Page:A short history of France (IA shorthistoryoffr03parm).pdf/113

 of suffrage, and fascinated by the growing splendors of an ingenious reproduction of the most brilliant chapter in French history, they were unresistingly drawn into the Imperial net.

France was for the second time an Empire, and Napoleon III. was Emperor of the French.

His Mephistophelian face did not look as classic under the laurel wreath as had his uncle's, nor had his work the blinding splendor nor the fineness of texture of his great model. But then, an imitation never has. It was a marble masterpiece, done in plaster! But what a clever reproduction it was! And how, by sheer audacity, it compelled recognition and homage, and at last even adulation in Europe! — and what a clever stroke it was, for this heavy, unsympathetic man to bring up to his throne from the people a radiant Empress, who would capture romantic and aesthetic France!

It was a far cry from cheap lodgings in New York to a seat upon the Imperial throne of France; but human ambition is not easily satisfied. A Pelion always