the Right watched the Left, and that the
Left watched the Right, but that no one watched Bonaparte. They were two
flocks of sheep so distrustful of one another that they forgot the wolf.
During that time, in his den at the Elysee, Bonaparte was working. He was
busily employing the time which the Assembly, the majority and the
minority, was losing in mistrusting itself. As people feel the loosening
of the avalanche, so they felt the catastrophe tottering in the gloom.
They kept watch upon the enemy, but they did not turn their attention in
the true direction. To know where to fix one's mistrust is the secret of
a great politician. The Assembly of 1851 did not possess this shrewd
certainty of eyesight, their perspective was bad, each saw the future
after his own fashion, and a sort of political short-sightedness blinded
the Left as well as the Right; they were afraid, but not where fear was
advisable; they were in the presence of a mystery, they had an ambuscade
before them, but they sought it where it did not exist, and they did not
perceive where it really lay. Thus it was that these two flocks of sheep,
the majority, and the minority faced each other affrightedly, and while
the leaders on one side and the guides on the other, grave and attentive,
asked themselves anxiously what could be the mewing of the grumbling, of
the Left on the one side, of the bleatings of the Right on the other,
they ran the risk of suddenly feeling the four claws of the _coup d'etat_
fastened in their shoulders.

My visitor said to me,-

"You are one of the Sixteen!"

"Yes," answered I, smiling; "a 'Red Burgrave.'"

"Like me, a 'Red Prince.'"

And his smile responded to mine.

He resumed,--

"You have full powers?"

"Yes. Like the others."

And I added,--

"Not more than the others. The Left has no leaders."

He continued,--

"Yon, the Commissary of Police, is a Republican?'

"Yes."

"He would obey an order signed by you?"

"Possibly."

"_I_ say, without doubt."

He looked at me fixedly.

"Well, then, have the President arrested this night."

It was now my turn to look at him.

"What do you mean?"

"What I say."

I ought to state that his language was frank, resolute, and
self-convinced, and that during the whole of this conversation, and now,
and always, it has given me the impression of honesty.

"Arrest the President!" I cried.

Then he set forth that this extraordinary enterprise was an easy matter;
that