But reflect, in any case, what a life-problem this of poor Louis, when he rose as _Bien-Aimé_ from that Metz sick-bed, really was! What son of Adam could have swayed such incoherences into coherence? Could he? Blindest Fortune alone has cast _him_ on the top of it: he swims there; can as little sway it as the drift-log sways the wind-tossed moon-stirred Atlantic. ‘What have I done to be so loved?’ he said then. He may say now: What have I done to be so hated? Thou hast done nothing, poor Louis! Thy fault is properly even this, that thou didst _nothing_. What could poor Louis do? Abdicate, and wash his hands of it,—in favour of the first that would accept! Other clear wisdom there was none for him. As it was, he stood gazing dubiously, the absurdest mortal extant (a very Solecism Incarnate), into the absurdest confused world;—wherein at lost nothing seemed so certain as that he, the incarnate Solecism, had five senses; that were Flying Tables (_Tables Volantes_, which vanish through the floor, to come back reloaded). and a _Parc-aux-cerfs_. Whereby at least we have again this historical curiosity: a human being in an original position; swimming passively, as on some boundless “Mother of Dead Dogs,” towards issues which he partly saw. For Louis had withal a kind of insight in him. So, when a new Minister of Marine, or what else it might be, came announcing his new era, the Scarlet-woman would hear from the lips of Majesty at supper: ‘Yes, he spread out his ware like another; promised the beautifulest things in the world; not a thing of which will come: he does not know this region; he will see.’ Or again: ‘’Tis the twentieth time I hear all that; France will never get a Navy, I believe.’ How touching also was this: ‘If _I_ were Lieutenant of Police, I would prohibit those Paris cabriolets.’[17] Doomed mortal;—for is it not a doom to be Solecism incarnate! A new _Roi Fainéant_, King Donothing; but with the strangest new _Mayor of the Palace:_ no bow-legged Pepin now for _Mayor_, but that same cloud-capt, fire-breathing Spectre of DEMOCRACY; incalculable, which is enveloping the world!—Was Louis no wickeder than this or the other private Donothing and Eatall; such as we often enough see, under the name of Man, and even Man of Pleasure, cumbering God’s diligent Creation, for a time? Say, wretcheder! His Life-solecism was seen and felt of a whole scandalised world; him endless Oblivion cannot engulf, and swallow to endless depths,—not yet for a generation or two.