There are few Frenchman of any calling who are indifferent to politics, and the men of letters almost without exception are interested spectators when not actors in public affairs. From 1843 to 1845, the period of the _Chroniques_, was a dead calm in the political horizon of France, undisturbed by the little distant cloud of warfare in Algiers: the Legitimists worked up farcical fermentations which had no more body or head than those of the present day, although the chances of the party were rather better. The duke of Bordeaux (as the Comte de Chambord was then called) made an excursion to England one Christmas, which was seized as an occasion, or more probably was a preconcerted signal, for a dreary little demonstration of loyalty on the part of his adherents, who crossed over to pay their respects to him in London: by great arithmetical efforts their number was added up and made to amount to four hundred, though whether so many really went was doubted. There were a few old noblemen of great family: Berryer the eminent lawyer and Chateaubriand were the only names of individual distinction in the list, and the chief results were that Queen Victoria was annoyed (some of the Orleans family being on a visit to her at the time) and intimated her annoyance, and that the superb Chateaubriand was spoken of in the English newspapers as "the good old man;" which Sainte-Beuve enjoyed extremely. The _Cahiers_ extend from 1847 to 1869, including the vicissitudes which brought about the Second Empire, whose annihilation Sainte-Beuve died half a year too soon to witness. In January, 1848, he felt the storm brewing in the air, though he little guessed from what quarter it would come nor on whose head it would burst. On the revolution of the 24th of February he writes: "What events! what a dream! I was prepared for much, but not so soon, nor for this.... I am tempted to believe in the nullity of every judgment, my own in particular--I who make it a business to judge others, and am so short-sighted.... The future will disclose what no one can foresee. There is no use in talking of ordinary wisdom and prudence: they have been utterly at fault. Guizot, the historian-philosopher, has turned out more stupid than a Polignac: Utopia and the poet's dream, on the contrary, have become facts and reality. I forgive Lamartine everything: he has been great during these days, and done honor to the poetic nature." But afterward, in looking back to the poet's reign, he grew satirical: "It was in the time of the good provisional government, which did so many things and left so many undone. The fortunes of France crumbled to pieces in a fortnight, but it was under the invocation of equality and fraternity. As to liberty, it only existed for madmen, and the wise took good care to make no use of it. 'The great folk are terribly scared,' said my portress, but the small fry triumphed: it was their turn. So much had never been said about work before, and so little was never done.