He would not, certainly, have effaced the crime of his starting-point, but he might have covered it.

By dint of material improvements he might have succeeded, perhaps, in masking from the nation his moral abasement.

Indeed, we must admit that for a dictator of genius the thing was not difficult.

A certain number of social problems, elaborated during these last few years by several powerful minds, seemed to be ripe, and might receive immediate, practical solution, to the great profit and satisfaction of the nation.
Of this, Louis Bonaparte does not appear to have had any idea.

He has not approached, he has not had a glimpse of one of them.