Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/18

 all these immense efforts had failed to produce any stability whatever, and that the colossal god so elaborately constructed actually had feet of clay. Thanks to the recoil of these twenty-five years — years so tempestuous and overcharged with events — the image of the old Monarchy loomed larger; men saw in it a certain immobile and superb beauty, and many a time they regretted that they had found no way to better its imperfections and make terms with it. After all, it had in it a principle of stability which would have enabled France to escape the abysses into which, one after another, she had plunged and all but perished.

So when a hitherto unforeseen opportunity arose for the recall of the Bourbons, there was no reason why everybody should not be pleased to see them again. They were in no sense imposed on France by a Foreign Power, consequently there was nothing in their return which could possibly wound the national pride. It was later that this astonishing legend became current, and the opposition found in it a formidable weapon. But revolutionary opposition is not as a rule very scrupulous in its choice of arguments, and this particular one