But, if you please, the Congress of Vienna was one
long succession of such absurdities and for many months the
question of ``short trousers vs. long trousers'' interested the
delegates more than the future settlement of the Saxon or
Spanish problems. His Majesty the King of Prussia went so
far as to order a pair of short ones, that he might give public
evidence of his contempt for everything revolutionary.
Another German potentate, not to be outdone in this noble
hatred for the revolution, decreed that all taxes which his subjects
had paid to the French usurper should be paid a second
time to the legitimate ruler who had loved his people from afar
while they were at the mercy of the Corsican ogre. And so on.
From one blunder to another, until one gasps and exclaims
``but why in the name of High Heaven did not the people
object?'' Why not indeed? Because the people were utterly
exhausted, were desperate, did not care what happened or how
or where or by whom they were ruled, provided there was
peace. They were sick and tired of war and revolution and
reform.
In the eighties of the previous century they had all danced
around the tree of liberty. Princes had embraced their cooks
and Duchesses had danced the Carmagnole with their lackeys
in the honest belief that the Millennium of Equality and
Fraternity had at last dawned upon this wicked world.
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