What are the qualities of a dynasty? It should be national; that is to say, revolutionary at a distance,not through acts committed, but by reason of ideas accepted. It should be composed of past and be historic; be composed of future and be sympathetic.
All this explains why the early revolutions contented themselves with finding a man, Cromwell or Napoleon; and why the second absolutely insisted on finding a family, the House of Brunswick or the House of Orleans.
Royal houses resemble those Indian fig-trees, each branch of which, bending over to the earth, takes root and becomes a fig-tree itself. Each branch may become a dynasty. On the sole condition that it shall bend down to the people.
Such is the theory of the skilful.
Here, then, lies the great art: to make a little render to success the sound of a catastrophe in order that those who profit by it may tremble from it also, to season with fear every step that is taken, to augment the curve of the transition to the point of retarding progress, to dull that aurora, to denounce and retrench the harshness of enthusiasm, to cut all angles and nails, to wad triumph, to muffle up right, to envelop the giant-people in flannel, and to put it to bed very speedily, to impose a diet on that excess of health, to put Hercules on the treatment of a convalescent, to dilute the event with the expedient, to offer to spirits thirsting for the ideal that nectar thinned out with a potion, to take one''''s precautions against too much success, to garnish the revolution with a shade.
1830 practised this theory, already applied to England by 1688.
1830 is a revolution arrested midway. Half of progress, quasi-right. Now, logic knows not the\"almost,\" absolutely as the sun knows not the candle.Who arrests revolutions half-way? The bourgeoisie?
Why?
Because the bourgeoisie is interest which has reached satisfaction. Yesterday it was appetite, to-day it is plenitude, to-morrow it will be satiety.
The phenomenon of 1814 after Napoleon was reproduced in 1830 after Charles X.