This ministerial progression was a thermometer by which
the parliament could measure the ebbing temperature of its own life.
This had sunk so low by the end of April that, at a personal interview,
Persigny could invite Changarnier to go over to the camp of the
President. Bonaparte, he assured Changarnier, considered the influence
of the National Assembly to be wholly annihilated, and already the
proclamation was ready, that was to be published after the steadily
contemplated, but again accidentally postponed "coup d'etat."
Changarnier communicated this announcement of its death to the leaders
of the party of Order; but who was there to believe a bed-bug bite
could kill? The parliament, however beaten, however dissolved, however
death-tainted it was, could not persuade itself to see, in the duel with
the grotesque chief of the "Society of December 10," anything but a duel
with a bed-bug. But Bonaparte answered the party of Order as Agesilaus
did King Agis: "I seem to you an ant; but shall one day be a lion.
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