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Then another exile returned to his country, heralded by neither trumpets nor acclamations. Calm, astute, watchful, he took his place amid the revolutionary forces; but without seeming effort, from a follower he became a leader. His was the brain that was to develop from the imperfect plan of Ayutla liberties more daring and precious than men had learned to dream of to that hour. Comonfort the last President was the figure toward which all eyes turned; but behind him stood the quiet, insignificant Indian, successful general now, Benito Juarez, shaping the destinies of those who ignored or despised him.

Comonfort was daring, impulsive, utterly devoid of physical fear; a man of action, prone to plunge into difficulties, yet ready to compromise where he could not fight, antagonistic to the temporal power of the Church, yet superstitiously bound by its traditions, he was at once the initiator and the enemy of reform. Finding himself in triumphant opposition to the clergy, he recklessly attacked their most cherished institutions; to open a passage for his troops he threw down their finest convent; to pay his soldiery he levied upon their treasures. Yet he trembled before their denunciations,—upon one day sending the bishop into exile; on the next, he cowered before the meanest priest who threatened him with the Virgin’s ire. The terrors of excommunication unnerved him. Scared by his own audacity; unable to quell the storm he had roused; viewing with dismay the reaction that his ill-considered boldness had created in the minds of a people dominated by ghostly fears, even while they groaned under the material oppressions of priestcraft; led beyond his depth by unscrupulous counsellors, or by those who like Juarez had ideas beyond the epoch in which he lived,—Comonfort, while he maintained a kingly state, looked forth upon the new aspect of distraction which his country wore, and vainly sought a method of compromise to evoke order from chaos. He who had dared all physical dangers shrank before a revolution of sentiment. His vacillating demeanor—above all his conciliations of the clergy whom he had so short a time before defied—awoke distrust on every hand.