who went as far as the door of the Great Hall of the
Mairie, halted, looked inside, looked outside, and did not enter. It
would be unjust not to record that others amongst the pure Royalists, and
above all M. de Vatimesnil, had the sincere intonation and the upright
wrath of justice.

Be it as it may, the Legitimist party, taken as a whole, entertained no
horror of the _coup d'etat_. It feared nothing. In truth, should the
Royalists fear Louis Bonaparte? Why?

Indifference does not inspire fear. Louis Bonaparte was indifferent. He
only recognized one thing, his object. To break through the road in order
to reach it, that was quite plain; the rest might be left alone. There
lay the whole of his policy, to crush the Republicans, to disdain the
Royalists.

Louis Bonaparte had no passion. He who writes these lines, talking one
day about Louis Bonaparte with the ex-king of Westphalia, remarked, "In
him the Dutchman tones down the Corsican."--"If there be any Corsican,"
answered Jerome.

Louis Bonaparte has never been other than a man who has lain wait for
fortune, a spy trying to dupe God. He had that livid dreaminess of the
gambler who cheats. Cheating admits audacity, but excludes anger. In his
prison at Ham he only read one book, "The Prince." He belonged to no
family, as he could hesitate between Bonaparte and Verhuell; he had no
country, as he could hesitate between France and Holland.

This Napoleon had taken St. Helena in good part. He admired England.
Resentment! To what purpose? For him on earth there only existed his
interests. He pardoned, because he speculated; he forgot everything,
because he calculated upon everything. What did his uncle matter to him?
He did not serve him; he made use of him. He rested his shabby enterprise
upon Austerlitz. He stuffed the eagle.

Malice is an unproductive outlay. Louis Bonaparte only possessed as much
memory as is useful. Hudson Lowe did not prevent him from smiling upon
Englishmen; the Marquis of Montchenu did not prevent him from smiling
upon the Royalists.

He was a man of earnest politics, of good company, wrapped in his own
scheming, not impulsive, doing nothing beyond that which he intended,
without abruptness, without hard words, discreet, accurate, learned,
talking smoothly of a necessary massacre, a slaughterer, because it
served his purpose.

All this, we repeat, without passion, and without anger. Louis Bonaparte
was one of those men who had been influenc