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He was more warlike in his policy than suited either the king or his rival Guizot, who had entered the cabinet with him on the death of Casimir Périer. Nor was he a favorite with Louis Philippe, who was always afraid that he would embroil the kingdom in war. Thiers' political opinions were very much like those of Canning in later days.
The year 1832 was marked by the ravages of the cholera, which swept away twenty thousand people in Paris alone, and among them Casimir Périer, and Cuvier the pride of the scientific world.
He lived in grand style, and his palace, with its courts and gardens, was the resort of the most distinguished men in France, the Duke of Choiseul, Dupin, Béranger, Casimir Périer, Montalivet, the two Aragos, Guizot, Odillon Barrot, Villemain, politicians, artists, and men of letters. His ministry, however, lasted less than a year.
He and Madame Périer shall do as they wish; the money would not be blessed unless it came from free hearts, and was given for the love of God. She is willing even to be received gratuitously as a sister—a feeling evidently not without its bitterness. Her submission became, as may be guessed, her triumph; a result probably not unforeseen by the deeper experience of La Mère Agnès and M. Singlin.
According to a certain promise made by Vinet, General Baron Gouraud, that noble relic of our glorious armies, married a Mademoiselle Matifat, twenty-five years old, daughter of a druggist in the rue des Lombards, whose dowry was a hundred thousand francs. He was named peer of France for his conduct in the riots which occurred during the ministry of Casimir Perier.
Farther on we get a more pleasant glimpse of these relations, in a letter from Jacqueline Pascal to Madame Périer, dated 25th September 1647, and apparently shortly after Pascal had retired to Paris, along with his younger sister, leaving their father for some time still at Rouen.
Now it is the attraction of her piety which sways him, and leaves him unhappy amidst all the seductions of the society in which he mingles. “God made use of my sister,” says Madame Périer, “for the great design, as He had formerly made use of my brother, when He desired to withdraw my sister from her engagements in the world.”
When Pascal received these results, all the difficulties were removed; and perceiving from the two last observations in the preceding table that 20 toises, or about 120 feet, produce a change of 2 lines, and 7 toises, or 42 feet, a change of ½ a line, he made the observation at the top and bottom of the tower of St Jacques de la Boucherie, which was about 24 or 25 toises, or about 150 feet high, and he found a difference of more than 2 lines in the mercurial column; and in a private house 90 steps high he found a difference of ½ a line. . . . After this important experiment was made, Pascal intimated to M. Périer that different states of the weather would occasion differences in the barometer, according as it was cold, hot, dry, or moist; and in order to put this opinion to the test of experiment, M. Périer instituted a series of observations, which he continued from the beginning of 1649 till March 1651.
Six months later he was dismissed; but he insisted that he was judged without being heard; and he made so much talk about it that, under the ministry of Casimir Perier, he became the editor of an anti-republican newspaper in the pay of the government.
Casimir Périer was a man of great energy, and liberal in his political antecedents, a banker of immense wealth and great force of character, reproachless in his integrity. He had scarcely assumed office when he was called upon to enforce a very rigorous policy.
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