THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
of touching faithfulness to high principles and aspirations. One of them, the “Memoirs of an Idealist,” owed to its exquisite charms of noble sentiment and genuine sincerity the rare good fortune of reappearing in literature after a long period of seeming oblivion. She lived to a high old age, the last thirty years in Rome, as the center of a large circle of friends, many of them distinguished characters, who clung to her inspiring personality with singular affection. We remained warm friends to the end.
Now to return to my narrative—an event occurred which essentially darkened the horizon of refugeedom, and which also gave to my fate an unexpected and decisive turn.
The reports which we had received from our friends in Paris made us believe that Louis Napoleon, the president of the French republic, was an object of general contempt, that he played a really ridiculous figure with his manifest ambition to restore the empire in France and to mount the throne, and that every attempt to accomplish this by force would inevitably result in his downfall and in the institution of a strong and truly republican government. The tone of the opposition papers in Paris gave much color to this view. Suddenly, on the 2d of December, 1851, the news arrived in London that Louis Napoleon had actually undertaken the long-expected coup d'état. He had secured the support of the army, had occupied the meeting-place of the national assembly with troops, had arrested the leaders of the opposition, as well as General Changarnier, who had been intrusted by the national assembly with its protection, had laid his hand upon several other generals suspected of republican sentiments, had published a decree restoring universal suffrage, which had been restricted by the national assembly, and issued a proclamation to the French people. In this he accused the parliamentary parties of
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