'What struck me,' he said, 'in every page of it, was the resemblance of
King Otho to Louis Napoleon.'
'I see the resemblance,' I answered, 'but it is the resemblance of a
dwarf to a giant.'
'No,' he replied. 'Of a man five feet seven inches high to one five feet
eleven inches. There are not more than four inches between them. There is
the same cunning, the same coldness, the same vindictiveness, the same
silence, the same perseverance, the same unscrupulousness, the same
selfishness, the same anxiety to appear to do everything that is done,
and above all, the same determination to destroy, or to seduce by
corruption or by violence, every man and every institution favourable to
liberty, independence, or self-government. In one respect Otho had the
more difficult task. He found himself, in 1843, subject to a Constitution
carefully framed under the advice of England for the express purpose of
controlling him. He did not attempt to get rid of it by a _coup d'état_,
or even to alter it, but cunningly and skilfully perverted it into an
instrument of despotism. Louis Napoleon destroyed the Constitution which
he found, and made a new one, copied from that which had been gradually
elaborated by his uncle, which as a restraint is intentionally powerless
and fraudulent.
'A man,' he continued, 'may acquire influence either by possessing in a
higher degree the qualities which belong to his country and to his time,
or by possessing those in which they are deficient.
'Wellington is an example of this first sort. His excellences were those
of an Englishman carried almost to perfection.
'Louis Napoleon belongs to the second. If his merits had been impetuous
courage, rapidity of ideas, quickness of decision, frankness, versatility
and resource, he would have been surrounded by his equals or his
superiors. He predominated over those with whom he came in contact
because he differed from them. Because he was calm, slow, reserved,
silent, and persevering. Because he is a Dutchman, not a Frenchman.'
'He seems,' I said, 'to have lost his calmness.'
'Yes,' answered L. 'But under what a shock! And observe that though the
greatest risk was encountered by _him_, the terror was greatest among his
_entourage_. I do not believe that if he had been left to himself he
would have lost his prudence or his self-possession. He did not for the
first day. Passions are contagious. Everyone who approached him was
agitated by terror and anger. His intrepidity and self-reliance, great as
they are, were disturbed by the hubbub all round him. His great defects
are three. First, his habit of self-contemplation. He belongs to the men
whom the Germans call subjective, whose eye is always turned inwardly;
who think only of themselves, of their own character, and of their own
fortunes. Secondly, his jealousy of able men. He wishes to be what you
called him, a giant, and as Nature has not made him positively tall, he
tries to be comparatively so, by surrounding himself with dwarfs. His
third defect is the disproportion of his wishes to his means. His desires
are enormous. No power, no wealth, no expenditure would satisfy them.
Even if he had his uncle's genius and his uncle's indefatigability, he
would sink, as his uncle did, under the exorbitance of his attempts. As
he is not a man of genius, or even a man of remarkable ability, as he is
ignorant, uninventive and idle, you will see him flounder and fall from
one failure to another.
'During the three years that Drouyn de L'Huys was his minister he was
intent on home affairs--on his marriage, on the Louvre, on the artillery,
on his _bonnes fortunes_, and on the new delights of unbounded
expenditure. He left foreign affairs altogether to his minister. When
Drouyn de L'Huys left him, the road before him was plain--he had only to
carry on the war. But when the war was over, the road ended; neither
he nor Walewski nor any of his _entourage_ know anything of the country
in which they are travelling. You see them wandering at hazard. Sometimes
trying to find their way to Russia, sometimes to England. Making a treaty
with Austria, then attempting to injure her, and failing; attempting to
injure Turkey, and failing; bullying Naples, and failing; threatening
Switzerland, threatening Belgium, and at last demanding from England an
Alien Bill, which they ought to know to be incompatible with the laws and
hateful to the feelings of the people.
'He is not satisfied with seeing the country prosperous and respected
abroad. He wants to dazzle. His policy, domestic and foreign, is a policy
of vanity and ostentation--motives which mislead everyone both in private
and in public life.
'His great moral merits are kindness and sympathy. He is a faithful
attached friend, and wishes to serve all who come near him.
'His greatest moral fault is his ignorance of the difference between
right and wrong; perhaps his natural insensibility to it, his want of the
organs by which that difference is perceived--a defect which he inherits
from his uncle.'
'The uncle,' I said, 'had at least one moral sense--he could understand
the difference between pecuniary honesty and dishonesty, a difference
which this man seems not to see, or not to value.'
'I agree with you,' said L. 'He cannot value it, or he would not look
complacently on the peculation which surrounds him. Every six months some
magnificent hotel rises in the Champs Élysées, built by a man who had
nothing, and has been a minister for a year or two.'
On my return I found Tocqueville with the ladies. I gave him an outline
of what L. had said.
'No one,' he said, 'knows Louis Napoleon better than L.'
'My opportunities of judging him have been much fewer, but as far as they
have gone, they lead to the same conclusions. L. perhaps has not dwelt
enough on his indolence. Probably as he grows older, and the effects of
his early habits tell on him, it increases. I am told that it is
difficult to make him attend to business, that he prolongs audiences
apparently to kill time.
'One of the few of my acquaintances who go near him, was detained by him
for an hour to answer questions about the members of the _Corps
législatif_. Louis Napoleon inquired about their families, their
fortunes, their previous histories. Nothing about their personal
qualities. These are things that do not interest him. He supposes that
men differ only in externals. "That the _fond_ is the same in everyone."'
_April 26_.--Tocqueville spent the evening with us.
We talked of Novels.
'I read none,' he said, 'that end ill. Why should one voluntarily subject
oneself to painful emotions? To emotions created by an imaginary cause
and therefore impelling you to no action. I like vivid emotions, but I
seek them in real life, in society, in travelling, in business, but above
all in political business. There is no happiness comparable to political
success, when your own excitement is justified by the magnitude of the
questions at issue, and is doubled and redoubled by the sympathy of your
supporters. Having enjoyed that, I am ashamed of being excited by the
visionary sorrows of heroes and heroines.
'I had a friend,' he continued, 'a Benedictine, who is now ninety-seven.
He was, therefore, about thirteen when Louis XVI. began to reign. He is a
man of talents and knowledge, has always lived in the world, has attended
to all that he has seen and heard, and is still unimpaired in mind, and
so strong in body that when I leave him he goes down to embrace me, after
the fashion of the eighteenth century, at the bottom of his staircase.'
'And what effect,' I asked, 'has the contemplation of seventy years of
revolution produced in him? Does he look back, like Talleyrand, to the
_ancien régime_ as a golden age?'
'He admits,' said Tocqueville, 'the material superiority of our own age,
but he believes that, intellectually and morally, we are far inferior to
our grandfathers. And I agree with him. Those seventy years of revolution
have destroyed our courage, our hopefulness, our self-reliance, our
public spirit, and, as respects by far the majority of the higher
classes, our passions, except the vulgarest and most selfish ones--vanity
and covetousness. Even ambition seems extinct. The men who seek power,
seek it not for itself, not as the means of doing good to their country,
but as a means of getting money and flatterers.
'It is remarkable,' he continued, 'that women whose influence is
generally greatest under despotisms, have none now. They have lost it,
partly in consequence of the gross vulgarity of our dominant passions,
and partly from their own nullity. They are like London houses, all built
and furnished on exactly the same model, and that a most uninteresting
one. Whether a girl is bred up at home or in a convent, she has the same
masters, gets a smattering of the same accomplishments, reads the same
dull books, and contributes to society the same little contingent of
superficial information.
'When a young lady comes out I know beforehand how her mother and her
aunts will describe her. "Elle a les goûts simples. Elle est pieuse. Elle
aime la campagne. Elle aime la lecture. Elle n'aime pas le bal. Elle
n'aime pas le monde, elle y ira seulement pour plaire à sa mère." I try
sometimes to escape from these generalities, but there is nothing behind
them.'
'And how long,' I asked, 'does this simple, pious, retiring character
last?'
'Till the orange flowers of her wedding chaplet are withered,' he
answered. 'In three months she goes to the _messe d'une heure_.'
'What is the "messe d'une heure?"' I asked.
'A priest,' he answered, 'must celebrate Mass fasting; and in strictness
ought to do so before noon. But to accommodate fashionable ladies who
cannot rise by noon, priests are found who will starve all the morning,
and say Mass in the afternoon. It is an irregular proceeding, though
winked at by the ecclesiastical authorities. Still to attend it is rather
discreditable; it is a middle term between the highly meritorious
practice of going to early Mass, and the scandalous one of never going at
all.'
'What was the education,' I asked, 'of women under the _ancien régime_?'
'The convent,' he answered.
'It must have been better,' I said, 'than the present education, since
the women of that time were superior to ours.'
'It was so far better,' he answered, 'that it did no harm. A girl at that
time was taught nothing. She came from the convent a sheet of white
paper. _Now_ her mind is a paper scribbled over with trash. The women of
that time were thrown into a world far superior to ours, and with the
sagacity, curiosity, and flexibility of French women, caught knowledge
and tact and expression from the men.
'I knew well,' he continued, 'Madame Récamier. Few traces of her former
beauty then remained, but we were all her lovers and her slaves. The
talent, labour, and skill which she wasted in her _salon_, would have
gained and governed an empire. She was virtuous, if it be virtuous to
persuade every one of a dozen men that you wish to favour him, though
some circumstance always occurs to prevent your doing so. Every friend
thought himself preferred. She governed us by little distinctions, by
letting one man come five minutes before the others, or stay five minutes
after. Just as Louis XIV. raised one courtier to the seventh heaven by
giving him the _bougeoir_, and another by leaning on his arm, or taking
his shirt from him.
'She said little, but knew what each man's _fort_ was, and placed from
time to time a _mot_ which led him to it. If anything were peculiarly
well said, her face brightened. You saw that her attention was always
active and always intelligent.
'And yet I doubt whether she really enjoyed conversation. _Tenir salon_
was to her a game, which she played well, and almost always successfully,
but she must sometimes have been exhausted by the effort. Her _salon_ was
perhaps pleasanter to us than it was to herself.
'One of the last,' he continued, 'of that class of potentates was the
Duchesse de Dino. Her early married life was active and brilliant, but
not intellectually. It was not till about forty, when she had exhausted
other excitements, that she took to _bel esprit._ But she performed her
part as if she had been bred to it.'
This was our last conversation. I left Paris the next day, and we never
met again.