In 1869 there was a general election in France, which was carefully manipulated by the Government, in order that, if possible, no deputy might be sent to the Chamber who would provoke discussion on the changes in the Constitution submitted by the emperor.  Thiers thought it time for him to re-enter public life and to speak out to his countrymen.  At this time one of the gentlemen attached to the English embassy in Paris had a conversation with him.  “For a man,” he says, “of talents, learning, and experience, I never met one who impressed me as having so great an idea of his own self-importance;” but the visitor was at the same time impressed by his frankness and sincerity.  Speaking of the Emperor Napoleon III., and foreseeing his downfall, he said:  “What will succeed him, I know not.  God grant it may not be the ruin of France!...  For a long time I kept quiet.  It was no use breaking one’s head against the wall; but now we have revolution staring us in the face as an alternative with the Empire; and do you think I should be doing well or rightly by my fellow-citizens, were I to keep in the background?  If I am wanted, I shall not fail.”  As he spoke, the fire in his eyes sparkled right through the glass of his spectacles, and all the time he talked, he was walking rapidly up and down.  When greatly animated, he seemed even to grow taller and taller, so that on some great occasion a lady said of him to Charles Greville:  “Did you know, Thiers is handsome! and is six feet high!”

When the fall of the Empire occurred, in September, 1870, M. Thiers was in Paris; but when the Committee of Defence was formed, he quitted the capital, before the arrival of the Prussians, to go from court to court,—­to London, St. Petersburg, Vienna,—­to implore the intervention of diplomacy, and to prove how essential to the balance of power in Europe was the preservation of France.  His feeling was that France ought promptly to have made peace after Sedan, that her cause then was hopeless for the moment, and that by making the best terms she could, and by husbanding her resources, she might rise in her might at a future day.  These views were not in the least shared by Gambetta, who believed—­as, indeed, most Frenchmen and most foreigners believed in 1870—­that a general uprising in France would be sufficient to crush the Prussians.  Thiers knew better; his policy was to save France for herself and from herself at the same time.

[Illustration:  LEON GAMBETTA.]

We already know the story.  Gambetta escaped from Paris in a balloon, and joined Cremieux and Garnier-Pages, the other two members of the Committee of Defence who were outside of Paris.  At Tours they had set up a sort of government, and there, in virtue of being the War Minister of the Committee of Defence, Gambetta proceeded to take all power into his own hands, and to become dictator of masterless France.  It was like a shipwreck in which, captain and officers being disabled, the command falls to the most able seaman.  Gambetta had no legal right to govern France, but he governed it by right divine, as the only man who could govern it.