Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/260

 21 S OKIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1S53 chap, circumstances of his birth, he had been as success- '__ ful as the first Brutus in passing for a man of a poor intellect. Both in France and in England, at that time, men in general imagined him to be dull. When he talked, the flow of his ideas was sluggish : his features were opaque ; and after years of dreary studies, the writings evolved by his thoughtful, long-pondering mind had not shed much light on the world. Even the strange ventures in which he had engaged had failed to win towards him the interest which commonly attaches to enterprise, People in London who were fond of having gatherings of celebrated characters never used to present him to their friends as a serious pretender to a throne, but rather as though he were a balloon-man, who had twice had a fall from the skies, and was still in some measure alive. Yet the more men knew him in England, the more they liked him. He entered into English pursuits, and rode fairly to hound?. ITe was friendly, social, good-humoured, and will- ing enough to talk freely about his views upon the throne of France. The sayings he uttered about his 'destiny' were addressed (apparently as a matter of policy) to casual acquaintance; but to his intimate friends he used the language of a calculating and practical aspirant to Empire. The opinion which men had formed of his ability in the period of exile was not much altered by his return to France : for in the Assembly his apparent want of mental power caused the world to regard him as harmless, and in the chair of the