CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

THE STORY OF THIERS.

In a densely populated street of the quaint sea-portof Marseilles there dwelt a poor locksmith andhis family, who were so hard pressed by the dearnessof provisions and the general hardness of thetimes, that the rent and taxes for the wretchedtenement which they called a home had beenallowed to fall many weeks into arrear. But thegood people struggled on against their poverty;and the locksmith (who was the son of a ruinedcloth-merchant), though fallen to the humble positionof a dock-porter, still managed to wadethrough life as if he had been born to opulence.This poor labourer’s name was Thiers, and hiswife was a descendant of the poet Chenier; thetwo being destined to become the parents of LouisAdolphe Thiers, one of the most remarkable menthat ever lived.

The hero of our story was at his birth mentallyconsigned to oblivion by his parents, whilethe neighbours laughed at the ungainly child,and prognosticated for him all kinds of evil inthe future. And it is more than probable thatthese evil auguries would have been fulfilled hadit not been for the extraordinary care bestowedupon him by his grandmother. But for her,perhaps our story had never been written.

Under her fostering care the child survived allthose diseases which were, according to the gossips,to prove fatal to him; but while his limbs remainedalmost stationary, his head and chest grewlarger, until he became a veritable dwarf. By hismother’s influence with the family of AndréChenier, the lad was enabled to enter the MarseillesLyceum at the age of nine; and here theremarkable head and chest kept the promise theymade in his infancy, and soon fulfilled MadameThiers’ predictions.

Louis Adolphe Thiers was a brilliant thoughsomewhat erratic pupil. He was noted for hispractical jokes, his restlessness, and the ready andingenious manner in which he always extricatedhimself from any scrapes into which his bold andrestless disposition had led him. Thus the childin this case would appear to have been ‘fatherto the man,’ by the manner in which he afterwardsreleased his beloved country from one ofthe greatest ‘scrapes’ she ever experienced.

On leaving school Thiers studied for the law,and was eventually called to the bar, though henever practised as a lawyer. He became insteada local politician; and so

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