Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/99

 on this theme since 1820, but without any great success. It had been taken up with frenzy by a young man, hitherto unknown, whom it is well to mention here, because of the tremendous part he was suddenly about to play. That young man was Thiers. Born at Marseilles in 1797, Thiers came to Paris with his friend Mignet in 1821, and was not long in making a place for himself in the ranks of Liberal journalism. At that time he possessed all the lightness of the typical Frenchman, without his generosity. An enormous facility for assimilating the most various subjects, a factitious but extremely seductive personality were the instruments of his egoistic vanity and boundless ambition. That ambition aimed at nothing less than the Government ; to be Minister seems to have been his earliest dream. He was aware that the Restoration offered him no chance of realising it except in very remote contingencies. His constant attitude towards that régime was one of jealous hatred, which made him desire to see it overthrown, and help it to its downfall. Therefore he lost no opportunity of reviving the memory of 1688. It is a long-standing belief that this memory