At first, it appeared little likely that this would be so. Clemenceau, entering upon his father's profession, with the benefit of the paternal knowledge and full of the inculcated readiness to probe all the facts of life to the bottom, took up his medical studies as a serious business, after having gone through the ordinary curriculum of a school at Nantes. It was in the hospital of that city that he first entered as a qualified student. After a short stay there he went off to Paris, in 1860, at the age of nineteen, to "walk the hospitals," as we phrase it, in the same capacity. It was a plunge into active life taken at a period in the history of France which was much more critical than it seemed. The year which saw Clemenceau's arrival in Paris saw also the Second Empire at the height of its fame and influence. As we look back to the great stir of 1848, which, so far as Paris and France were concerned, was brought about by the almost inconceivable fatuity of Louis Philippe, we marvel at the strange turn of events which got rid of Orleanist King Log in order to replace him by a Napoleonist King Stork. But we may wonder still more at the lack of foresight, capacity and tact of Louis Philippe himself, who had been in his youth the democrat Citoyen Egalité, and an excellent general, with all the hard experience of his family misfortune and personal sufferings in exile as a full-grown man, possessed, too, of a thorough knowledge of the world and an adequate acquaintance with modern thought in several departments of science and literature. Yet, enjoying all these qualifications for a successful ruler, Louis Philippe failed to understand that a democratic monarchy, and a democratic monarchy alone, could preserve France from a republic or a military dictatorship. This was astounding. He refused to agree to the democratic vote claimed by the people, and then ran away. So the House of Orleans joined the House of Bourbon in the array of discrowned Heads of the Blood Royal. The short-lived Republic of 1848 existed just long enough to scare the bourgeoisie by the installation of the National Workshops, which might well have succeeded but for their unintelligent opposition, and the peasantry by the fear of general Communism, into a demand for a ruler who would preserve them from those whom they considered the maniacs or plunderers of Paris.