Passy was a man of real merit, but not of a very attractive merit. His mind was narrow, maladroit, provoking, disparaging and ingenious rather than just. Nevertheless, he was more inclined to be just when it was really necessary to act than when it was only a question of talking; for he was more fond of paradox than liable to put it into practice. I never knew a greater talker, nor one who so easily consoled himself for troublesome events by explaining the causes which had produced them and the consequences likely to ensue. When he had finished drawing the most sombre picture of the state of affairs, he concluded with a smiling and placid air, saying, "So that there is practically no means of saving ourselves, and we have only to look forward to the total overthrow of Society." In other respects he was a cultured and experienced minister; his courage and honesty were proof against everything; and he was as incapable of vacillation as of treachery. His ideas, his feelings, his former intimacy with Dufaure and, above all, his eager animosity against Thiers made us certain of him. Rulhiere would have belonged to the monarchic and ultra-conservative party if he had belonged to any, and especially if Changarnier had not been in the world; but he was a soldier who only thought of remaining Minister for War. We perceived at the first glance his extreme jealousy of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army in Paris; and the intimacy between the latter and the leaders of the majority, and his influence over the President, obliged Rulhiere to throw himself into our arms, and forcibly drove him to depend upon us. Tracy had by nature a weak character, which was, as it were, enclosed and confined in the very precise and systematic theories which he owed to the ideological education he had received from his father.[16] But, in the end, contact with every-day events and the shock of revolutions had worn out this rigid envelope, and all that remained was a wavering intelligence and a sluggish, but always honest and kindly, heart. [16: Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy, 1754-1836, the celebrated ideologist, Condillac's disciple.--A.T. de M.]