The downfall of Louis Philippe startled and astonished even those who had brought it about.  They had intended reform, and they drew down revolution.  They hoped to effect a change of ministry:  they were disconcerted when they had dethroned a king.  There were about thirty thousand regular troops in Paris, besides the National Guard and the mounted police, or Garde Municipale.  No one had imagined that the Throne of the Barricades would fall at the first assault.  There were no leaders anywhere in this revolution.  The king’s party had no leaders; the young princes seemed paralyzed.  The army had no leader; the commander-in-chief had been changed three times in twenty-four hours.  The insurgents had no leaders.  On February 22 Odillon Barrot was their hero, and on February 23 they hooted him.

The republicans, to their own amazement, were left masters of the field of battle, and Lamartine was pushed to the front as their chief man.

I may here pause in the historical narrative to say a few words about the personal history of Lamartine, which, indeed, will include all that history has to say concerning the Second Republic.

The love stories of the uncle and father of Alphonse de Lamartine are so pathetic, and give us so vivid a picture of family life before the First Revolution, that I will go back a generation, and tell them as much as possible in Lamartine’s own words.

His grandfather had had six children,—­three daughters and three sons.  According to French custom, under the old regime, the eldest son only was to marry, and the other members of the Lamartine family proceeded as they grew up to fulfil their appointed destinies.  The second son went into the Church, and rose to be a bishop.  The third son, M. le Chevalier, went into the army.  The sisters adopted the religious life, and thus all were provided for.  But strange to say, the eldest son, to whose happiness and prosperity the rest were to be sacrificed, was the first rebel in the family.  He fell in love with a Mademoiselle de Saint-Huruge; but her dot was not considered by the elder members of the family sufficient to justify the alliance.  The young man gave up his bride, and to the consternation of his relatives announced that he would marry no other woman.  M. le Chevalier must marry and perpetuate the ancestral line.

Lamartine says,—­

“M. le Chevalier was the youngest in that generation of our family.  At sixteen he had entered the regiment in which his father had served before him.  His career was to grow old in the modest position of a captain in the army (which position he attained at an early age), to pass his few months of leave, from time to time, in his father’s house, to gain the Cross of St. Louis (which was the end of all ambitions to provincial gentlemen), and then, when he grew old, being endowed with a small provision from the State, or a still smaller revenue of his own, he expected to vegetate in one of his brothers’