Humboldt's Letters. 267 



was at first full of rejoicing, he and the court saw 

 nothing offensive in the crime committed against the 

 people, the legislature, the law, and the sanctity of 

 oaths, but that the adventurer preserves universal 

 suffrage, rests upon the people, practises socialism, 

 and even wants to be emperor ; this is what makes him 

 detested ! Humboldt is of opinion that in the revolu- 

 tion of February the establishment of the Provisional 

 Government, which was immediately obeyed throughout 

 France, was a piece of even greater audacity than the 

 present usurpation of the one man who has already been 

 president, and worn the name of government for three 

 years. I reminded him of the parliament, and the com- 

 mittee of fifty at Frankfort-on-the-Main. In the dispo- 

 sition to acquiesce, he sees that national feeling of unity 

 and cohesion which, among Frenchmen, suppresses all 

 party feeling. Humboldt says there is no doubt that 

 Louis Bonaparte is a son of Admiral Verhuel, and his 

 brother, Morny, a son of General Flahault, who, he says, 

 lived with both the sisters, the Queen of Holland and the 

 Queen of Naples. Of Persigny Fialin de Persigny 

 he speaks with the utmost contempt, calling him a raw, 

 unkempt non-commissioned ofiicer, who still arrogates 

 to himself discoveries about the pyramids. Passing on 

 to our own affairs, he deplored the narrowness, the 

 pitiful character of our ministry ; he considers Raumer 

 the most stupid of them all, stupid and unmannerly 



