The only solution which at first seemed definitely excluded was the Bonapatist one

The only solution which at first seemed definitely excluded was the Bonapatist one. In 1871 the political and administrative personnel of the Second Empire had followed its predecessors into the increasingly overcrowded Valhalla of defunct regimes, whose memories filled the history books and whose ghosts haunted the French political scene.

A. Cobban, A History of Modern France Volume 3: 1871 - 1962 (1964), 11