We know how they regarded Hernani. What did they see in the second great character, King Charles of Spain? He repels at first. We cannot place much faith in this cold, cautious monarch's ardent love for Donna Sol; and he, moreover, employs violent and dishonourable means to get her into his power. But the poet soon raises him to a higher level, and makes us feel the great ambition which fills his soul. It was Charles's tremendous monologue at the tomb of Charlemagne which decided the fate of the drama that evening. And this much criticised and ridiculed monologue is in reality the work of a young master. It is easy to perceive, even if we did not know, how untrue it is to history, how impossible it is that Charles V. should have thought thus; but we are fascinated by the faithfulness with which the political ideas and dreams of 1830 are mirrored, and by the marvellous political insight displayed. This is the historical insight which sometimes astonishes us in poets; Schiller showed it at the age of 21, in _Fiesco_. Listen to Don Carlos's description of Europe: A building with two human beings on its pinnacles, two elected chiefs, to whom every hereditary monarch must bow--the Emperor and the Pope. Almost all the states have hereditary rulers, and are, in so far, in the power of chance; but the people are at times able to elect their Pope or their Emperor; chance corrects chance, and the balance is restored. The Electors in their cloth of gold, the Cardinals in their scarlet, are the instruments by means of whom God chooses. "Qu'une idée, au besoin des temps, un jour éclose; Elle grandît, va, court, se mêle à toute chose, Se fait homme, saisit les cœurs, creuse un sillon; Maint roi la foule aux pieds ou lui met un baîllon; Mais qu'elle entre un matin à la diète, au conclave, Et tous les rois soudain verront l'idée esclave Sur leurs têtes de rois que ses pieds courberont Surgir, le globe en main ou la tiare au front." The poet was certainly not thinking of Charles V. when he wrote this, but of an Emperor much nearer his own day, the Emperor of whom he had just written in the _Ode à la Colonne de la Place Vendôme_, that his spurs outweighed Charlemagne's sandals. It must not be forgotten that men's enthusiasm for Napoleon in those days by no means implied that they were Bonapartists; it only signified that they belonged to the party of progress. The Napoleon they worshipped was not the tyrant of France, but the humiliator of kings and of hereditary authority. The Emperor, as compared with the King, was regarded as the personified people; therefore the young generation was deeply moved when Charles in his monologue exclaims: "Rois! regardez en bas!... Ah! le peuple!--Océan! Vague qui broie un trône! Miroir où rarement un roi se voit en beau!"