il. But, if
you please, the Congress of Vienna was one long succession of such
absurdities and for many months the question of "short trousers vs. long
trousers" interested the delegates more than the future settlement of
the Saxon or Spanish problems. His Majesty the King of Prussia went so
far as to order a pair of short ones, that he might give public evidence
of his contempt for everything revolutionary.

Another German potentate, not to be outdone in this noble hatred for the
revolution, decreed that all taxes which his subjects had paid to the
French usurper should be paid a second time to the legitimate ruler
who had loved his people from afar while they were at the mercy of the
Corsican ogre. And so on. From one blunder to another, until one gasps
and exclaims "but why in the name of High Heaven did not the people
object?" Why not indeed? Because the people were utterly exhausted, were
desperate, did not care what happened or how or where or by whom they
were ruled, provided there was peace. They were sick and tired of war
and revolution and reform.

In the eighties of the previous century they had all danced around the
tree of liberty. Princes had embraced their cooks and Duchesses had
danced the Carmagnole with their lackeys in the honest belief that
the Millennium of Equality and Fraternity had at last dawned upon this
wicked world. Instead of the Millennium they had been visited by the
Revolutionary commissary who had lodged a dozen dirty soldiers in their
parlor and had stolen the family plate when he returned to Paris to
report to his government upon the enthusiasm with which the "liberated
country" had received the Constitution, which the French people had
presented to their good neighbours.

When they had heard how the last outbreak of revolutionary disorder
in Paris had been suppressed by a young officer, called Bonaparte, or
Buonaparte, who had turned his guns upon the mob, they gave a sigh of
relief. A little less liberty, fraternity and equality seemed a very
desirable thing. But ere long, the young officer called Buonaparte or
Bonaparte became one of the three consuls of the French Republic, then
sole consul and finally Emperor. As he was much more efficient than any
ruler that had ever been seen before, his hand pressed heavily upon his
poor subjects. He showed them no mercy. He impressed their sons into
his armies, he married their daughters to his generals and he took their
pictures and their