Page:The invasion of the Crimea vol. 1.djvu/366

324 ORIGIN OF THE WAR OF 1S53 chap, the means of protecting Lis flight; and it seems X1V- that, during a great portion of the critical interval, the carriages and horses required for his escape were kept ready for instant use in the stable-yard of the Elysee. Moreover, it was at this time that he suffered himself to resort to the almost desperate resource of counterfeiting the names of men repre- sented as belonging to the Consultative Commis- sion. But perhaps his condition of mind may be best inferred from the posture in which history catches him whilst he nestled under the win"- of the army. When a peaceful citizen is in grievous peril, and depending for his life upon the whim of sol- diers, his instinct is to take all his gold and ffo and offer it to the armed men, and tell them he loves and admires them. What, in such stress, the endangered citizen would be impelled by his nature to do, is exactly what Louis Bonaparte did. The transaction could not be concealed, and the imperial historian seems to have thought that, upon the whole, the best course was to give it an air of classic grandeur by describing the soldiers as the ' conquerors ' of a rugged Greek word, and by calling a French coin an 'obolus.' 'There ' remained,' said he, ' to the President, out of all ' his personal fortune, out of all his patrimony, ' a sum of fifty thousand francs. He knew that ■ in certain memorable circumstances the troops ' had faltered in the presence of insurrection, ' more from being famished than from being ' defeated ; so he took all that remained to hi?n,