50 CAUSES INYOLVIA'G fllANCE AHL F^GLA^•D CHAPTER VI. CHAP. A NEW opportunity of making his way back to '. peace was now thrown away by the Czar. The Enfpcror's exigencics of a throne based upon the deeds of theCzar the 2d of December were always driving the French Emperor to endeavour to allay the remem- brance of the past by creating a stir in Europe, and endeavouring to win celebrity. When Europe was quiet, he was obliged, for his life's sake, to become its disturber ; but when it was at war, or threatened with war, he was willing, it seems, to take an exactly opposite method of attaining the required conspicuousness ; for he was not a blood- thirsty nor even a very active-minded man, and there seems no good reason to doubt that, having brought Europe to the state in which it was at the close of January, he was sincere in the pacific step which he then took. At a moment when war was already kindled and seemed to be on the point of involving the great Powers, the odd vanity and the theatric bent which had so strangely governed his life might easily make him wish to conic upon the scene and bestow the
