against the coup d'état of 2 December 1851, that ended the Second Republic and gave Louis-Napoleon presidential powers for ten years, effectively beginning the Second Empire. As vice-president of the meeting, Vitet was arrested and imprisoned for a few days. Under the Second Empire, he moved away from public life and dealt only with art and literature, in part because he remained a monarchist. The disasters of 1870-71 reawakened Vitet's interest in public affairs, and he published in the Revue des deux mondes his optimistic "Lettres sur le siège de Paris." He joined the Republic after its inception on 4 September 1870, and during the Siege of Paris he published a series of articles in the Revue des deux Mondes in which he advocated resistance. Elected deputy again for Seine-Inferieure in the National Assembly on 8 February 1871, he was, from the start, one of the chamber's vice-presidents and was part of the commission headed by Adolphe Thiers to negotiate peace with the Germans. He deposited the bill of 30 August 1871, in which the Assembly recognized itself as constituting power, which passed by a vote of 434 to 225. He wrote the official report on the "Rivet law," creating the Third Republic, which he personally opposed. In June 1872, Vitet was part of the delegation sent by the right to Thiers to persuade the latter to adopt a conservative policy. He voted for peace with the Germans, for the abrogation of the laws of exile, for the petition of the bishops, against the three-year service, and in May 1873 for the resignation of Thiers. This was his last vote before his death a fortnight later. Under the Third Republic, he had also regained his position as president of the Commission des monuments historiques and worked both for the revision of the list of historical monuments and for the verification of the accounts of the works. Family and personal life Ludovic Vitet had married Cécile Perier (18141858), the daughter of Scipion Perier, with whom he had no children; but he adopted his niece Hélène Casimir-Perier, whom he made his heiress. He had a sister Amélie, wife of Eugène Aubry-Vitet. Vitet was the author of some valuable works on the history of art, and his Monographie de l'Église Notre-Dame de Noyon (1845) especially did much to awaken popular interest in architecture. In the early days of the Romantic movement, he wrote