Neuilly, and so badly injured that he
died five hours later, universally lamented. The right of succession
passed to his son, the Comte de Paris, then a child of four; and both
Legitimists and Republicans began to look forward to the inevitable
feebleness and uncertainty of a regency as favorable to the triumph of
their ideas. The opposition of the king's minister, Guizot, the
historian, to the electoral reforms is generally considered as having
brought about the Revolution of 1848, though it is somewhat doubtful if
the monarchy could have successfully weathered the storms of this year
of liberal ideas and universal unrest.

Nevertheless, the Republic came too soon, as the French historians now
seem disposed to admit. The political education of the nation was not
yet sufficiently advanced, and "it returned to the Empire as to a
solution that best conformed with its condition of _esprit simpliste_.
This movement was accelerated by the combinations of men of all shades
of political beliefs,--Berryer, Montalembert, Mole, Thiers, Odilon
Barrot, and others, who counted on 'the pretended incapacity' of the
future emperor for sliding into power themselves. But their hopes were
disappointed by the taciturn pretender." One of the latest apologists
for the Emperor, M. Thirria, in his _Napoleon III avant l'Empire_,
claims, and no intelligent commentator can disprove the claim: "If he
reigned, it was because France was willing, and very willing, and his
fatal politics of nationalities, she approved of it, sanctioned it, the
republican party first of all." M. Thirria is willing to admit, however,
that "he was not made to be the chief of a State, and his reign was a
great misfortune for France."

[Illustration: THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE BIRTH OF A GIRL. From a drawing
by Adolphe Willette.]

Having the courage of his convictions, M. Thirria does not hesitate to
take up all the charges against the Emperor, beginning with the first of
all, chronologically, that he was not the son of his alleged father. By
a number of letters which he quotes from Louis-Napoleon, King of
Holland, he endeavors to demonstrate that the latter considered himself
to be, without doubt, the parent of Charles-Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte.
The story of the Dutch Admiral Verhuel is, however, corroborated by
other documents of equal authenticity. The future emperor, it appears,
did at one time officiate as an English police officer, but it was only
for the space of tw