Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/63

 aspirations, and it was circumstances over which they had no control which carried these generous patriots further than they had meant to go. And so on. In their blindness the Liberals helped to mislead both themselves and public opinion by deafening the ears of France with their eternal panegyrics of the men and the institutions most directly hostile to liberty. Their clumsy error surpassed that of the ultras, though its consequences took longer to develop and were not so soon perceived.

As for that love of mystery, that mania for Machiavelism, which I have shown to be characteristic of the French deputy, the Right contrived to satisfy it by means of the Congrégation and the occult Government, the Left by military conspiracies. From the moment when the Liberals (and under this title I include the entire Left) took their stand on Bonapartism they were bound to turn their attention to the Army. Was not the Army the instrument and, so to speak, the symbol of the Empire ? Only when politicians turn their attention to the Army their aim is more often to unsettle it than to maintain discipline, the more so when we have