And now arose the Napoleonic legend, at first no more than a bright exhalation in the evening, but gradually taking on the sweep, the definiteness, the fascination, of mirage at noonday. Time enough had elapsed to dull or quite blot out the recollections of the hardships and strains, the millions of soldiers killed and wounded, the taxes, the grievous tyranny; men remembered only the victories, the rewards, and the splendor. A new generation, unacquainted with the havoc of war, had grown up, to listen with fervid envy to the reminiscences of some gray-haired veteran, who had made the great charge at Wagram or ridden behind Ney at Borodino. Those exploits were so stupendous as to seem incredible, and yet they were vouched for by too many survivors to be doubted. Was not Thiers setting forth the marvelous story in nineteen volumes? Were not Béranger and even Victor Hugo singing of the departed grandeur? Were not the booksellers’ shelves loaded with memoirs, lives, historical statements, polemics? Paris, France, seemed to exist merely to be the monument of one man. And wherever the young Frenchman traveled--in Spain, in Italy, along the Rhine or the Danube, to Vienna, or Cairo, or Moscow--he saw the footprints of French valor and French audacity, reminders that Napoleon had made France the mistress of Europe. No Frenchman, were he Bourbon or Republican, but felt proud to think that his countrymen had humbled Prussia and Austria. Confronted by such recollections, the France of Louis Philippe looked degenerate. It offered nothing to thrill at, to brag over; it sinned in having--what it could not help--a stupendous past just behind it. So the Napoleonic legend grew. The body of the great Emperor was brought home from St. Helena, to perform more miracles than the mummy of a mediæval saint. Power and _gloire_ came to be regarded as the products of a Napoleonic régime: to secure them it was only necessary to put a Bonapartist on the throne. Contemporaneous with the expansion of this spell, Socialism grew up, and taught that, just as the _bourgeoisie_ had overthrown the old privileged classes in the French Revolution, so now the working classes must emancipate themselves from the tyranny of the _bourgeoisie_. Political equality without industrial equality seemed a mockery. In this wise the doctrines of a score of Utopians penetrated society to loosen old bonds and embitter class with class. And besides all this, there was the usual wrangle of political parties. The tide of opposition rose, and on February 24, 1848, swept away Louis Philippe and his minister Guizot. Among the many fortune-seekers whom that tide brought to land was Louis Napoleon.