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committee of sixteen members to direct the Left, and observe the Right;
these the Right had hastened to name the "Red Burgraves." A harmless
rejoinder. The result was that the Right watched the Left, and that the
Left watched the Right, but that no one watched Bonaparte. They were two
flocks of sheep so distrustful of one another that they forgot the wolf.
During that time, in his den at the Elysée, Bonaparte was working. He was
busily employing the time which the Assembly, the majority and the
minority, was losing in mistrusting itself. As people feel the loosening
of the avalanche, so they felt the catastrophe tottering in the gloom.
They kept watch upon the enemy, but they did not turn their attention in
the true direction. To know where to fix one's mistrust is the secret of
a great politician. The Assembly of 1851 did not possess this shrewd
certainty of eyesight, their perspective was bad, each saw the future
after his own fashion, and a sort of political short-sightedness blinded
the Left as well as the Right; they were afraid, but not where fear was
advisable; they were in the presence of a mystery, they had an ambuscade
before them, but they sought it where it did not exist, and they did not
perceive where it really lay. Thus it was that these two flocks of sheep,
the majority, and the minority faced each other affrightedly, and while
the leaders on one side and the guides on the other, grave and attentive,
asked themselves anxiously what could be the mewing of the grumbling, of
the Left on the one side, of the bleatings of the Right on the other,
they ran the risk of suddenly feeling the four claws of the coup d'état
fastened in their shoulders.
My visitor said to me,-
"You are one of the Sixteen!"
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