V.

impersonated the army; [#1 Under the reign of Louis Philippe, Bonaparte made two attempts to restore the throne of Napoleon: one in October, 1836, in an expedition from Switzerland upon Strassburg and one in August, 1840, in an expedition from England upon Boulogne.] and so now, in his “Society of December 10,” he collects 10,000 loafers who are to impersonate the people as Snug the Joiner does the lion. At a period when the bourgeoisie itself is playing the sheerest comedy, but in the most solemn manner in the world, without doing violence to any of the pedantic requirements of French dramatic etiquette, and is itself partly deceived by, partly convinced of, the solemnity of its own public acts, the adventurer, who took the comedy for simple comedy, was bound to win. Only after he has removed his solemn opponent, when he himself takes seriously his own role of emperor, and, with the Napoleonic mask on, imagines he impersonates the real Napoleon, only then does he become the victim of his own peculiar conception of history—the serious clown, who no longer takes history for a comedy, but a comedy for history. What the national work-shops were to the socialist workingmen, what the “Gardes mobiles” were to the bourgeois republicans, that was to Bonaparte the “Society of December 10,”—a force for partisan warfare peculiar to himself. On his journeys, the divisions of the Society, packed away on the railroads, improvised an audience for him, performed public enthusiasm, shouted “vive l’Empereur,” insulted and clubbed the republicans,—all, of course, under the protection of the police. On his return stages to Paris, this rabble constituted his vanguard, it forestalled or dispersed counter-demonstrations. The “Society of December 10” belonged to him, it was his own handiwork, his own thought. Whatever else he appropriates, the power of circumstances places in his hands; whatever else he does, either circumstances do for him, or he is content to copy from the deeds of