ir hopes. Their more unscrupulous
members belittled his services and hinted that love of power alone led
him to cling to the Republic, and thus belie his political past. Then,
too, the Orleans princes, the Duc d'Aumale and the Prince de Joinville,
the surviving sons of King Louis Philippe, took their seats as deputies
for the Oise and Haute-Marne Departments, thus keeping the monarchical
ideal steadily before the eye of France. True, the Duc d'Aumale had
declared to the electorate that he was ready to bow before the will of
France whether it decided for a Constitutional Monarchy or a Liberal
Republic; and the loyalty with which he served his country was destined
to set the seal of honesty on a singularly interesting career. But there
was no guarantee that the Chamber would not take upon itself to
interpret the will of France and call from his place of exile in London
the Comte de Paris, son of the eldest descendant of Louis Philippe,
around whom the hopes of the Orleanists centred.

Had Thiers followed his earlier convictions and declared for such a
Restoration, it might quite conceivably have come about without very
much resistance. But early in the year 1871, or perhaps after the fall
of the Empire, he became convinced that France could not heal her
grievous wounds except under a government that had its roots deep in the
people's life. Now, the cause of monarchy in France was hopelessly
weakened by schisms. Legitimists and Orleanists were at feud ever since,
in 1830, Louis Philippe, so the former said, cozened the rightful heir
out of his inheritance; and the efforts now made to fuse the claims of
the two rival branches remained without result, owing to the stiff and
dogmatic attitude of the Comte de Chambord, heir to the traditions of
the elder branch. A Bonapartist Restoration was out of the question. Yet
all three sections began more and more to urge their claims. Thiers met
them with consummate skill. Occasionally they had reason to resent his
tactics as showing unworthy finesse; but oftener they quailed before the
startling boldness of his reminders that, as they constituted the
majority of the deputies of France, they might at once undertake to
restore the monarchy--if they could. "You do not, and you cannot, do so.
There is only one throne and it cannot have three occupants[68]." Or,
again, he cowed them by the sheer force of his personality: "If I were a
weak man, I would flatter you," he once exclaimed. In the