the Ministry. After Decazes, Guizot was carefully considered.[1] He also was greatly trusted when it was necessary to conceal the most absolute aims under constitutional names and forms. For this quasi-father of the new doctrinaires, this author of an English history and of a book of French synonymes, understands how in the most masterly manner, by aid of Parliamentary examples drawn from England, to disguise the most illegal things with an ordre légal, and to suppress the high-flying spirit of the French with the heavy and learned letter of the law (das plump gelehrte Wort). But it is said that even while he conversed warmly with the King, who offered him a portfolio, he suddenly experienced the most ignoble symptoms of the cholera, and abruptly breaking off his discourse, departed, declaring that he could not resist the pressure of the time.[2] Guizot's failure (Durchfall) in the choice of a new Minister is narrated even more comically by others. Negotiations were then begun with Dupin, who was always regarded as Perier's successor, and who was believed to be a man of great strength and courage. But the proposal came to
