They knew that defeat awaited them,
possibly death. Now they are confident, and eager to try their hands.'
In the evening L. took me into a corner, and we had a long conversation.
He had been reading my 'Athens Journal.'
'What struck me,' he said, 'in every page of it, was the resemblance of
King Otho to Louis Napoleon.'
'I see the resemblance,' I answered, 'but it is the resemblance of a
dwarf to a giant.'
'No,' he replied. 'Of a man five feet seven inches high to one five feet
eleven inches. There are not more than four inches between them. There is
the same cunning, the same coldness, the same vindictiveness, the same
silence, the same perseverance, the same unscrupulousness, the same
selfishness, the same anxiety to appear to do everything that is done,
and above all, the same determination to destroy, or to seduce by
corruption or by violence, every man and every institution favourable to
liberty, independence, or self-government. In one respect Otho had the
more difficult task. He found himself, in 1843, subject to a Constitution
carefully framed under the advice of England for the express purpose of
controlling him.
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