n. I was prepared for his abandonment of the Emperor--even of
the Empress and the Regency. But how could I imagine that he, the man of
moderate politics, of Orleanistic leanings, the clever writer, the fine
talker, the chivalrous soldier, the religious Breton, could abandon
everything that was legal, everything that could save France against
the enemy, and Paris against civil discord; that he would connive at the
annihilation of the Senate, of the popular Assembly, of every form of
Government that could be recognised as legitimate at home or abroad,
accept service under men whose doctrines were opposed to all his
antecedents, all his professed opinions, and inaugurate a chaos under
the name of a Republic!"

INCOGNITO.--"How, indeed? How suppose that the National Assembly, just
elected by a majority of seven millions and a half, could be hurried
into a conjuring-bog, and reappear as the travesty of a Venetian
oligarchy, composed of half-a-dozen of its most unpopular members!
The sole excuse for Trochu is, that he deemed all other considerations
insignificant compared with the defence of Paris, and the united action
of the nation against the invaders. But if that were his honest desire
in siding with this monstrous usurpation of power, he did everything
by which the desire could be frustrated. Had there been any provisional
body composed of men known and esteemed, elected by the Chambers,
supported by Trochu and the troops at his back, there would have been
a rallying-point for the patriotism of the provinces; and in the wise
suspense of any constitution to succeed that Government until the enemy
were chased from the field, all partisans--Imperialists, Legitimists,
Orleanists, Republicans--would have equally adjourned their differences.
But a democratic Republic, proclaimed by a Parisian mob for a nation in
which sincere democratic Republicans are a handful, in contempt of
an Assembly chosen by the country at large; headed by men in whom the
provinces have no trust, and for whom their own representatives are
violently cashiered;--can you conceive such a combination of wet
blankets supplied by the irony of Fate for the extinction of every spark
of ardour in the population from which armies are to be gathered in
haste, at the beck of usupers they distrust and despise? Paris has
excelled itself in folly. Hungering for peace, it proclaims a Government
which has no legal power to treat for it. Shrieking out for allies among
th