‘This,’ said Tocqueville, ’I utterly deny.  He, indeed, began to conspire from November 10, 1848.  His direct instructions to Oudinot, and his letter to Ney, only a few months after his election, showed his determination not to submit to Parliamentary Government.  Then followed his dismissal of Ministry after Ministry, until he had degraded the.office to a clerkship.  Then came the semi-regal progress, then the reviews of Satory, the encouragement of treasonable cries, the selection for all the high appointments in the army of Paris of men whose infamous characters fitted them to be tools.  Then he publicly insulted the Assembly at Dijon, and at last, in October, we knew that his plans were laid.  It was then only that we began to think what were our means of defence, but that was no more a conspiracy than it is a conspiracy in travellers to look for their pistols when they see a band of robbers advancing.

’M.  Baze’s proposition was absurd only because it was impracticable.  It was a precaution against immediate danger, but if it had been voted, it could not have been executed.  The army had already been so corrupted, that it would have disregarded the orders of the Assembly.  I have often talked over our situation with Lamoriciere and my other military friends.  We saw what was coming as clearly as we now look back to it; but we had no means of preventing it.’

‘But was not your intended law of responsibility,’ I said, ’an attack on your part?’

‘That law,’ he said, ’was not ours.  It was sent up to us by the Conseil d’Etat which had been two years and a half employed on it, and ought to have sent it to us much sooner.  We thought it dangerous—­that is to say, we thought that, though quite right in itself, it would irritate the President, and that in our defenceless state it was unwise to do so.  The bureau, therefore, to which it was referred refused to declare it urgent:  a proof that it would not have passed with the clauses which, though reasonable, the President thought fit to disapprove.  Our conspiracy was that of the lambs against the wolf.

‘Though I have said,’ he continued, ’that he has been conspiring ever since his election, I do not believe that he intended to strike so soon.  His plan was to wait till next March when the fears of May 1852 would be most intense.  Two circumstances forced him on more rapidly.  One was the candidature of the Prince de Joinville.  He thought him the only dangerous competitor.  The other was an agitation set on foot by the Legitimists in the Conseils generaux for the repeal of the law of May 31.  That law was his moral weapon against the Assembly, and he feared that if he delayed, it might be abolished without him.’

‘And how long,’ I asked, ‘will this tyranny last?’