He was in the habit of meeting the friends of the restoration every evening at a club, and he did not hesitate to take a bold part in its proceedings.  Royer-Collard said to him after one of these meetings, “Guizot, you will rise high.”  Guizot demanded an explanation He replied, “You have ambition; you have much head but no heart; you will rise high.  When the restoration comes the abbe will be minister, and he will make you secretary-general.”  Such was the fact eighteen months after.  The Calvinistic religion of Guizot was no bar to his promotion, so long as his conscience permitted him to serve with unquestioned zeal his master, and he was never troubled on that score.  The return of Napoleon from Elba was a sudden blow to the fortunes of Guizot, and he became the friend of the new minister, who kept him provisionally in office.  He was suddenly dismissed, however, because, he declares, he would not sign an additional act to the constitution, but the minister denied this.  He returned to Ghent, where in the Moniteur he published bitter articles against Napoleon and his government.  The columns were filled with criticisms of this nature.  He endeavored afterward to disown some of these articles, but the authorship clung to him.

Napoleon was vanquished, but Guizot continued to write books.  Some of them were as follows:  "Some Ideas upon the Liberty of the Press;” “Of the Representative Government;” “Essay upon the state of Public Instruction." He was a busy man—­he was never idle.  This is in his favor, and undoubtedly he honestly sought the good of the nation, though mixed with this desire there was a strong love of fame, and great ambition.  He wrote a book upon the elections, and the king created a new department for him—­that of director-general of the communes and departments.  He made use of his position to extend his influence.  He became chief of the doctrinaire school, which included many eminent men of that time, and acquired great political power.  It occupied a kind of middle ground between the ancien regime and pure liberalism.  There came a reaction, and Guizot again took to his pen, leaving office and emolument.  The king did not like his writings, and even his office of professor of history in the university was taken from him.  He was a man who was not dejected through misfortune, and grew stronger as he was persecuted.  His wife was taken very ill, and finally died.  The Catholic priests endeavored to gain access to her bed-side, but were not permitted.  She died a convert to Protestantism.  Guizot was to her a good husband, but she always felt keenly the fact that she was older than her husband.  He married a young and beautiful English woman, of whom he was passionately fond, if so cold a man ever possessed passions.  His first wife, it is said, knew who was to succeed her.  He now wrote a History of Representative Government, in which he gave the administration repeated blows.