But it was amidst unending difficulties.  The Monarchists, eager to emphasise the political reaction set in motion by the extravagances of the Paris Commune, wished to rid themselves at the earliest possible time of this self-confident little bourgeois who seemed to stand alone between them and the realisation of their hopes.  Their more unscrupulous members belittled his services and hinted that love of power alone led him to cling to the Republic, and thus belie his political past.  Then, too, the Orleans princes, the Duc d’Aumale and the Prince de Joinville, the surviving sons of King Louis Philippe, took their seats as deputies for the Oise and Haute-Marne Departments, thus keeping the monarchical ideal steadily before the eye of France.  True, the Duc d’Aumale had declared to the electorate that he was ready to bow before the will of France whether it decided for a Constitutional Monarchy or a Liberal Republic; and the loyalty with which he served his country was destined to set the seal of honesty on a singularly interesting career.  But there was no guarantee that the Chamber would not take upon itself to interpret the will of France and call from his place of exile in London the Comte de Paris, son of the eldest descendant of Louis Philippe, around whom the hopes of the Orleanists centred.

Had Thiers followed his earlier convictions and declared for such a Restoration, it might quite conceivably have come about without very much resistance.  But early in the year 1871, or perhaps after the fall of the Empire, he became convinced that France could not heal her grievous wounds except under a government that had its roots deep in the people’s life.  Now, the cause of monarchy in France was hopelessly weakened by schisms.  Legitimists and Orleanists were at feud ever since, in 1830, Louis Philippe, so the former said, cozened the rightful heir out of his inheritance; and the efforts now made to fuse the claims of the two rival branches remained without result, owing to the stiff and dogmatic attitude of the Comte de Chambord, heir to the traditions of the elder branch.  A Bonapartist Restoration was out of the question.  Yet all three sections began more and more to urge their claims.  Thiers met them with consummate skill.  Occasionally they had reason to resent his tactics as showing unworthy finesse; but oftener they quailed before the startling boldness of his reminders that, as they constituted the majority of the deputies of France, they might at once undertake to restore the monarchy—­if they could.  “You do not, and you cannot, do so.  There is only one throne and it cannot have three occupants[68].”  Or, again, he cowed them by the sheer force of his personality:  “If I were a weak man, I would flatter you,” he once exclaimed.  In the last resort he replied to their hints of his ambition and self-seeking by offering his resignation.  Here again the logic of facts was with him.  For many months he was the necessary man, and he and they knew it.