Perhaps the most remarkable thing about M. Thiers was the unusual care he took to prepare himself fully before writing or speaking.  He had every subject clearly and fully in his own mind before he put pen to paper, and when he began to write, he did so with extraordinary rapidity; nor would he write any account of anything, either in a newspaper or in his history, till he had visited localities, conversed with eye-witnesses, and picked up floating legends.

By an accident he became acquainted before other Parisian journalists with the signing of the Ordinances by Charles X., July 26, 1830.  He had also good reason to think that Louis Philippe, if offered the crown of France or the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom, would accept it.  While fighting was going on in Paris, he and Ary Scheffer, the artist, were the two persons deputed to go to Neuilly and sound the Duke of Orleans.  As we have seen, Marie Amelie, the duke’s wife, indignantly refused their overtures in the absence of her husband, while Madame Adelaide, his sister, encouraged them.

Thiers, Laffitte, and Lafayette became the foremost men in Paris at this crisis, and at the end of some days Louis Philippe became king of the French.  He wanted to make Thiers one of his ministers, but Thiers characteristically declined so high an office until he should have served an apprenticeship to ministerial work in an under secretary-ship, and knew the machinery and the working of all departments of government.

Thus far I have not spoken of Thiers’ “History of the Revolution.”  It appeared first in monthly parts.  Up to the publication of the first number, in 1823, no writer in France had dared to speak well of any actor in the Revolution.  Thiers’ History, as it became known, created a great sensation.  Thiers himself was supposed by the general public (both of his own country and of foreign nations) to be a wild revolutionist.  At first the critics knew not how to speak of a book that admired the States-General and defended the Constitutional Convention; but by the time the third volume was completed, in 1827, it was bought up eagerly.  The work was published afterwards in ten volumes, and the “History of the Consulate and Empire,” which appeared between 1845 and 1861, is in twenty volumes; but it is only fair to say that the print is very large and the illustrations are very numerous, and that the portraits especially are beyond all praise.

From 1831 to 1836, Thiers was one of Louis Philippe’s ministers, and from 1836 to 1840 he was Prime Minister, or President of the Council.

As soon as Thiers rose to power his mercurial father made his appearance in Paris.  Thiers was disposed to receive him very coldly.  “What have you ever done for me that you have any claim on me?” he asked.  “My son,” replied the prodigal parent, “if I had been an ordinary father and had stayed by my family and brought up a houseful of children in obscurity, do you suppose you would have been where you are now?” At this Thiers laughed, and gave his father a post-mastership in a small town in the South of France called Carpentras.  There the old gentleman lived, disreputable and extravagant to the last, surrounded by a large family of dogs.