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Louis Philippe did, unexpectedly. His great strength is the conviction of the bourgeoisie that the government which follows him must give liberty of the press, and that a free press will produce revolution after revolution until a new despot again fetters it.

er is the readiness with which he confesses his mistake.

Senior. His last confession was, perhaps, too full and too frank.

Madame Cornu. So I think; but by making it he enjoyed another pleasure, that of astonishing. He delights in l'imprévu, in making Eu

April 7th (1862). I called on Madame Cornu. rope, and France, and, above all, his own minisWe talked of Louis Napoleon.

Madame Cornu. A single day changed his character. Until the death of his elder brother he was mild, unambitious, impressionable, affectionate, delighting in country pursuits, in nature, in art, and in literature. He frequently said to me-not when he was a child, but at the age of nineteen and twenty, "What a blessing that I have two before me in the succession-the Duc de Reichstadt and my brother, so that I can be happy in my own way, instead of being, as the head of our house must be, the slave of a mission!" From the day of his brother's death he was a different man. I can compare his feelings as to his mission only to those which urged the first apostles and martyrs.

ters stare. When it is necessary to act, he does not consult his friends, still less his ministers; and perhaps he is right, for they would give him only bad advice; he does not conscientiously think the matter over, weigh the opposing means, strike the balance, and act. He takes his cigar, gives loose to his ideas, lets them follow one another without exercising over them his will, till at last something pleases his imagination; he seizes it, and thinks himself inspired. Sometimes the inspiration is good, as it was when he released Abd-el-Kader. Sometimes it is very bad, as it was when he chose the same time for opening the discussion of the address, and revealing the state of our finances.

Senior. Auguste Chevalier treats his phlegm

Senior. What is the sense in which he under- as his greatest quality—qu'il ne s'étonne de rien. stands his mission?

Madame Cornu. It is a devotion first to the Napoleonic dynasty, and then to France. It is not personal ambition. He has always said, and I believe sincerely, that, if there were any better hands to which he could transmit that duty, he would do so with delight. His duty to his dynasty is to perpetuate it. His duty to France is to give her influence abroad and prosperity at home.

Senior. And also extension of territory? Madame Cornu. Not now. I will not say what may have been his wishes before the birth of his son, but what I have called devotion to his dynasty is rather worship of his son. One of his besetting fears is the revival of a European coalition, not so much against France as against the Bonapartes, and the renewal of the proscription of the family.

Senior. I have been told that he leans toward constitutionalism as more favorable to hereditary succession than despotism.

Madame Cornu. I believe that to be true, and that it is the explanation of his recent liberalism. He hates, without doubt, opposition; he hates restraint; but if he thinks submitting to opposition, or even to restraint, will promote his great object-the perpetuation of his dynasty-he will do so. He would sacrifice to that object Europe, France, his dearest friends, and even himself. One of his qualities-and it is a valuable one-is his willingness to adjourn, to change, or even to give up, his means, however dear they may be to him, if any better or safer occur to him. Anoth

Madame Cornu. Did Auguste Chevalier ever describe to you his fits of passion?

Senior. No.

Madame Cornu. Probably he never perceived them. His powers of self-command are really marvelous. I have known him after a conversation, in which he betrayed no anger, break his own furniture in his rage. The first sign of emotion in him is a swelling of his nostrils, like those of an excited horse. Then his eyes become bright, and his lips quiver. His long mustache is intended to conceal his mouth, and he has disciplined his eyes. When I first saw him in 1848 I asked him what was the matter with his eyes. Nothing," he said. A day or two after I saw him again. They had still an odd appearance. At last I found out that he had been accustoming himself to keep his eyelids half closed, and to throw into his eyes a vacant, dreamy expression. I can not better describe the change that came over him after his brother's death than by saying that he tore his heart out of his bosom and surrendered himself to his head.

(April, 1862.) In the afternoon I called on Thiers. I found him in his garden.

Thiers. Do you remember our walking up and down this garden with Lord Ashburton some years ago, and discussing the probable fortunes of the empire?

Senior. Yes; and your prophesying that the amount of liberty contained in the imperial constitution would in time make it cease to be despotic.

Thiers. Well, that time has come. Louis Napoleon has brought it on rather sooner than I expected. He has irritated and alarmed and injured every class.

First, he has exasperated the most intolerant of all classes—the clergy; and, what is worse, all the laity who believe religion to be the most important element in human society. France will not be Protestant. Napoleon, perhaps, might have made her so, for the clergy were then Gallican. Now they are Ultramontane; so are the believers among the laity. If France is not Catholic, she will be atheistic. By favoring the expulsion of the Pope from Rome, he is destroying Catholicism, for Catholicism can not exist without the Pope.

Secondly, he has injured and alarmed the classes which, next to the clergy, are the most intolerant - the manufacturers and the fundholders; the former, by his absurd commercial treaty; the latter, by his deficit. He has alarmed all the lovers of peace and of prosperity by his senseless wars.

Senior. You approved of his Russian war? Thiers. Yes; but not of his Italian war, or his Syrian war, or his two Chinese wars, or his Mexican war. The last four wars have merely wasted our money and our blood. The Italian war has given us a powerful rival-perhaps an enemy-on our southwestern frontier, and has weakened irrevocably the power most useful to the European equilibrium-Austria.

When I was anxious to see Russia humbled, I relied on her place being taken by Austria. I hoped to substitute a pacific power for an aggressive one. Now that the influence of Austria is also destroyed, I begin to regret Russia.

All the politicians despise Louis Napoleon; all the friends of liberty hate him; all the Bourbonists hate him; all the Orleanists hate him; all the Republicans hate him. The whole of France is convinced that the imperial constitution is a failure, and a dangerous failure; and it is in these circumstances that he has unmuzzled the Chambers and given to them the most dangerous of all powers, the power to canvass and to blame the whole policy, foreign and domestic, of the Government. He must yield, indeed he has begun to yield. To yield even well is dangerous to a despot; to yield ill is fatal.

Sunday, April 5th (1863). Madame Cornu breakfasted with us.

Senior. Every time that I return to Paris I expect to find you reconciled to the Emperor. Madame Cornu. At last you are right. On the 5th of last month he wrote to me to say that for twelve years I had refused to see him, and that perhaps I should persist, but that he

could not bear the thought that he might die before I had embraced his child; that the next day the boy would be seven years old; that Madame Walewska would call on me at one on that day, and that he could not avoid indulging a hope that I would allow her to take me to the Tuileries. I could not refuse.

The next day she came and took me thither. As we entered his cabinet the door was closed; and I found myself in the presence of the Emperor and the Empress. She was the nearest, and took me by the hand. He stood still for an instant, then ran forward, took me by the arm, threw himself on my neck, and kissed me. I kissed him, and we all of us, including the Empress and Madame Walewska, began to weep. “Méchante femme," exclaimed the Emperor, "voilà douze ans que tu me tiens rigueur." Then there was silence, which the Emperor broke by saying, "Je crois que nous ferions mieux de nous asseoir." He stood with his back to the fire, the Empress and I sitting on each side, and Madame Walewska behind the Empress. Then there again was silence, and the child was sent for. I took him in my arms and kissed him. He looked astonished. The Emperor took him between his knees, and told him to repeat one of his fables. "I have forgotten," the boy said, "the ends of them all." Then tell us the beginning of one of them." "I have forgotten the beginnings." "Then let us have the middle."

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"Mais, papa, où commence un milieu?"

It was clear that he would not show off, so he was allowed to go to his pony.

Since that time I see him or the Empress two or three times a week. I find him in the evenings alone in his cabinet at work on his “ Cæsar"; but he is glad to break it off, and to talk to me for hours on old times. He is quite unembarrassed, for his conscience does not reproach him; indeed, no Bonaparte ever has to complain of his conscience. I sometimes forget all that has passed since we saw one another for the last time before December, 1851, when he was still an innocent man. But from time to time the destruction of our liberties, the massacres of 1851, the deportations of 1852, and the cruelties which revenged the attentat, rise to my mind, and I shrink from the embrace of a man stained with the blood of so many of my friends.

Senior. Do you see the Empress and the child?

Madame Cornu. Constantly. The child flies into my arms, and the Empress is all kindness and graciousness. She is a Spaniard, she wants knowledge; in fact, she wants education; but she is very seductive. She is strict with the child, and manages him much better than the

Emperor does, who, in fact, does not manage dame Cornu when she had last seen the Emhim at all.

Senior. Francis Baring maintains that Prince Napoleon has more ability than his cousin.

Madame Cornu. Their talents are different. The Prince is by far the quickest. He acquires knowledge with wonderful ease; he decides rapidly; his conversation is brilliant; he can speak effectively with little premeditation. But he quickly forgets; he wants patience, both in meditation and in action. He works out no subject carefully; he rushes to action without having sufficiently considered his means; he is easily discouraged, and on the first opposition gives up his schemes, and forgets them.

peror.

Madame Cornu. Yesterday. It is arranged that I go to him every Sunday at five and stay till a quarter to seven, when he has to dress for dinner; but often, as was the case yesterday, he keeps me much longer, and then has to run for it, that he may not exhaust the patience of the Empress and of the chef. He delights to talk to a person not bound by etiquette, who can question him, and contradict him, and talk over all his youth. I never conceal my republican opinions, and he treats them as the harmless follies of a woman.

Yesterday he was in very high spirits. I suspect that he has just made up his mind on some subject that has been teasing him. He dislikes coming to a decision, but perhaps for that very reason, when he has done so, he feels relieved and happy. He may have decided what to do about Poland, or what to write about some questionable anecdote of Cæsar, or when the elections shall be. I think that it may have been about Poland. . . .

Louis Napoleon is slow, both in conception and in execution. He meditates his plans long, thinks over every detail, waits for an opportunity which, when it comes, he does not always seize; he keeps often deferring and deferring execution until execution has become impossible or useless. But he forgets nothing that he has learned; he renounces nothing that he has planned. On the 29th of January, 1849, six weeks after he became President, he intended a coup d'état. He read his plan to Changarnier, and the instant Changarnier began to oppose it he folded up the paper and was silent. But he never abandoned it, and two years and a half afterward he executed it. . . . Senior. What are Louis Napoleon's habits some one to propose me as a candidate.” now?

Madame Cornu. Worse than they used to be. He rides little, walks less, and is getting fat. He hates more and more the details of business, and yet is more and more afraid of trusting them to his ministers. But his "Cæsar" absorbs and consoles him. He said to the bureau of the Academy, when they came to announce the election of Feuillet," Je travaille à me rendre digne de vous." He thought at one time of offering himself for the vacancy made by Pasquier. He intended to be present at his own reception, and read, in the frightful Academic green coat, the éloge of his predecessor, and to characterize the nine different governments which Pasquier has served. But, with his habit of procrastination, he has delayed his candidature till the first two volumes of his "Cæsar" have been published. The first volume is ready, and he intended to publish it immediately; but the book-sellers tell him that they will sell better in couples; and, as even emperors must submit to book-sellers, he waits till the second is finished.

Monday, April 20th.-We breakfasted with Madame Cornu, and met there Rénan, and Maury, librarian of the Institute, the Emperor's principal assistant in his "Life of Cæsar." I asked Ma

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There is one subject, however, on which he has not decided, and that is, the time of his candidature for the Academy. Pasquier's vacancy is to be filled up on Thursday next. His mind is still set on pronouncing Pasquier's éloge.

"I wish," he said to me, "that I could get

"That is not the practice," I said to him; "the candidate presents himself."

"I am shy," he answered. "If my ‘Cæsar,' or even the first volume of it, had appeared, I should feel that I had some claims; but I am not vain enough to think that what I have published as yet entitles me to the honor of being a member of the first literary society in the world. I want somebody to say so for me. You may think that I ought to delay my candidature till the 'Cæsar' has appeared; but I know now whom I should succeed, and whose éloge I should have to pronounce. If I delay, I may have to make a speech in praise of Feuillet or Victor Hugo."

Senior. You have read his "Cæsar" as far as it has gone; will it give him a claim to the Academy ?

Maury. I think that it will. It is a work of great and sagacious research, and contains passages admirably written. It is a wonderful improvement on the "Idées Napoléoniennes."

A SERMON BY PÈRE FÉLIX.

April 14th (1861).—I went in the morning to hear the Père Félix preach at St.-Clotilde. The whole nave and aisles of the great church were

full. There must have been four or five thousand auditors. It was a charity sermon for a society which takes care of young work-people when they first enter the factories. It has at present ten thousand young persons under its protection. The preacher told us that the "classes ouvrières" were the masters of France; that the higher classes, the middle classes, and the army only registered their decrees.

"The fate of the country," he said, "is in the hands of the working classes, and the working classes are led, not by their older members, who are timid, not by their middle-aged members, who are prudent, but by their youngest members, who are governed, not by their timidity, not by prudence, but by passion, by the love of excitement, by caprice, by envy. You have heard of the enfant terrible; the enfant terrible is the gamin de Paris. All our revolutions have been made by children.

"Now, what is the training which we give to these children who are the masters of our destinies? Is it moral? is it religious? What is its creed? what is its catechism? It is this:

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means of happiness.

"What are the means of happiness?
"Wealth.

"How is equality to be produced?

"By taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

"Such, my brethren, is the catechism which the unprotected child learns in the atelier. The object of our society is to protect it from these maleficent influences; to arm it with the knowledge, the feelings, and the habits, which may enable it to detect the sophistry, despise the folly, and abhor the wickedness, of its misdirected companions. If you wish to save society from a revolution more frightful than any that has preceded it, if you wish to save the happiness of the higher classes and the souls of the lower, give your time and your money to this holy work.

And with these words I put my sermon under the protection of the Immaculate Mother of God." From St.-Clotilde I went to breakfast with Mérimée. I gave him a sketch of the sermon. Mérimée. There is much truth in Père Félix's remark that our revolutions are caused by children. On the 23d of February, 1848, I was in the Rue Richelieu. A battalion was marching down the street. Three boys stood across it; they cried out that the troops should not pass without killing them. The men hesitated, the officers were afraid of responsibility, and, in fact, the battalion halted for a quarter of an hour, and then retired.

Senior. Were they National Guards?

Mérimée. No, troops of the line. The gamins were armed and utterly indifferent to life, whether their own or that of others. They would have shot three men of the first rank, and the soldiers, if they had killed them, would have been execrated as the butchers of the citizens.

AUSTRIAN AND RUSSIAN SOLDIERS.

Thursday, April 25th (1861).—General Trochu* called on me. We talked of different ar

mies.

Trochu. In our own, the best troops are the infantry of the line, taken from the plow. They are sober, docile, brave, proud of their country and of their profession; and, though anxious to return to their friends and to their little properties, perform zealously their duties.

Senior. We hear much more of the Zouaves. Trochu. The Zouaves have wonderful élan; they are a useful portion of our army; but I doubt whether they are worth what they cost. They are ill disciplined and marauders, and so set a bad example. They are taken from different regiments, which are thus deprived of their most active and energetic soldiers.

Senior. What think you of the Piedmontese? Fénelon described them to me as good third-rate.

Trochu. So I should have called them, from

* General Trochu was born in 1815, and educated at St.-Cyr. He became a captain in 1843, and was attached to the army of Marshal Bugeaud in Algeria. He was aide-de-camp to St.-Arnaud in the Crimea, appointed brigadier-general in November, 1854, and commanded He was general in that capacity to the end of the war. of division in the Italian campaign in 1859. In 1861, when he was appointed Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur, he counted twenty-five years of active service and eighteen campaigns. His work on the French army in 1867 went through seven editions. He was appointed Governor of Paris in 1870, and during the siege he held the command and directed the operations of all the troops

within the walls. In 1871 he was elected a member of the National Assembly, and sat in the Right Center. He retired into private life in 1872.

what I saw of them in Italy. In the Crimea they did nothing. But now, swamped as it is by a rabble of Tuscans, Romans, and Neapolitans, the Italian army can be worth little-I had almost said, nothing.

The best troops in the world are the English, and the best portion are the infantry and artillery.

Never in the history of war did only two guns do such service as Major Dickson's did at Inkerman. Never did troops stand such attacks as your Guards did on that day. Ours could not have done it. I saw the field. There was an uninterrupted line of dead Guardsmen-every man seemed to have fallen at his post. It is fortunate that your army is so small. If it were as large as ours is, it would conquer the world.

Senior. What are the Russians?

Trochu. Very good indeed, but they have no generals. It seems an absurdity; but one cause of their failure at Inkerman was their superiority in number. Their columns were so crowded that they interfered with one another, had not room to deploy, and were ravaged by our fire.

The Austrians, too, are very good. But, with the exception of Benedek, who is excellent, they were miserably commanded. Hesse was an excellent general in 1854, but he has lost his decision and his presence of mind. He saved us at Magenta by stopping the march of the Austrians on the 2d of June. Giulay never had any merit. Their commissariat was worse managed than our own, which was not brilliant. Both at Magenta and at Solferino we made prisoners of regiments who had not eaten during the day. The first thing they did was to ask for food.

The Austrian soldiers began the war under great disadvantages. They expected to be beaten. They believed our troops to be much more superior to theirs than they really are. We equally exaggerated their inferiority. Our confidence and their despondence had a great effect on the campaign.

As for the two Emperors, they were about equally useless; but the Austrian, exposing himself to fire and interfering, did perhaps the most harm.

miles from Buffalora and twelve from Trecate, where we were to sleep. When we reached Trecate we received orders to advance as quickly as we could to Buffalora. We reached Buffalora in the evening in some disorder from the haste of our march. I found the Emperor before the door of a house, near the bridge, walking silently up and down, and smoking. I asked him for orders, and he answered that I had better cross the bridge and advance toward the Magenta. There the battle was going on, but the Austrians were losing ground.

I found several generals, but nobody who could give me any orders, and at last I was advised to attack a village to our right. I did so, drove out the Austrians, and established myself there for the night. At about three in the morning I was attacked myself, but unsuccessfully.

Senior. That seems to prove that your victory at Magenta was not complete. A thoroughly beaten army does not attack within a few hours.

Trochu. Certainly; and so they seem to have thought at headquarters. For, though we were highly praised, and twelve crosses were given to me to be distributed to my officers, the fact that we had been attacked was carefully concealed. You will find no mention of it in the bulletins or general orders.

CLERGYMEN IN SOCIETY.

Senior. You told us the other day that you never met a clergyman in society. I am invited to meet on Monday the Cardinal Archbishop.

Lasteyrie. I do not envy you; he will be dull, and the cause of dullness. It is thought correct when a mere bishop is present to be formal. What must it be in the presence of a cardinal? Many subjects must be avoided; vices must be treated as sins, and errors lamented, not ridiculed. What remains to be laughed at?

Senior. In Rome the cardinals are good company.

Lasteyrie. Yes, for there the Church is at home, and therefore at her ease. Here in Paris she feels herself a stranger. During the fifty

Senior. Did not Louis Napoleon expose him- years that preceded the Restoration, when infi

self?

Trochu. Not in the least. In the morning of the 4th of June he crossed the Ticino by the Buffalora Bridge, and found that the enemy were in force at Magenta, on the other side of the Naviglio. He maintained that it was only a reconnaissance, and returned to the right bank, where he remained during the rest of the day, three miles from the battle.

I was with my brigade-part of Canrobert's division at Novara, in the rear, about sixteen

delity was aggressive, an ecclesiastic was always in danger of hearing things which he could not tolerate without some loss of dignity, or reprove without making a scene. The clergy, therefore

even those whose birth, and education, and fortune would have enabled them to mix in society gradually withdrew from it.

That danger no longer exists; no clergyman in good company would hear anything that could offend him. But the habit has remained, though the cause has ceased.

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