Without, therefore, being able to explain the changed species, we notice, here and there, a few individuals whom we are able to grasp, because of their peculiar failings or distinctive qualities which make them stand out from among the crowd. M. Thiers, for instance, is the only man that the Revolution of July has produced. He has founded the school that admires the Terror, a school to which he himself belongs. If the men of the Terror, those deniers and denied of God, were such great men, the authority of their judgment ought to carry weight; but those men, reviling one another, declare that the party whose throats they are cutting is a party of rascals. See what Madame Roland says of Condorcet, what Barbaroux[285], the principal actor of the 10th of August, thinks of Marat, what Camille Desmoulins writes against Saint-Just[286] Are we to appreciate Danton according to Robespierre's opinion, or Robespierre according to Danton's? When the Conventionals have so poor a notion of one another, how can we, without failing in the respect which we owe them, entertain an opinion different from theirs?
With its material mind, Jacobinism does not perceive that the Terror failed from not being capable of fulfilling the conditions of its continuance. It was unable to achieve its aim, because it was unable to cut off enough heads: it would have needed four or five hundred thousand more; now time was wanting for those long massacres; nothing remains but unfinished crimes whose fruit cannot be gathered, because the last sun of the storm did not ripen it sufficiently.
The French revolutionaries.
The secret of the inconsistencies of the men of the day lies in the privation of moral sense, the absence of any fixed principle and the worship of force: whoever goes to the wall is guilty and without merit, at least without that merit which assimilates with events. Behind the liberal phrases of the devotees of the Terror, you must see only what lies hidden there: the deification of success. Do not adore the Convention except in the manner in which one adores a tyrant. When the Convention is upset, go over with your baggage of liberties to the Directory, then to Bonaparte, and that without having a suspicion of your metamorphosis, without thinking that you have changed. Sworn dramatist that you are, while looking upon the Girondins as poor wretches because they have been "beaten," nevertheless draw a fantastic picture of their death: they are beautiful young men marching, crowned with flowers, to the sacrifice. The Girondins, a cowardly faction, who spoke in favour of Louis XVI. and voted for his execution, did wonderfully, it is true, on the scaffold; but who did not, in those days, run full butt at death? The women were distinguished for their heroism: the young girls of Verdun climbed the steps of the altar like Iphigenia; the artisans, about whom we are prudently silent, those plebeians of whom the Convention reaped so large a crop, braved the steel of the executioner as resolutely as our grenadiers braved the steel of the enemy. For one priest and one noble, the Convention offered up thousands of workmen taken from the lowest classes of the population[287]: this is what we always refuse to remember.
Does M. Thiers set store by his principles? Not in the least: he has cried up massacre and he would preach humanity in quite as edifying a manner; he gave himself out as a bigot for liberty, and he has oppressed Lyons, shot people down in the Rue Transnonain, and upheld the September Laws against all men: if he ever reads this, he will take it for a panegyric.
Since he became President of the Council and Minister for Foreign Affairs[288], M. Thiers is enraptured with the diplomatic intrigues of the Talleyrand School; he runs the risk of being taken for a buffoon-in-waiting, for lack of equilibrium, gravity and silence. One can turn up one's nose at earnestness and greatness of soul: but it does not do to say so, before one has brought the subjugated world to take its seat at the orgies of Grand-Vaux[289].
For the rest, M. Thiers combines with inferior manners an instinct for higher things; while the feudal survivors have become misers and turned themselves into stewards of their own land, he, M. Thiers, a great lord by second birth, travels like a new Atticus[290], purchases works of art on the roads and revives the prodigality of the old aristocracy: this is a distinction; but, if he sows as easily as he reaps, he ought to be more cautious of the intimacy of his old habits: consideration is one of the ingredients that go to make the public man.
Adolphe Thiers.
Stirred by his mercurial nature, M. Thiers has pretended that he was going to kill, in Madrid, the anarchy which I had overthrown there in 1823: a project all the bolder inasmuch as M. Thiers was struggling with the opinions of Louis-Philippe. He may suppose himself to be a Bonaparte; he may think that his pen-cutter is but an elongation of the Napoleonic sword; he may be persuaded that he is a great general, he may dream of the conquest of Europe, by reason that he has constituted himself its historian[291] and that he is very inconsiderately bringing back the ashes of Napoleon[292]. I acquiesce in all these pretensions; I will only say, as for Spain, that, when M. Thiers thought of invading her, he was deceived in his calculations; he would have ruined his King in 1836, and I saved mine in 1823. The essential thing, then, is to do in the nick of time what one wants to do; there are two forces, the force of men and the force of things: when these two are in opposition to one another, nothing is accomplished. At the present moment, Mirabeau would rouse nobody, even though his corruption would do him no harm; for, just now, none is cried down because of his vices: one is slandered only for his virtues. M. Thiers must make up his mind to one of three courses: to declare himself the representative of the republican future[293], or perch himself upon the counterfeit Monarchy of July like a monkey on a camel's back, or revive the imperial order of things. This last would be to M. Thiers's taste; but the Empire without an emperor: is that possible? It is more natural to believe that the author of the Histoire de la Révolution will allow himself to be absorbed by a vulgar ambition: he will want to remain in power or return to it; in order to keep or recover his place, he will recant anything that the moment or his own interest will seem to him to require[294]; to strip one's self before the public, there is audacity: but is M. Thiers young enough for his beauty to serve him as a veil?
Putting Deutz[295] and Judas on one side, I recognise in M. Thiers a supple, prompt, shrewd and malleable mind, perhaps the heir to the future, capable of comprehending everything, except the greatness that comes from moral order. Free from jealousy, pettiness and prejudice, he stands out against the tame and obscure background of the mediocrities of the time. His excessive pride is not yet odious, because it does not consist in despising others. M. Thiers possesses resources, variety, fortunate gifts; he troubles little about differences of opinion, bears no malice, is not afraid of compromising himself, does justice to a man, not for his probity or for what he thinks, but for what he is worth: which would not prevent him from having us all strangled, in case of need. M. Thiers is not what he is able to be: years will modify him, unless the elation of self-love should place obstacles in the way. If his brain stands firm and he is not carried away by some headstrong act, public life will reveal unheeded superior qualities in him. He must soon rise or fall; the chances are that M. Thiers will either become a great minister or remain a marplot.