Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/26

 yet, to uphold the Third Republic through fear of some other Revolution and desire of political and social stability. She is naturally somewhat apathetic, and suffers herself to be circumvented rather too easily ; but after all, she is the true France, and it is impossible to understand her history if we do not see in her the victim of those others, reactionaries and Jacobins, who for eighty years have outraged her turn by turn.

Louis XVIII., with his large political sense, at once saw in this France, which was neither reactionary nor Jacobin, the indispensable support of his own throne and that of his successors. But he was aware that time alone would enable him to secure that support, for already, under the very shadow of his throne, a pitched battle was being fought between the reactionaries, known as ultra-Royalists or "ultras" for short, and the Jacobins, who adorned themselves with the inappropriate title of " Liberals." This battle, as it happened, was quite inevitable, and its importance has been very much exaggerated. Whether Beugnot, the Prefect of Police, may have ordered the people of Paris to decorate their houses in honour of the procession of the Fête