of primogeniture applied to the transmission of land
is absolutely necessary; when that law is suppressed the system of
legislative representation becomes absurd. England owes her existence to
the quasi-feudal law which entails landed property and family mansions
on the eldest son. Russia is based on the feudal right of autocracy.
Consequently those two nations are to-day on the high-road of startling
progress. Austria could only resist our invasions and renew the way
against Napoleon by virtue of that law of primogeniture which preserves
in the family the active forces of a nation, and supplies the great
productions necessary to the State. The house of Bourbon, feeling that
it was slipping to the third rank in Europe, by reason of liberalism,
wanted to regain its rightful place and there maintain itself, and the
nation has thrown it over at the very time it was about to save the
nation. I am sure I don't know how low down the present system will drop
us."

"If we have a war, France will be without horses, as Napoleon was in
1813, when, being reduced to those of France only, he could not profit
by his two victories of Lutzen and Botzen, and so was crushed at
Leipzig," cried Grossetete. "If peace continues, the evil will only
increase. Tw