Paris, Sunday, May 14, 1854.
My dear Tocqueville,--I write to you _in meditatione fugæ_. We start for
England in an hour's time. The last news that I heard of you was the day
before yesterday from Cousin. He read me your letter, which sounded to me
like that of a man in not very bad health or hopes. I trust that the
attack of which Madame de Tocqueville wrote to us has quite passed off.
Thiers, who asked very anxiously after you to-day, is earnest that you
should be present at the election on the 18th. The Academy, he said, is
very jealous. _Vous serez très-mal vu_, if you do not come.
You are at last going seriously to work in the war. By the end of the
year you will have, military and naval, 700,000 men in arms.