died of the internal disease which for seven years past had been undermining his strength.

His son, the Prince Imperial, was at present far too young to figure as a claimant to the throne.
It is also an open secret that Bismarck worked hard to prevent all possibility of a royalist Restoration; and when the German ambassador at Paris, Count Arnim, opposed his wishes in this matter, he procured his recall and subjected him to a State prosecution.

In fact, Bismarck believed that under a Republic France would be powerless in war, and, further, that she could never form that alliance with Russia which was the bugbear of his later days.

A Russian diplomatist once told the Duc de Broglie that the kind of Republic which Bismarck wanted to see in France was "_une Republique dissolvante_." Everything therefore concurred to postpone the monarchical question, and to prolong the informal truce which Thiers had been the first to bring about.

Accordingly, in the month of November, the Assembly extended the Presidency of Marshal MacMahon to seven years--a period therefore known as the Septennate.
Having now briefly shown the causes of the helplessness of the monarchical majority in the matter that it had most nearly at heart, we must pass over subsequent events save as they refer to that crowning paradox--the establishment of a Republican Constitution.