"
Bonaparte understood this cry. His perspicacity was sharpened by the
growing anxiety of the creditors' class, who, with every sunset, that
brought nearer the day of payment, the 2d of May, 1852, saw in the
motion of the stars a protest against their earthly drafts. They had
become regular astrologers The National Assembly had cut off Bonaparte's
hope of a constitutional prolongation of his term; the candidature of
the Prince of Joinville tolerated no further vacillation.
If ever an event cast its shadow before it long before its occurrence,
it was Bonaparte's "coup d'etat." Already on January 29, 1849, barely
a month after his election, he had made to Changarnier a proposition to
that effect. His own Prime Minister. Odillon Barrot, had covertly, in
1849, and Thiers openly in the winter of 1850, revealed the scheme
of the "coup d'etat." In May, 1851, Persigny had again sought to win
Changarnier over to the "coup," and the "Miessager de l'Assemblee"
newspaper had published this conversation. At every parliamentary storm,
the Bonapartist papers threatened a "coup," and the nearer the crisis
approached, all the louder grew their tone.
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