affluent and educated, the prominent feeling was evidently a strong desire for peace, a dislike of the exigencies and hazards of the Imperial despotism, a calculated foreshadowing of its fall, and the dawning perspective of another system of government. The lower orders, on the contrary, only roused themselves up from lassitude to give way to a momentary burst of patriotic rage, or to their reminiscences of the Revolution. The Imperial rule had given them discipline without reform. Appearances were tranquil, but in truth it might be said of the popular masses as of the emigrants, that they had forgotten nothing, and learned nothing. There was no moral unity throughout the land, no common thought or passion, notwithstanding the common misfortunes and experience. The nation was almost as blindly and completely divided in its apathy, as it had lately been in its excitement. I recognized these unwholesome symptoms; but I was young, and much more disposed to dwell on the hopes than on the perils of the future. While at Nismes, I soon became acquainted with the events that had taken place in Paris. M. Royer-Collard wrote to press my return. I set out on the instant, and a few days after my arrival, I was appointed Secretary-General to the Ministry of the Interior, which department the King had just confided to the Abbé de Montesquiou.