Thus is war, made by humanity against humanity, despite humanity, explained.
As for the Bourbons, the war of 1823 was fatal to them.
They took it for a success.
They did not perceive the danger that lies in having an idea slain to order.
They went astray, in their innocence, to such a degree that they introduced the immense enfeeblement of a crime into their establishment as an element of strength.
The spirit of the ambush entered into their politics.
1830 had its germ in 1823. The Spanish campaign became in their counsels an argument for force and for adventures by right Divine.
France, having re-established elrey netto in Spain, might well have re-established the absolute king at home.
They fell into the alarming error of taking the obedience of the soldier for the consent of the nation.
Such confidence is the ruin of thrones.
It is not permitted to fall asleep, either in the shadow of a machineel tree, nor in the shadow of an army.
Let us return to the ship Orion.
During the operations of the army commanded by the prince generalissimo, a squadron had been cruising in the Mediterranean.
We have just stated that the Orion belonged to this fleet, and that accidents of the sea had brought it into port at Toulon.
The presence of a vessel of war in a port has something about it which attracts and engages a crowd.
It is because it is great, and the crowd loves what is great.
A ship of the line is one of the most magnificent combinations of the genius of man with the powers of nature.
A ship of the line is composed, at the same time, of the heaviest and the lightest of possible matter, for it deals at one and the same time with three forms of substance,--solid, liquid, and fluid,-- and it must do battle with all three.
It has eleven claws of iron with which to seize the granite on the bottom of the sea, and more wings and more antennae than winged insects, to catch the wind in the clouds.
Its breath pours out through its hundred and twenty cannons as through enormous trumpets, and replies proudly to the thunder.