Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 2.djvu/132

 102 CAUSES INVOLVING FRANCE AND ENGLAND CHAP, interest which tended to divide us from her, he "'"' had. ill this wh:y/ become antagonistic. He had too much lustiness of mind, too much simplicity 6t..j[xirp(r«e-, to-be capable, of living on terms of close intelligence with the philosophical statesmen of Berlin. To the accustomed foi-eign policy of French statesmen — in other words, to the France that lie had been used to encounter in the Foreign Office — he was adverse by very habit. He spurned the whole invention of the French Eepublic. But his favourite hatred of all was his hatred of the House of Bourbon.* In short, by the Ist of December 1851, though still at the Foreign Office, he had become isolated in Europe. But fortune smiles on bold men. The next night Prince Louis Bonaparte and his fellow- venturers destroyed the French Eepublic, superseded the Bourbons, and suppressed France. Plainly this Prince and Lord Palmerston were men who could act together — could act together until the Prince should advise himself to deceive the English jMinister. Not longer: not an hour beyond the time when the momentous promise which was made, if I mis- take not, before the events of December, should remain unbroken. So when the Czar began to encroach upon the Sultan, there was nothing that could so completely meet Lord Palmerston's every wish as an alliance between the two Westei'n Powers, which should toss France lieadlong into the Eng- the 'Spanish Marriages.'
 * This feeling j)roljably drew its origin from the business of