The Due de Broglie, who died last Saturday, though he
bad retired from the political arena since 1885, was not the least eminent representative of the Piedmontese family which came to France in the train of Mazarin, and gave the country of its adoption two Marshals, two Prime Ministers, and two Academicians. The late Duke, who was the grandson of Madame de Stael, and son of Louis Philippe's Prime Minister, was elected to the Academy nearly forty years ago, and only exchanged a life of literary leisure for that of active politics after the fall of the Empire. Thiess so fully recognised his ability as leader of the Conservatives in the National Assembly that he appointed him French Ambassador in London, but the Duke soon resigned, resumed his leader- ship, and took the lead in engineering the coup which overthrew Thiers in May, 1873. Under MaoMahon he was twice Premier, but ultimately fell a victim to a cumulative public resent- ment. The measure of his unpopularity is sufficiently shown by the fact that after his fall be failed to become a life Senator, and, in M. de Blowitz's pictaresque phrase, "now dies after having been enveloped in fifteen years of silence."
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