M. Thiers wants to treat men, ideas and revolutionary events with
parliamentary routine. He plays his old game of constitutional tricks
in face of abysms and the dreadful upheavals of the chimerical and
unexpected. He does not realise that everything has been transformed; he
finds a resemblance between our own times and the time when he governed,
and starts out from this. This resemblance exists in point of fact, but
there is in it a something that is colossal and monstrous. M. Thiers has
no suspicion of this, and pursues the even tenour of his way. All his
life he has been stroking cats, and coaxing them with all sorts of
cajolling processes and feline ways. To-day he is trying to play the
same game, and does not see that the animals have grown beyond all
measure and that it is wild beasts that he is keeping about him. A
strange sight it is to see this little man trying to stroke the roaring
muzzle of a revolution with his little hand.
When M. Thiers is interrupted he gets excited, folds and unfolds his
arms, then raises his hands to his mouth, his nose, his spectacles,
shrugs his shoulders, and ends by clasping the back of his head
convulsively with both hands.
I have always entertained towards this celebrated statesman, this
eminent orator, this mediocre writer, this narrow-minded man, an
indefinable sentiment of admiration, aversion and disdain.