quality was his tenacity of purpose, and his disposition was inclined to kindly tolerance, even of pecuniary greed and slipshod service.  He could rouse himself to great exertion; but in the later days of Imperialism, pain and his decaying physical powers had rendered him inert; moreover, in his general habits he had always been indolent and pleasure-loving.  In carrying out the coup d’etat nine tenths of the public men in France had been subjected to humiliations and indignities, by which they were permanently outraged, and a host of co-conspirators and adventurers had acquired claims upon the emperor that it was not safe to disregard.  Places and money were distributed among them with reckless profusion, and many a shady money transaction, throwing discredit on some men high in favor with the emperor, was passed over, to avoid exposure.

On the other hand, the emperor improved Paris till he made it the most beautiful city in the world.  It was his aim to open wide streets through the old crowded quarters where revolution hid itself, hatching plots and crimes.  He provided fresh air and drainage.  He turned the Bois de Boulogne from a mere wild wood into the magnificent pleasure-ground of a great city.  He completed the Louvre, and demolished the straggling, hideous buildings which disfigured the Carrousel in Louis Philippe’s time.  The working population, which his improvements drove out of the Faubourg Saint Antoine emigrated to high and healthy quarters in Montmartre and Belleville, where a beautiful park was laid out for them.  No part of Paris escaped these improvements, though it took immense sums to complete them.  But while their good results will be permanent, their immediate effect was to raise rents and make the increased cost of living burdensome to people of small incomes.  The work brought also into Paris an enormous population of masons, carpenters, and day-laborers,—­a population which was a good deal like the monster in the fairy tale, which had to be fed each day with the best; for if once it became hungry or dissatisfied, it might devour the man of science who had brought it into being.

Still, the French are ungrateful to Napoleon III. when they forget how much they are indebted to him for the extension of their commerce, the growth of their railroads, the improvement of their cities, and above all for his attention to sanitary science and to agriculture.

When he came to the throne, every traveller through France was struck by the poor breeds of swine, sheep, and cattle; the slovenly system of cultivation, the wide waste lands, the poor implements for farming, and the want of drainage.  In his exile the emperor had lived much with English landowners, and he endeavored more than anything else to improve agriculture.  He spent great sums of money himself in model farms for the purpose of showing how things could be done.  But while commercial, agricultural, and manufacturing prosperity increased in France, so also did the cost of living; and the cry, “Put money in thy purse!” found its echo in the hearts of all men in all classes of society.  Speculation of every kind ran rampant, and by the year 1869 the cost of the improvements in Paris alone became greater than France could patiently bear.