JOURNAL.

_Tocqueville, Sunday, August_ 11, 1861.--We left Paris on Saturday

evening, got to Valognes by the Cherbourg railway by six the next

morning, and were furnished there with a good carriage and horses, which

took us, and our servants and luggage, in three hours to Tocqueville.

Valognes has been immortalised by Le Sage in Turcaret. It is a town of

about 6,000 inhabitants, built of granite, and therefore little altered

from what it was 200 years ago. Over many of the doors are the armorial

bearings of the provincial nobility who made it a small winter capital:

the practice is not wholly extinct. I asked who was the inhabitant of an

imposing old house. 'M. de Néridoze,' answered our landlady, 'd'une

très-haute noblesse.' I went over one in which Madame de Tocqueville

thinks of passing the winter. It is of two stories. The ground floor

given up to kitchen, laundry, and damp-looking servants' rooms; the first

floor in this form:--

[Illustration:]

Bedroom.

Door

Stairs Bedroom.

Bedroom. Drawing-room. Dining-room. Hall. Bedroom.

The longer side looks into the street, the shorter, which is to be Madame

de Tocqueville's bedroom, into a small garden.

_August_ 11.--At Tocqueville we find M. and Madame de Beaumont, their

second son--a charming boy of ten years old, and Ampère.

It is eleven years since I was here. Nothing has been done to the

interior of the house. This is about the plan of ground floor.

[Illustration:]

Offices

Tower

staircase Offices.

Drawing-room. Billiard-room. Dining-room.

Hall.

Tower

The first floor corresponds to the ground floor, except that on the

western sides a passage runs, into which the library, which is over the

drawing-room, and the bedrooms open. The second consists of garrets. My

room is on the first floor of the eastern tower, with deep windows

looking south and east. The room dedicated by Tocqueville to Ampère is

above me. Creepers in great luxuriance cover the walls up to the first

floor windows. The little park consists of from thirty to forty acres,

well wooded and traversed by an avenue in this form, leading from the

road to the front of the house.

* * * * * * * * *

* * * * * * * * *

* *

* *

* *

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To the west the ground rises to a wild common commanding the sea, the

lighthouses of Gatteville, Barfleur, La Hogue, and a green plain covered

with woods and hedgerow trees, and studded with church towers and spires

of the picturesque forms of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth

centuries. It has no grand features, except the sea and the rocky coast

of the Cherbourg peninsula, but it is full of variety and beauty. I can

understand Tocqueville's delight in the house and in the country. The

weather is perfect; the thermometer in my bedroom, the walls of which are

about six feet thick, is 71°, in the sun it is 80°; but there is a strong

breeze.

_August 12th._--Madame de Beaumont, my daughter, and Ampère drove, and

Beaumont and I walked, to the coast about three miles and a half off. Our

road ran through the gay wooded plain which I have described.

We talked of Italian affairs.

'Up to the annexation of Tuscany,' said Beaumont, 'I fully approve of all

that has been done. Parma, Modena, and Tuscany were eager to join

Piedmont. During the anxious interval of six months, while the decision

of Louis Napoleon was doubtful, the conduct of the Tuscans was above all

praise. Perhaps the general wish of the people of Romagna justified the

Piedmontese in seizing it. Though there the difficult question as to the

expediency of stripping the Pope of his temporal power rises.

'Perhaps, too, the facility with which Sicily submitted was a

justification. But I cannot pardon the seizure of Naples. It is clear to

me that if the Neapolitans had been left to themselves they would have

driven out the Garibaldians. Garibaldi himself felt this: nothing but a

conviction of its necessity would have induced him to call for the

assistance of the Piedmontese. I do not believe that in defiance of all

international law-indeed in defiance of all international

morality--Cavour would have given that assistance if the public opinion

of Piedmont had allowed him to refuse it. And what is the consequence? A

civil war which is laying waste the country. The Piedmontese call their

adversaries brigands. There are without doubt among them men whose motive

is plunder, but the great majority are in arms in defence of the

independence of their country. They are no more brigands now than they

were when they resisted King Joseph. The Piedmontese are as much

foreigners to them as the French were: as much hated and as lawfully

resisted. They may be conquered, they probably will be conquered. An

ignorant corrupt population, inhabiting a small country, unsupported by

its higher classes--its fleet, its fortresses, and all the machinery of

its government, in the hands of its enemies--cannot permanently resist;

but the war will be atrocious, and the more cruel on the part of Piedmont

because it is unjust.'

'You admit,' I said, 'that the higher classes side with Piedmont?'

'I admit that,' he answered; 'but you must recollect how few they are in

number, and how small is the influence which they exercise. In general, I

detest universal suffrage, I detest democracy and everything belonging to

it, but if it were possible to obtain honestly and truly the opinion of

the people, I would ask it and obey it. I believe that it would be better

to allow the Neapolitans, ignorant and debased as they are, to choose

their own sovereign and their own form of government, than to let them be

forced by years of violence to become the unwilling subjects of

Piedmont.'

'Do you believe,' I said, 'that it is possible to obtain through

universal suffrage the honest and true opinion of a people?'

'Not,' he answered, 'if the Government interferes. I believe that in

Savoy not one person in fifty was in favour of annexation to France. But

this is an extreme case.

'The Bourbons are deservedly hated and despised by the Neapolitans, the

Piedmontese are not despised, but are hated still more intensely. There

is no native royal stock. The people are obviously unfit for a Republic.

It would be as well, I think, to let them select a King as to impose one

on them. The King whom Piedmont, without a shadow of right, is imposing

on them is the one whom they most detest.'

'If I go to Rome,' I asked, 'in the winter, whom shall I find there?'

'I think,' he answered, 'that it will be the Piedmontese. The present

state of things is full of personal danger to Louis Napoleon. As his

policy is purely selfish, he will, at any sacrifice, put an end to it.

That sacrifice may be the unity of Catholicism. The Pope, no longer a

sovereign, will be under the influence of the Government in whose

territory he resides, and the other Catholic Powers may follow the

example of Greece and of Russia, and create each an independent Spiritual

Government. It would be a new excitement for _Celui-ci_ to make himself

Head of the Church.'

'Assassinations,' I said, 'even when successful have seldom produced

important and permanent effects, but Orsini's failure has influenced and

is influencing the destinies of Europe.'

'If I were an Italian liberal,' said Beaumont, 'I would erect a statue to

him. The policy and almost the disposition of Louis Napoleon have been

changed by the _attentat_. He has become as timid as he once was

intrepid. He began by courting the Pope and the clergy. He despised the

French assassins, who were few in number and unconnected, and who had

proved their unskilfulness on Louis Philippe; but Orsini showed him that

he had to elect between the Pope and the Austrians on one side, and the

Carbonari on the other. He has chosen the alliance of the Carbonari. He

has made himself their tool, and will continue to do so.

'They are the only enemies whom he fears, at least for the present.

'France is absolutely passive. The uneducated masses from whom he holds

his power are utterly indifferent to liberty, and he has too much sense

to irritate them by wanton oppression. They do not know that he is

degrading the French character, they do not even feel that he is wasting

the capital of France, they do not know that he is adding twenty millions

every year to the national debt. They think of his loans merely as

investments, and the more profligately extravagant are the terms and the

amount, the better they like them.'

'Ten years ago,' I said, 'the cry that I heard was, "Ça ne durera pas."'

'That was my opinion,' he answered; 'indeed, it was the opinion of

everybody. I thought the Duc de Broglie desponding when he gave it three

years. We none of us believed that the love of liberty was dead in

France.'

'It is not,' I said, 'dead, for among the higher classes it still lives,

and among the lower it never existed.'

'Perhaps,' he answered, 'our great mistakes were that we miscalculated

the courage of the educated classes, and the degree in which universal

suffrage would throw power into the hands of the uneducated. Not a human

being in my commune reads a newspaper or indeed reads anything: yet it

contains 300 electors. In the towns there is some knowledge and some

political feeling, but for political purposes they are carefully swamped

by being joined to uneducated agricultural districts.

'Still I think I might enter the _Corps législatif_ for our capital Le

Mans. Perhaps at a general election twenty liberals might come in. But

what good could they do? The opposition in the last session strengthened

Louis Napoleon. It gave him the prestige of liberality and success.'

'You think him, then,' I said, 'safe for the rest of his life?'

'Nothing,' he answered, 'is safe in France, and the thing most unsafe is

a Government. Our caprices are as violent as they are sudden. They

resemble those of a half-tamed beast of prey, which licks its keeper's

hand to-day, and may tear him to-morrow. But if his life be not so long

as to enable the fruits of his follies to show themselves in their

natural consequences--unsuccessful war, or defeated diplomacy, or

bankruptcy, or heavily increased taxation--he may die in the Tuileries.

'But I infer from his conduct that he thinks an insurrection against his

tyranny possible, and that he is preparing to meet it by a popular war--

that is to say, by a war with England.

'I found my opinion not so much on the enormous maritime preparations, as

on the long-continued systematic attempts to raise against England our

old national enmity. All the provincial papers are in the hands of the

Government. The constantly recurring topic of every one of them is, the

perfidy and the malignity of England. She is described as opposing all

our diplomacy, as resisting all our aggrandisement, as snarling and

growling at our acquisition of Savoy, as threatening us if we accept

Sardinia, as trying to drive the Pope from Rome because we protect him,

as trying to separate the Danubian provinces because we wish to unite

them, as preventing the Suez Canal because we proposed it--in short, on

every occasion and in every part of the world as putting herself in our

way. To these complaints, which are not without foundation, are added

others of which our ignorant people do not see the absurdity. They are

told that the enormous conscription, and the great naval expenditure, are

rendered necessary by the aggressive armaments of England. That you are

preparing to lay waste all our coasts, to burn our arsenals, to subsidise

against us a new Coalition, and perhaps lead its armies again to Paris.

'The Emperor's moderation, his love of England, and his love of peace,

are said to be the only obstacles to, a violent rupture. But they are

prepared for these obstacles at length giving way. "The Emperor," they

are told, "is getting tired of his insolent, and hostile, and quarrelsome

allies. He is getting tired of a peace which is more expensive than a

war. Some day the cup will flow over. 'Il en finira avec eux,' will

dictate a peace in London, will free the oppressed Irish nationality,

will make England pay the expense of the war, and then having conquered

the only enemy that France can fear, will let her enjoy, for the first

time, real peace, a reduced conscription, and low taxation."

'Such is the language of all the provincial papers and of all the

provincial authorities, and it has its effect. There never was a time

when a war with England would be so popular. He does not wish for one, he

knows that it would be extremely dangerous, but he is accustomed to play

for great stakes, and if submitting to any loss of his popularity, or to

any limitation of his power is the alternative, he will run the risk. He

keeps it, as his last card, in reserve, to be played only in extremity,

but to be ready when that extremity has arrived.'

_Tuesday, August_ 13.--We drove to La Prenelle, a church at the point of

a high table-land running from Tocqueville towards the bay of La Hogue,

and commanding nearly all the Cherbourg peninsula. On three sides of us

was the sea, separated from us by a wooded, well-inhabited plain, whose

churches rose among the trees, and containing the towns and lofty

lighthouses of Gatteville, Barfleur, Vast, and La Hogue. We sat on the

point from whence James II. saw the battle of La Hogue, and admired the

courage of his English rebels.

Ampère has spent much of his life in Rome, and is engaged on a work in

which its history is to be illustrated by its monuments.

We talked of the Roman people.

'Nothing,' said Ampère, 'can be more degraded than the higher classes.

With the exception of Antonelli, who is charming, full of knowledge,

intelligence, and grace, and of the Duke of Sermoneta, who is almost

equally distinguished, there is scarcely a noble of my acquaintance who

has any merits, moral or intellectual.

'They are surrounded by the finest ancient and modern art, and care

nothing for it. The eminent men of every country visit Rome--the Romans

avoid them for they have nothing to talk to them about.

'Politics are of course unsafe, literature they have none. They never

read. A cardinal told me something which I doubted, and I asked him where

he had found it. "In certi libri," he answered.

'Another, who has a fine old library, begged me to use it. "You will do

the room good," he said. "No one has been there for years." Even scandal

and gossip must be avoided under an Ecclesiastical Government.

'They never ride, they never shoot, they never visit their estates, they

give no parties; if it were not for the theatre and for their lawsuits

they would sink into vegetable life.'

'Sermoneta,' I said, 'told me that many of his lawsuits were hereditary,

and would probably descend to his son.'

'If Sermoneta,' said Ampère, 'with his positive intelligence and his

comparative vigour, cannot get through them, what is to be expected from

others? They have, however, one merit, one point of contact with the rest

of the world--their hatred of their Government. They seem to perceive,

not clearly, for they perceive nothing clearly, but they dimly see, that

the want of liberty is a still greater misfortune to the higher classes

than to the lower.

'But the people are a fine race. Well led they will make excellent

soldiers. They have the cruelty of their ancestors, perhaps I ought to

say of their predecessors, but they have also their courage.'

'They showed,' said Beaumont, 'courage in the defence of Rome, but

courage behind walls is the commonest of all courages. No training could

make the Spaniards stand against us in the open field, but they were

heroes in Saragossa. The caprices of courage and cowardice are

innumerable. The French have no moral courage, they cannot stand

ridicule, they cannot encounter disapprobation, they bow before

oppression; a French soldier condemned by a court-martial cries for mercy

like a child. The same man in battle appears indifferent to death. The

Spaniard runs away without shame, but submits to death when it is

inevitable without terror. None of the prisoners taken on either side in

the Spanish civil war asked for pardon.'

'Indifference to life,' I said, 'and indifference to danger have little

in common. General Fénelon told me that in Algeria he had more than once

to preside at an execution. No Arab showed any fear. Once there were two

men, one of whom was to be flogged, the other to be shot. A mistake was

made and they were going to shoot the wrong man. It was found out in

time, but neither of the men seemed to care about it; yet they

would probably have run away in battle. The Chinese are not brave, but

you can hire a man to be beheaded in your place.'

'So,' said Ampère, 'you could always hire a substitute in our most

murderous wars, when in the course of a year a regiment was killed twice

over. It was hiring a man, not indeed to be beheaded, but to be shot for

you.'

'The destructiveness,' said Beaumont, 'of a war is only gradually known.

It is found out soonest in the villages when the deaths of the conscripts

are heard of, or are suspected from their never returning; but in the

towns, from which the substitutes chiefly come, it may be long

undiscovered. Nothing is known but what is officially published, and the

Government lies with an audacity which seems always to succeed. If it

stated the loss of men in a battle at one half of the real number, people

would fancy that it ought to be doubled, and so come near to the truth;

but it avows only one-tenth or only one-twentieth, and then the amount of

falsehood is underestimated.'

'Marshal Randon,' I said, 'told me that the whole loss in the Italian

campaign was under 7,000 men.'

'That is a good instance,' said Beaumont. 'It certainly was 50,000,

perhaps 70,000. But I am guilty of a _délit_ in saying so, and you will

be guilty of a _délit_ if you repeat what I have said. I remember the

case of a man in a barber's shop in Tours, to whom the barber said that

the harvest was bad. He repeated the information, and was punished by

fine and imprisonment for having spread _des nouvelles alarmantes_. Truth

is no excuse; in fact it is an aggravation, for the truer the news the

more alarming.'

'In time of peace,' I asked, 'what proportion of the conscripts return

after their six years of service?'

'About three-quarters,' answered Beaumont.

'Then,' I said, 'as you take 100,000 conscripts every year even in peace,

you lose 25,000 of your best young men every year?'

'Certainly,' said Beaumont.

'And are the 75,000 who return improved or deteriorated?' I asked.

'Improved,' said Ampère; 'they are _dégourdis_, they are educated, they

submit to authority, they know how to shift for themselves.'

'Deteriorated,' said Beaumont. 'A garrison life destroys the habits of

steady industry, it impairs skill. The returned conscript is more vicious

and less honest than the peasant who has not left his village.'

'And what was the loss,' I asked, 'in the late war?'

'At least twice as great,' said Beaumont, 'as it is in peace. Half of

those who were taken perished. The country would not have borne the

prolongation of the Crimean War.'

'These wars,' I said, 'were short and successful. A war with England can

scarcely be short, and yet you think that he plans one?'

'I think,' said Beaumont, 'that he plans one, but only in the event of

his encountering any serious difficulty at home. You must not infer from

the magnitude of his naval expenditure that he expects one.

'You look at the expense of those preparations, and suppose that so great

a sacrifice would not be made in order to meet an improbable emergency.

But expense is no sacrifice to him. He likes it. He has the morbid

taste for it which some tyrants have had for blood, which his uncle had

for war. Then he is incapable of counting. When he lived at Arenenburg he

used to give every old soldier who visited him an order on Viellard his

treasurer for money. In general the chest was empty. Viellard used to

remonstrate but without effect. The day perhaps after his orders had been

dishonoured he gave new ones.'

'Is it true,' I asked, 'that the civil list is a couple of years' income

in debt?'

I know nothing about it,' said Beaumont; 'in fact, nobody knows anything

about anything, but it is highly probable. Everybody who asks for

anything gets it, everybody is allowed to waste, everybody is allowed to

rob, every folly of the Empress is complied with. Fould raised

objections, and was dismissed.

'She is said to have a room full of revolutionary relics: there is the

bust of Marie Antoinette, the nose broken at one of the sacks of the

Tuileries. There is a picture of Simon beating Louis XVII. Her poor child

has been frightened by it, and she is always dwelling on the dangers of

her position.'

'So,' I said, 'did Queen Adelaide--William IV.'s Queen. From the passing

of the Reform Bill she fully expected to die on the scaffold.'

'There is more reason,' he answered, 'for the Empress's fears.'

'Not,' I said, 'if she fears the scaffold. Judicial murder, at least in

that form, is out of fashion. Cayenne and Lambressa are your guillotines,

and the Empress is safe from them.'

'But there are other modes of violent death,' he answered; 'from one of

which she escaped almost by miracle.'

'How did she behave,' I asked, 'at the _attentat?_'

'Little is known,' he answered, 'except that the Emperor said to her, as

he led her upstairs to her box: "Allons, il faut faire notre métier."'

'Then she is disturbed by religious fears. The little prince has been

taught to say to his father every morning: "Papa, ne faites pas de mal à

mon parrain." The Pope was his godfather.'

'If the Emperor dies, the real power will pass into the hands of Prince

Napoleon. And very dangerous hands they will be. He has more talent than

the Emperor, and longer views. Louis Napoleon is a revolutionist from

selfishness. Prince Napoleon is selfish enough, but he has also passion.

He detests everything that is venerable, everything that is established

or legal.

'There is little value now for property or for law, though the Government

professes to respect them. What, will it be when the Government professes

to hate them?'

_Wednesday, August_ 14.--We talked at breakfast of Rome.

'Is there,' said Beaumont to Ampère, 'still an Inquisition at Rome?'

'There is,' said Ampère, 'but it is torpid. It punishes bad priests, but

does little else.'

'If a Roman,' I asked, 'were an avowed infidel, would it take notice of

him?'

'Probably not,' said Ampère, 'but his _curé_ might--not for his

infidelity, but for his avowing it. The _curé_ who has always the powers

of a _commissaire de police,_ might put him in prison if he went into a

_café_ and publicly denied the Immaculate Conception, or if he neglected

going to church or to confession: but the Inquisition no longer cares

about opinions.'

'Is there much infidelity,' I asked, 'in Rome?'

'Much,' said Ampère, 'among the laity. The clergy do not actively

disbelieve. They go through their functions without ever seriously

inquiring whether what they have to teach be true or false. No persons

were more annoyed by the Mortara[1] business than the clergy, with the

exception of Antonelli. He hates and fears the man who set it on foot,

the Archbishop of Bologna, and therefore was glad to see him expose

himself, and lose all hope of the Secretaryship, but he took care to

prevent the recurrence of such a scandal. He revived an old law

prohibiting Jews from keeping Christian nurses. But he could scarcely

order restitution. According to the Church it would have been giving the

child to the Devil, and, what is worse, robbing God of him. The Pope's

piety is selfish. His great object is his own salvation. He would not

endanger that, to confer any benefit upon, or to avert any evil from

Rome; or indeed from the whole world. This makes him difficult to

negotiate with. If anything is proposed to him which his confessor

affirms to be dangerous to his soul, he listens to no arguments. As for

Mortara himself, he is a poor creature. A friend of mine went to see him

in his convent. All that he could get from him was:

'"Sono venuti i Carabinieri."

'"And what did they do to you?"

'"M' hanno portato quì."

'"What more?"

'"M' hanno dato pasticci; erano molto buoni."

'What is most teasing,' continued Ampère, 'in the Roman Government is not

so much its active oppression as its torpidity. It hates to act. An

Englishman had with great difficulty obtained permission to light Rome

with gas. He went to the Government in December, and told them that

everything was ready, and that the gas would be lighted on the 1st of

January.

'"Could you not," they answered, "put it off till April?"

'"But it is in winter," he replied; "that it is wanted. Every thing is

ready. Why should we wait?"

'"It is a new thing," they replied; "people will be frightened. It may

have consequences. At least put it off till March."

'"But they will be as much frightened in March," he replied.

'"If it must be done," they said, "as a kindness to His Holiness and to

us put it off till February."

'There is, however, one sort of oppression which even we should find it

difficult to tolerate.

'A Monsignore has a young friend without money, but an excellent Catholic

and an excellent politician, a fervid believer in the Immaculate

Conception and in the excellence of the Papal Government. He wishes to

reward such admirable opinions: but the Pope has little to give.

Monsignore looks out for some young heiress, sends for her father,

describes his pious and loyal _protégé_, and proposes marriage. Her

father objects--says that his daughter cannot afford to marry a poor man,

or that she does not wish to marry at all--or that he or she has some

other preference.

'Monsignore insists. He assures the father that what he is proposing is

most favourable to the salvation of his daughter, that he suggests it

principally for the benefit of her soul, and that the father's objections

are inspired by the Evil One. The father breaks off the conversation and

goes home. He finds that his daughter has disappeared. He returns furious

to Monsignore, is received with the utmost politeness and is informed

that his daughter is perfectly safe under the protection of a cardinal

who himself did her the honour of fetching her in his gilded coach. "You

have only," the Monsignore says, "to be reasonable, and she shall be

returned to you."

'The father flies to the cardinal.

'The same politeness and the same answer.

'"Do not oppose," he is told, "the will of the Pope, who, in this matter,

seeks only your daughter's happiness here and hereafter. She is now with

me. If you will give up your sinful obstinacy she shall be restored to

you to-day. If not, it will be our duty to place her in a convent, where

she will be taken the utmost care of, but she will not leave it except to

marry the person whom His Holiness thinks most fitted to promote the

welfare of her soul."

'I have known several cases in which this attempt has been made. With

such timid slaves as the Roman nobility it always succeeds.'

[Footnote 1: The Jewish child who was taken away from his parents and

converted.--ED.]

_Thursday, August_ 15.--This is the fête of St. Louis--the great fête of

Tocqueville. Madame de Tocqueville and Madame de Beaumont spent much of

the morning in church.

Beaumont and his son walked to the coast to bathe. Minnie, Ampère, and I

strolled among the deep shady lanes of the plateau above the castle.

Throughout Normandy the fields are small and are divided by mounds

planted with trees. The farmhouses, and even the cottages, are built of

primitive rock, granite, or old red sandstone. At a distance, peeping out

of the trees that surround them, they look pretty, but they, have more

than the usual French untidiness. The outhouses are roofless, the

farmyards are full of pools and dung heaps, which often extend into the

road; and the byroads themselves are quagmires when they do not consist

of pointed stones. I was struck by the paucity of the children and the

absence of new houses. The population of Normandy is diminishing.

We conversed on the subject of Italy.

'If we are in Rome next winter,' I asked, 'shall we find the French

there?'

'I think not,' said Ampère; 'I think that you will find only the

Piedmontese.

'Every day that Louis Napoleon holds Rome is a day of danger to him, a

danger slight perhaps now, but serious if the occupation be prolonged.

The Anti-papal party, and it includes almost all that are liberal and all

that are energetic, are willing to give him time, but not an indefinite

time. They are quiet only because they trust him. He is a magician who

has sold himself to the Devil. The Devil is patient, but he will not be

cheated. The Carbonari will support Louis Napoleon as long as he is doing

their work, and will allow him to do it in his own way and to take his

own time, as long as they believe he is doing it. But woe to him if they

believe that he is deceiving them. I suspect that they are becoming

impatient, and I suspect too, that he is becoming impatient. This quarrel

between Mérode and Goyon is significative. I do not believe that Goyon

used the words imputed to him. We shall probably keep Civita Vecchia, but

we shall give up Rome to the Piedmontese.'

'And will the Pope,' I asked, 'remain?'

'Not this Pope,' said Ampère, 'but his successor. Nor do I see the great

evil of the absence of the Pope from Rome. Popes have often been absent

before, sometimes for long periods.'

'Most of my French friends,' I said, 'are opposed to Italian Unity as

mischievous to France.'

'I do not believe,' he answered, 'in the submission of Naples to this

Piedmontese dynasty, but I shall be delighted to see all Italy north of

the Neapolitan territory united.

'I do not think that we have anything to fear from the kingdom of Italy.

It is as likely to be our friend as to be our enemy. But the Neapolitans,

even if left to themselves, would not willingly give up their

independence, and _Celui-ci_ is trying to prevent their doing so.'

'What do _they_ wish,' I asked, 'and what does _he_ wish?'

'I believe,' he answered, 'that _their_ wishes are only negative.

'They do not wish to recall the Bourbons, and they are resolved not to

keep the Piedmontese. _His_ wish I believe to be to put his cousin there.

Prince Napoleon himself refused Tuscany. It is too small, but he would

like Naples, and Louis Napoleon would be glad to get rid of him. What

would England say?'

'If we believed,' I said, 'in the duration of a Bonaparte dynasty in

France, we should, of course, object to the creation of one in Naples.

But if, as we think it probable, the Bonapartists have to quit France, I

do not see few we should be injured by their occupying the throne of

Naples.

'I should object to them if I were a Neapolitan. All their instincts are

despotic, democratic, and revolutionary. But even they are better than

the late king was. What chance have the Murats?'

'None,' said Ampère. 'They have spoiled their game, if they had a game,

by their precipitation. The Emperor has disavowed them, the Neapolitans

do not care for them. The Prince de Leuchtenberg, grandson of Eugène

Beauharnais, has been talked of. He is well connected, related to many of

the reigning families of the Continent, and is said to be intelligent and

well educated.'

'If Naples,' I said, 'is to be detached from the kingdom of Italy, Sicily

ought to be detached from Naples. There is quite as much mutual

antipathy.'

'Would you like to take it?' he asked.

'Heaven forbid!' I answered. 'It would be another Corfu on a larger

scale. The better we governed them, the more they would hate us. The only

chance for them is to have a king of their own.'

_August_ 15.--In the evening Ampère read to us a comedy called 'Beatrix,'

by a writer of some reputation, and a member of the Institut.

It was very bad, full of exaggerated sentiments, forced situations, and

the cant of philanthropic despotism.

An actress visits the court of a German grand duke. He is absent. His

mother, the duchess, receives her as an equal. The second son falls in

love with her at first sight and wishes to marry her. She is inclined to

consent, when another duchy falls in, the elder duke resigns to his

brother, he becomes king, presses their marriage, his mother does not

oppose, and thereupon Beatrix makes a speech, orders her horses, and

drives off to act somewhere else.

Ampère reads admirably, but no excellence of reading could make such

absurdities endurable. It was written for Ristori, who acted Beatrix in

French with success.

_Friday, August_ 16.--We talked at breakfast of 1793.

'It is difficult,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'to believe that the French

of that day were our ancestors.'

'They resembled you,' I said, 'only in two things: in military courage,

and in political cowardice.'

'They had,' she replied, 'perhaps more passive courage than we have.[1]

My great-great-grandmother, my great-grandmother, and my great-aunt, were

guillotined on the same day. My great-great-grandmother was ninety years

old. When interrogated, she begged them to speak loud, as she was deaf.

'Écrivez,' said Fouquier Tinville, 'que la citoyenne Noailles a conspiré

sourdement contre la République.' They were dragged to the Place de la

République in the same _tombereau_, and sat waiting their turn on the

same bench.

'My great-aunt was young and beautiful. The executioner, while fastening

her to the plank, had a rose in his mouth. The Abbé de Noailles, who was

below the scaffold, disguised, to give them, at the risk of his life, a

sign of benediction, was asked how they looked.

'"Comme si,' he said, 'elles allaient à la messe."'

'The habit,' said Ampère, 'of seeing people die produces indifference

even to one's own death. You see that among soldiers. You see it in

epidemics. But this indifference, or, to use a more proper word, this

resignation, helped to prolong the Reign of Terror. If the victims had

resisted, if, like Madame du Barry, they had struggled with the

executioner, it would have excited horror.'

'The cries of even a pig,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'make it disagreeable

to kill it.'

'Sanson,' I said, 'long survived the Revolution; he made a fortune and

lived in retirement at Versailles. A lady was run away with between

Versailles and Paris. An elderly man, at considerable risk, stopped her

horse. She was very grateful, but could not get from him his name. At

last she traced him, and found that it was Sanson.'

'Sanson,' said Beaumont, 'may have been an honest man. Whenever a place

of _bourreau_ is vacant, there are thirty or forty candidates, and they

always produce certificates of their extraordinary kindness and humanity.

It seems to be the post most coveted by men eminent for their

benevolence.'

'How many have you?' I asked.

'Eighty-six,' he answered. 'One for each department.'

'And how many executions?'

'About one hundred a year in all France.'

'And what is the salary?'

'Perhaps a couple of thousand francs a year.'

'Really,' said Ampère, 'it is one of the best parts of the patronage of

the Minister of the Interior. _M. le Bourreau_ gets more than a thousand

francs for each operation.'

'We pay by the piece,' I said, 'and find one operator enough for all

England.'

'A friend of mine,' said Beaumont, had a remarkably good Swiss servant.

His education was far above his station, and we could not find what had

been his birth or his canton.

'Suddenly he became agitated and melancholy, and at last told my friend

that he must leave him, and why. His father was the hereditary _bourreau_

of a Swiss canton. To the office was attached an estate, to be forfeited

if the office were refused. He had resolved to take neither, and, to

avoid being solicited, had left his country and changed his name. But his

family had traced him, had informed him of his father's death, and had

implored him to accept the succession. He was the only son, and his

mother and sisters would be ruined, if he allowed it to pass to the next

in order of inheritance, a distant cousin. He had not been able to

persist in his refusal.'

'The husband of an acquaintance of mine,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'used

to disappear for two or three hours every day. He would not tell her for

what purpose. At last she found out that he was employed in the _chambre

noire_, the department of the police by which letters passing through the

post are opened. The duties were well paid, and she could not persuade

him to give them up. They were on uneasy terms, when an accident threw a

list of all the names of the _employés_ in the _chambre noire_, into the

hands of an opposition editor, who published them in his newspaper.

'She then separated from him.'

'If the Post-office,' I said, 'were not a Government monopoly, if

everyone had a right to send his letters in the way that he liked best,

there would be some excuse. But the State compels you, under severe

penalties, to use its couriers, undertaking, not tacitly but expressly,

to respect the secrecy of your correspondence, and then systematically

violates it.'

'I should have said,' answered Ampère, 'not expressly but tacitly.'

'No,' I replied; 'expressly. Guizot, when Minister for Foreign Affairs,

proclaimed from the tribune, that in France the secrecy of correspondence

was, under all circumstances, inviolable. This has never been officially

contradicted.

'The English Post-office enters into no such engagements. Any letters may

be legally opened, under an order from a Secretary of State.'

'Are prisoners in England,' asked Beaumont, 'allowed to correspond with

their friends?'

'I believe,' I answered, 'that their letters pass through the Governor's

hands, and that he opens them, or not, at his discretion.'

'Among the tortures,' said Ampère, 'which Continental despots delight to

inflict on their state prisoners the privation of correspondence is one.'

'In ordinary life,' I said, 'the educated endure inaction worse than the

ignorant. A coachman sits for hours on his box without feeling _ennui_.

If his master had to sit quiet all that time, inside the carriage, he

would tear his hair from impatience.

'But the educated seem to tolerate the inactivity of imprisonment better

than their inferiors. We find that our ordinary malefactors cannot endure

solitary imprisonment for more than a year--seldom indeed so long. The

Italian prisoners whom I have known, Zucchi, Borsieri, Poerio,

Gonfalonieri, and Pellico, endured imprisonment lasting from ten to

seventeen years without much injury to mind or body.'

'The spirit of Pellico,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'was broken. When

released, he gave himself up to devotion and works of charity. Perhaps

the humility, resignation, and submission of his book made it still

more mischievous to the Austrian Government. The reader's indignation

against those who could so trample on so unresisting a victim becomes

fierce.'

'If the Austrians,' I said, 'had been wise, they would have shot instead

of imprisoning them. Their deaths would have been forgotten--their

imprisonment has contributed much to the general odium which is

destroying the Austrian Empire.'

'It would have been wiser,' said Beaumont, 'but it would have been more

merciful, and therefore it was not done. But you talk of all these men as

solitarily imprisoned. Some of them had companions.'

'Yes,' I said, 'but they complained that one permanent companion was

worse than solitude. Gonfalonieri said, that one could not be in the same

room, with the same man, a year without hating him.

'One of the Neapolitan prisoners was chained for some time to a brigand.

Afterwards the brigand was replaced by a gentleman. He complained

bitterly of the change.

'The brigand,' said Minnie, 'was his slave, the gentleman had a will of

his own.'

'How did M. de La Fayette,'[2] I asked Madame de Beaumont, 'bear his five

years' imprisonment at Olmutz?'

'His health,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'was good, but the miseries of his

country and the sufferings of his wife made him very unhappy. When my

grandmother came to him, it was two days before she had strength to tell

him that all his and her family had perished. I was once at Olmutz, and

saw the one room which they had inhabited. It was damp and dark. She

asked to be allowed to leave it for a time for better medical treatment

and change of air. It was granted only on the condition that she should

never return. She refused. The rheumatic attacks which the state of the

prison had produced, continued and increased: she was hopelessly ill when

they were released--and died soon afterwards. The sense of wrong

aggravated their sufferings, for their imprisonment was a gross and

wanton violation of all law, international and municipal. My grandfather

was not an Austrian subject; he had committed no offence against Austria.

She seized him simply because he was a liberal, because his principles

had made him the enemy of tyranny in America and in France; and because

his birth and talents and reputation gave him influence. It was one of

the brutal stupid acts of individual cruelty which characterise the

Austrian despotism, and have done more to ruin it than a wider

oppression--such a one, for instance, as ours, more mischievous, but more

intelligent,--would have done.'

'Freedom,' said Ampère, 'was offered to him on the mere condition of his

not serving in the French army. At that time the Jacobins would have

guillotined him, the Royalists would have forced duel after duel on him

till they had killed him. It seemed impossible that he should ever be

able to draw his sword for France. In fact he never _was_ able. America

offered him an asylum, honours, land, everything that could console an

exile. But he refused to give up the chance, remote as it was, of being

useful to his country, and remained a prisoner till he was delivered by

Napoleon.'

'He firmly believed,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'that if the Royal Family

would have taken refuge with his army in 1791 he could have saved them,

and probably the Monarchy. His army was then in his hands, a few months

after the Jacobins had corrupted it.'

'Two men,' said Ampère, 'Mirabeau and La Fayette, could have saved the

Monarchy, and were anxious to do so. But neither the King nor the Queen

would trust them.

'Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette are among the historical personages who

have most influenced the destinies of the world. His dulness, torpidity

and indecision, and her frivolity, narrow-minded prejudices and

suspiciousness, are among the causes of our present calamities. They are

among the causes of a state of things which has inflicted on

us, and threatens to inflict on all Europe, the worst of all

Governments--democratic despotism. A Government in which two wills only

prevail--that of the ignorant, envious, ambitious, aggressive multitude,

and that of the despot who, whatever be his natural disposition, is soon

turned, by the intoxication of flattery and of universal power, into a

capricious, fantastic, selfish participator in the worst passions of the

worst portion of his subjects.'

'Such a Government,' I said, 'may be called an anti-aristocracy. It

excludes from power all those who are fit to exercise it.'

'The consequence,' said Beaumont, 'is, that the qualities which fit men

for power not being demanded, are not supplied. Our young men have no

political knowledge or public spirit. Those who have a taste for the

sciences cultivated in the military schools enter the army. The rest

learn nothing.'

'What do they do?' I asked.

'How they pass their time,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'is a puzzle to me.

They do not read, they do not go into society--I believe that they smoke

and play at dominos, and ride and bet at steeple-chases.

'Those who are on home service in the army are not much better. The time

not spent in the routine of their profession is sluggishly and viciously

wasted. Algeria has been a God-send to us. There our young men have real

duties to perform, and real dangers to provide against and to encounter.

My son, who left St. Cyr only eighteen months ago, is stationed at

Thebessa, 300 miles in the interior. He belongs to a _bureau arabe_,

consisting of a captain, a lieutenant, and himself, and about forty

spahis. He has to act as a judge, as an engineer, to settle the frontier

between the province of Constantine and Tunis--in short, to be one of a

small ruling aristocracy. This is the school which has furnished, and is

furnishing, our best generals and administrators.'

We talked of the interior of French families.

'The ties of relationship,' I said, 'seem to be stronger with you than

they are with us. Cousinship with you is a strong bond, with us it is a

weak one.'

'The habit of living together,' said Beaumont, 'has perhaps much to do

with the strength of our feelings of consanguinity. Our life is

patriarchal. Grandfather, father, and grandson are often under the same

roof. At the Grange[3] thirty of the family were sometimes assembled at

dinner. With you, the sons go off, form separate establishments, see

little of their parents, still less of their cousins, and become

comparatively indifferent to them.'

'I remember,' I said, 'the case of an heir apparent of seventy; his

father was ninety-five. One day the young man was very grumpy. They tried

to find out what was the matter with him; at last he broke out,

"Everybody's father dies except mine."'

'An acquaintance of mine,' said Beaumont, 'not a son, but a son-in-law,

complained equally of the pertinacious longevity of his father-in-law.

"Je n'ai pas cru," he said, "en me mariant, que j'épousais la fille du

Père Éternel." Your primogeniture,' he continued, 'must be a great source

of unfilial feelings. The eldest son of one of your great families is in

the position of the heir apparent to a throne. His father's death is to

give him suddenly rank, power, and wealth; and we know that royal heirs

apparent are seldom affectionate sons. With us the fortunes are much

smaller, they are equally divided, and the rank that descends to the son

is nothing.'

'What regulates,' I asked, 'the descent of titles?'

'It is ill regulated,' said Beaumont 'Titles are now of such little value

that scarcely anyone troubles himself to lay down rules about them.

'In general, however, it is said, that all the sons of dukes and of

marquises are counts. The sons of counts in some families all take the

title of Count. There are, perhaps, thirty Beaumonts. Some call

themselves marquises, some counts, some barons. I am, I believe, the only

one of the family who has assumed no title. Alexis de Tocqueville took

none, but his elder brother, during his father's life, called himself

vicomte and his younger brother baron. Probably Alexis ought then to have

called himself chevalier, and, on his father's death, baron. But, I

repeat, the matter is too unimportant to be subject to any settled rules.

Ancient descent is, with us, of great value, of far more than it is with

you, but titles are worth nothing.'

[Footnote 1: This incident is described in a little book published last

year, the _Memoirs of Madame de Montaign_.--ED.]

[Footnote 2: M. de La Fayette was Madame de Beaumont's grandfather.--ED.]

[Footnote 3: The château of M. de La Fayette.--ED.]

_Saturday, August_ 17.--We drove to the coast and ascended the lighthouse

of Gatteville, 85 metres, or about 280 feet high. It stands in the middle

of a coast fringed with frightful reefs, just enough under water to

create no breakers, and a flat plain a couple of miles wide behind, so

that the coast is not seen till you come close to it. In spite of many

lighthouses and buoys, wrecks are frequent. A mysterious one occurred

last February: the lighthouse watchman showed us the spot--a reef just

below the lighthouse about two hundred yards from the shore.

It was at noon--there was a heavy sea, but not a gale. He saw a large

ship steer full on the reef. She struck, fell over on one side till her

yards were in the water, righted herself, fell over on the other, parted

in the middle, and broke up. It did not take five minutes, but during

those five minutes there was the appearance of a violent struggle on

board, and several shots were fired. From the papers which were washed

ashore it appeared that she was from New York, bound for Havre, with a

large cargo and eighty-seven passengers, principally returning emigrants.

No passenger escaped, and only two of the crew: one was an Italian

speaking no French, from whom they could get nothing; the other was an

Englishman from Cardiff, speaking French, but almost obstinately

uncommunicative. He said that he was below when the ship struck, that the

captain had locked the passengers in the cabin, and that he knew nothing

of the causes which had led the ship to go out of her course to run on

this rock.

The captain may have been drunk or mad. Or there may have been a mutiny

on board, and those who got possession of the ship may have driven her on

the coast, supposing that they could beach her, and ignorant of the

interposed reefs, which, as I have said, are not betrayed by breakers.

Our informant accounted for the loss of all, except two persons, by the

heavy sea, the sharp reefs, and the blows received by those who tried to

swim from the floating cargo. The two who escaped were much bruised.

A man and woman were found tied to one another and tied to a spar. They

seemed to have been killed by blows received from the rocks or from the

floating wreck.

In the evening Ampère read to us the 'Bourgeois Gentilhomme.' His reading

is equal to any acting. It kept us all, for the first two acts, which are

the most comic, in one constant roar of laughter.

'The modern _nouveau riche,_ said Beaumont, 'has little resemblance to M.

Jourdain. He talks of his horses and his carriages, builds a great hotel,

and buys pictures. I have a neighbour of this kind; he drives

four-in-hand over the bad roads of La Sarthe, visits with one carriage

one day, and another the next. His jockey stands behind his cabriolet in

top-boots, and his coachman wears a grand fur coat in summer. His own

clothes are always new, sometimes in the most accurate type of a groom,

sometimes in that of a dandy. His talk is of steeple-chases.'

'And does he get on?' I asked.

'Not in the least,' answered Beaumont. 'In England a _nouveau riche_ can

get into Parliament, or help somebody else to get in, and political power

levels all distinctions. Here, wealth gives no power: nothing, indeed,

but office gives power. The only great men in the provinces are the

_préfet_, the _sous-préfet_, and the _maire_. The only great man in Paris

is a minister or a general. Wealth, therefore, unless accompanied by the

social talents, which those who have made their fortunes have seldom had

the leisure or the opportunity to acquire, leads to nothing. The women,

too, of the _parvenus_ always drag them down. They seem to acquire

the _tournure_ of society less easily than the men. Bastide, when

Minister, did pretty well, but his wife used to sign her invitations

"Femme Bastide."

'Society,' he continued, 'under the Republic was animated. We had great

interests to discuss, and strong feelings to express, but perhaps the

excitement was too great. People seemed to be almost ashamed to amuse

or to be amused when the welfare of France, her glory or her degradation,

her freedom or her slavery, were, as the event has proved, at stake.'

'I suppose,' I said to Ampère, 'that nothing has ever been better than

the _salon_ of Madame Récamier?'

'We must distinguish,' said Ampère. 'As great painters have many manners,

so Madame Récamier had many _salons_. When I first knew her, in 1820, her

habitual dinner-party consisted of her father, her husband, Ballanche,

and myself. Both her father, M. Bernard, and her husband were agreeable

men. Ballanche was charming.'

'You believe,' I said, 'that Bernard was her father?' 'Certainly I do,'

he replied. 'The suspicion that Récamier might be was founded chiefly on

the strangeness of their conjugal relations. To this, I oppose her

apparent love for M. Bernard, and I explain Récamier's conduct by his

tastes. They were coarse, though he was a man of good manners. He never

spent his evenings at home. He went where he could find more license.

'Perhaps the most agreeable period was at that time of Chateaubriand's

reign when he had ceased to exact a _tête-à-tête_, and Ballanche and I

were admitted at four o'clock. The most illustrious of the _partie

carrée_ was Chateaubriand, the most amusing Ballanche. My merit was that

I was the youngest. Later in the evening Madame Mohl, Miss Clarke as she

then was, was a great resource. She is a charming mixture of French

vivacity and English originality, but I think that the French element

predominates. Chateaubriand, always subject to _ennui_, delighted in her.

He has adopted in his books some of the words which she coined. Her

French is as original as the character of her mind, very good, but more

of the last than of the present century.'

'Was Chateaubriand himself,' I said, 'agreeable?'

'Delightful,' said Ampère; 'très-entrain, très-facile à vivre, beaucoup

d'imagination et de connaissances.'

'Facile à vivre?' I said. 'I thought that his vanity had been _difficile

et exigeante?_'

'As a public man,' said Ampère, 'yes; and to a certain degree in general

society. But in intimate society, when he was no longer "posing," he was

charming. The charm, however, was rather intellectual than moral.

'I remember his reading to us a part of his memoirs, in which he

describes his early attachment to an English girl, his separation from

her, and their meeting many years after when she asked his protection for

her son. Miss Clarke was absorbed by the story. She wanted to know what

became of the young man, what Chateaubriand had been able to do for him.

Chateaubriand could answer only in generals: that he had done all that he

could, that he had spoken to the Minister, and that he had no doubt that

the young man got what he wanted. But it was evident that even if he had

really attempted to do anything for the son of his old love, he had

totally forgotten the result. I do not think that he was pleased at Miss

Clarke's attention and sympathy being diverted from himself. Later still

in Madame Récamier's life, when she had become blind, and Chateaubriand

deaf, and Ballanche very infirm, the evenings were sad. I had to try to

amuse persons who had become almost unamusable.'

'How did Madame de Chateaubriand,' I asked, 'take the devotion of her

husband to Madame Récamier?'

'Philosophically,' answered Ampère. 'He would not have spent with her the

hours that he passed at the Abbaye au bois. She was glad, probably, to

know that they were not more dangerously employed.'

'Could I read Chateaubriand?' I asked.

'I doubt it,' said Ampère. 'His taste is not English.'

'I _have_ read,' I said, 'and liked, his narrative of the manner in which

he forced on the Spanish war of 1822. I thought it well written.'

'It is, perhaps,' said Ampère, 'the best thing which he has written, as

the intervention to restore Ferdinand, which he effected in spite of

almost everybody, was perhaps the most important passage in his political

life.

'There is something revolting in an interference to crush the liberties

of a foreign nation. But the expedition tended to maintain the Bourbons

on the French throne, and, according to Chateaubriand's ideas, it was

more important to support the principle of legitimacy than that of

liberty. He expected, too, sillily enough, that Ferdinand would give a

Constitution. It is certain, that, bad as the effects of that expedition

were, Chateaubriand was always proud of it.'

'What has Ballanche written?' I asked.

'A dozen volumes,' he answered. 'Poetry, metaphysics, on all sorts of

subjects, with pages of remarkable vigour and _finesse_, containing some

of the best writing in the language, but too unequal and too desultory to

be worth going through.'

'How wonderfully extensive,' I said, 'is French literature! Here is a

voluminous author, some of whose writings, you say, are among the best in

the French language, yet his name, at least as an author, is scarcely

known. He shines only by reflected light, and will live only because he

attached himself to a remarkable man and to a remarkable woman.'

'French literature,' said Ampère, 'is extensive, but yet inferior to

yours. If I were forced to select a single literature and to read nothing

else, I would take the English. In one of the most important departments,

the only one which cannot be re-produced by translation--poetry--you

beat us hollow. We are great only in the drama, and even there you are

perhaps our superiors. We have no short poems comparable to the "Allegro"

or to the "Penseroso," or to the "Country Churchyard."'

'Tocqueville,' I said, 'told me that he did not think that he could

now read Lamartine.'

'Tocqueville,' said Ampère, 'could taste, like every man of genius, the

very finest poetry, but he was not a lover of poetry. He could not read a

hundred bad lines and think himself repaid by finding mixed with them ten

good ones.'

'Ingres,' said Beaumont, 'perhaps our greatest living painter, is one of

the clever cultivated men who do not read. Somebody put the "Misanthrope"

into his hands, "It is wonderfully clever," he said, when he returned it;

"how odd it is that it should be so totally unknown."'

'Let us read it to-night,' I said.

'By all means,' said Madame de Tocqueville; 'though we know it by heart

it will be new when read by M. Ampère.' Accordingly Ampère read it to us

after dinner.

'The tradition of the stage,' he said, 'is that Célimène was Molière's

wife.'

'She is made too young,' said Minnie. 'A girl of twenty has not her wit,

or her knowledge of the world.'

'The change of a word,' said Ampère, 'in two or three places would alter

that. The feeblest characters are as usual the good ones. Philinte and

Eliante.

'Alceste is a grand mixture, perhaps the only one on the French stage, of

the comic and the tragic; for in many of the scenes he rises far above

comedy. His love is real impetuous passion. Talma delighted in playing

him.'

'The desert,' I said, 'into which he retires, was, I suppose, a distant

country-house. Just such a place as Tocqueville.'

'As Tocqueville,' said Beaumont, 'fifty years ago, without roads, ten

days' journey from Paris, and depending for society on Valognes.'

'As Tocqueville,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'when my mother-in-law

first married. She spent in it a month and could never be induced to see

it again.'

'Whom,' I asked, 'did Célimène marry?'

'Of course,' said Ampère, 'Alceste. Probably five years afterwards. By

that time he must have got tired of his desert and she of her coquetry.'

'We know,' I said, 'that Molière was always in love with his wife,

notwithstanding her _légèrété_. What makes me think the tradition that

Célimène was Mademoiselle[1] Molière true, is that Molière was certainly

in love with Célimène. She is made as engaging as possible, and her worst

faults do not rise above foibles. Her satire is good-natured. Arsinoé is

her foil, introduced to show what real evil-speaking is.'

'All the women,' said Ampère, 'are in love with Alceste, and they care

about no one else. Célimène's satire of the others is scarcely

good-natured. It is clear, at least, that they did not think so.'

'If Célimène,' said Minnie, 'became Madame Alceste, he probably made her

life a burthen with his jealousy.'

'Of course he was jealous,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'for he was

violently in love. There can scarcely be violent love without jealousy.'

'At least,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'till people are married.

'If a lover is cool enough to be without jealousy, he ought to pretend

it.'

[Footnote 1: Under the _ancien régime_ even the married actresses were

called Mademoiselle.--ED.]

_Sunday, August_ 18.--After breakfast when the ladies were gone to

church, I talked over with Ampère and Beaumont Tocqueville's political

career.

'Why,' I asked, 'did he refuse the support of M. Molé in 1835? Why would

he never take office under Louis Philippe? Why did he associate himself

with the Gauche whom he despised, and oppose the Droit with whom he

sympathised? Is the answer given by M. Guizot to a friend of mine who

asked a nearly similar question, "Parce qu'il voulait être où je suis,"

the true one?'

'The answers to your first question,' said Beaumont, 'are two. In 1835

Tocqueville was young and inexperienced. Like most young politicians, he

thought that he ought to be an independent member, and to vote, on every

occasion, according to his conscience, untrammelled by party connections.

He afterwards found his mistake.

'And, secondly, if he had chosen to submit to a leader, it would not have

been Molé.

'Molé represented a principle to which Guizot was then vehemently

opposed, though he was afterwards its incarnation--the subservience of

the Ministry and of the Parliament to the King. In that house of 450

members, there were 220 placemen; 200 were the slaves of the King. They

received from him their orders; from time to time, in obedience to those

orders, they even opposed his Ministers.

'This, however, seldom occurred, for the King contrived always to have a

devoted majority in his Cabinet.

'It was this that drove the Duc de Broglie from the Government and

prevented his ever resuming office.

'"I could not bear," he said to me, "to hear Sebastiani repeat, in every

council and on every occasion, 'Ce que le Roi vient de dire est

parfaitement juste.'" The only Ministers that ventured to have an opinion

of their own were those of the 12th of May 1839, of which Dufaure,

Villemain, and Passy were members, and that of the 1st of March 1840, of

which Thiers was the leader; and Tocqueville supported them both.

'When Guizot, who had maintained the principle of Ministerial and

Parliamentary, in opposition to that of Monarchical Governments, with

unequalled eloquence, vigour, and I may add violence, suddenly turned

round and became the most servile member of the King's servile majority,

Tocqueville fell back into opposition.

'In general it is difficult to act with an opposition systematically and,

at the same time, honestly. For the measures proposed by a Government

are, for the most part, good. But, during the latter part of Louis

Philippe's reign, it was easy, for the Government proposed merely to do

nothing--either abroad or at home. I do not complain of the essence of M.

Guizot's foreign policy, though there was a want of dignity in its forms.

'There was nothing useful to be done, and, under such circumstances, all

action would have been mischievous.

'But at home _every_ thing was to be done. Our code required to be

amended, our commerce and our industry, and our agriculture required to

be freed, our municipal and commercial institutions were to be created,

our taxation was to be revised, and, above all, our parliamentary

system--under which, out of 36,000,000 of French, only 200,000 had votes,

under which the Deputies bought a majority of the 200,000 electors, and

the King bought a majority of the 450 deputies--required absolute

reconstruction.

'Louis Philippe would allow nothing to be done. If he could have

prevented it we should not have had a railroad. He would not allow the

most important of all, that to Marseilles, to be finished. He would not

allow our monstrous centralisation, or our monstrous protective system,

to be touched. The owners of forests were permitted to deprive us of

cheap fuel, the owners of forges of cheap iron, the owners of factories

of cheap clothing.

'In some of this stupid inaction Guizot supported him conscientiously,

for, like Thiers, he is ignorant of the first principles of political

economy, but he knows too much the philosophy of Government not to have

felt, on every other point, that the King was wrong.

'If he supposed that Tocqueville wished to be in his place, on the

conditions on which he held office, he was utterly mistaken.

'Tocqueville was ambitious; he wished for power. So did I. We would

gladly have been real Ministers, but nothing would have tempted us to be

the slaves of the _pensée immuable_, or to sit in a Cabinet in which we

were constantly out-voted, or to defend, as Guizot had to do in the

Chamber, conduct which we had disapproved in the Council.

'You ask why Tocqueville joined the Gauche whom he despised, against the

Droit with whom he sympathised?

'He voted with the Gauche only where he thought their votes right. Where

he thought them wrong, as, for instance, in all that respected Algeria,

he left them. They would have abandoned the country, and, when that

could not be obtained, they tried to prevent the creation of the port.

'Very early, however, in his parliamentary life, he had found that an

independent member--a member who supporting no party is supported by no

party---is useless. He allowed himself therefore to be considered a

member of the Gauche; but I never could persuade him to be tolerably

civil to them. Once, after I had been abusing him for his coldness to

them, he shook hands with Romorantin, then looked towards me for my

applause, but I doubt whether he ever shook hands with him again. In

fact almost his only point of contact with them was their disapprobation

of the inactivity of Louis Philippe. Many of them were Bonapartists like

Abbatucci and Romorantin. Some were Socialists, some were Republicans;

the majority of them wished to overthrow the Monarchy, and the minority

looked forward with indifference to its fall.

'They hated him as much as he did them, much more indeed, for his mind

was not formed for hatred. They excluded him from almost all committees.'

'Would it not have been wise in him,' I asked, 'to retire from the

Chamber during the King's life, or at least until it contained a party

with whom he could cordially act?'

'Perhaps,' said Beaumont, 'that would have been the wisest course for

him--and indeed for me. I entered the Chamber reluctantly. All my family

were convinced that a political man not in the Chamber was nothing. So

I let myself be persuaded. Tocqueville required no persuasion, he was

anxious to get in, and when in it was difficult to persuade oneself to go

out. We always hoped for a change. The King might die, or he might be

forced--as he had been forced before--to submit to a liberal Ministry

which might have been a temporary cure, or even to a Parliamentary reform

which might have been a complete cure. Duchâtel, who is a better

politician than Guizot, was superseding him in the confidence of the King

and of the Chamber.

'In fact, the liberal Ministry and Parliamentary reform did come at last,

though not until it was too late to save the Monarchy.

'If Tocqueville had retired in disgust from the Chamber of Deputies, he

might not have been a member of the Constituent, or of the Legislative

Assembly. This would have been a misfortune--though the shortness of the

duration of the first, and the hostility of the President during the

second, and also the state of his health, prevented his influencing the

destinies of the Republic as much as his friends expected him to do, and

indeed as he expected himself.'

'I have often,' I said, 'wondered how you and Tocqueville, and the other

eminent men who composed the committee for preparing the Constitution,

could have made one incapable of duration, and also incapable of change.'

'What,' he asked, 'are the principal faults which you find in the

Constitution?'

'First,' I said, 'that you gave to your President absolute authority over

the army, the whole patronage of the most centralised and the most

place-hunting country in the world, so that there was not one of your

population of 36,000,000 whose interests he could not seriously affect;

and, having thus armed him with irresistible power, you gave him the

strongest possible motives to employ it against the Constitution by

turning him out at the end of his four years, incapable of re-election,

unpensioned and unprovided for, so that he must have gone from the Élysée

Bourbon to a debtor's prison.

'Next, that, intending your President to be the subordinate Minister of

the Assembly, you gave him the same origin, and enabled him to say, "I

represent the people as much as you do, indeed much more. They _all_

voted for me, only a fraction of them voted for any one of you." Then

that origin was the very worst that could possibly be selected, the votes

of the uneducated multitude; you must have foreseen that they would give

you a demagogue or a charlatan. The absence of a second Chamber, and the

absence of a power of dissolution, are minor faults, but still serious

ones. When the President and the Assembly differed, they were shut up

together to fight it out without an umpire.'

'That we gave the President too much power,' said Beaumont, 'the event

has proved. But I do not see how, in the existing state of feeling in

France, we could have given him less. The French have no self-reliance.

They depend for everything on their administrators. The first revolution

and the first empire destroyed all their local authorities and also their

aristocracy. Local authorities may be gradually re-created, and an

aristocracy may gradually arise, but till these things have been done the

Executive must be strong.

'If he had been re-eligible, our first President would virtually have

been President for life. Having decided that his office should be

temporary, we were forced to forbid his immediate re-election.

'With respect to his being left unprovided for, no man who had filled the

office decently would have been refused an ample provision on quitting

it. As for this man, no provision that we could have made for him, if we

had given him three or four millions a year, would have induced him to

give up what he considered a throne which was his by descent. He swore to

the Constitution with an _idée fixe _to destroy it. He attempted to do so

on the 29th of January 1849, not two months after his election.

'I agree with you that the fault of the Constitution was that it allowed

the President to be chosen by universal suffrage; and that the fault of

the people was that they elected a pretender to the throne, whose

ambition, rashness, and faithlessness had been proved.

'No new Constitution can work if the Executive conspires against it. But

deliberating and acting in the midst of _émeutes_, with a Chamber and a

population divided into half a dozen hostile factions, the two Royalist

parties hating one another, the Bonapartists bent on destroying all

freedom, and the Socialists all individual property, what could we do? My

wish and Tocqueville's was to give the election to the Chamber. We found

that out of 650 members we could not hope that our proposition would be

supported by more than 200. You think that we ought to have proposed two

Chambers. The great use of two Chambers is to strengthen the Executive

by enabling it to play one against the other; but we felt that our

Executive was dangerously strong, and we believed, I think truly, that a

single Chamber would resist him better than two could do. The provision

which required more than a bare majority for the revision of the

Constitution was one of those which we borrowed from America. It had

worked well there. In the general instability we wished to have one

anchor, one mooring ring fixed. We did not choose that the whole

framework of our Government should be capable of being suddenly destroyed

by a majority of one, in a moment of excitement and perhaps by a

parliamentary surprise.

'With respect to your complaint that, there being no power of

dissolution, there was no means of taking the opinion of the people, the

answer is, that to give the President power of dissolution would have

been to invite him to a _coup d'état._ With no Chamber to watch him, he

would have been omnipotent.

'I agree with you that the Constitution was a detestable one. But even

now, looking back to the times, and to the conditions under which we made

it, I do not think that it was in our power to make a good one.'

'Tocqueville,' I said, 'told me that Cormenin was your Solon, that he

brought a bit of constitution to you every morning, and that it was

usually adopted.'[1]

'Tocqueville's memory,' answered Beaumont, 'deceived him. Cormenin was

our president. It is true that he brought a bit of constitution every

morning. But it scarcely ever was adopted or capable of being adopted.

It was in general bad in itself, or certain to be rejected by the

Assembly. He wished to make the President a puppet. But he exercised over

us a mischievous influence. He tried to revenge himself for our refusal

of all his proposals by rendering our deliberations fruitless. And as

the power of a president over a deliberative body is great, he often

succeeded.

'Many of our members were unaccustomed to public business and lost their

tempers or their courage when opposed. The Abbé Lamennais proposed a

double election of the president. But of thirty members, only four, among

whom were Tocqueville and I, supported him. He left the committee and

never returned to it. Tocqueville and I were anxious to introduce double

election everywhere. It is the best palliative of universal suffrage.'

'The double election,' I said, 'of the American President is nugatory.

Every elector is chosen under a pledge to nominate a specified

candidate.'

'That is true,' said Beaumont, 'as to the President, but not as to the

other functionaries thus elected. The senators chosen by double election

are far superior to the representatives chosen by direct voting.

'We proposed, too, to begin by establishing municipal institutions. We

were utterly defeated. The love of centralisation is almost inherent in

French politicians. They see the evil of local government--its stupidity,

its corruption, its jobbing. They see the convenience of

centralisation--the ease with which a centralised administration works.

Feelings which are really democratic have reached those who fancy

themselves aristocrats. We had scarcely a supporter.

'We should perhaps have a few now, when experience has shown that

centralisation is still more useful to an usurper than it is to a regular

Government.'

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I. p. 212.--ED.]

_August_ 18.--We drove in the afternoon to the coast, and sat in the

shade of the little ricks of sea-weed, gazing on an open sea as blue as

the Mediterranean.

We talked of America.

'I can understand,' said Madame de Tocqueville, 'the indignation of the

North against you. It is, of course, excessive, but they had a right to

expect you to be on their side in an anti-slavery war.'

'They had no right,' I said, 'to expect from our Government anything but

absolute neutrality.'

'But you need not,' she replied, 'have been so eager to put the South on

the footing of belligerents.'

'On what other footing,' I asked, 'could we put them? On what other

footing does the North put them? Have they ventured, or will they

venture, to hang a single seceder?'

'At least,' she said, 'you might have expressed more sympathy with the

North?'

'I think,' I answered, 'that we have expressed as much sympathy as it was

possible to feel. We deplore the combat, we hold the South responsible

for it, we think their capricious separation one of the most foolish and

one of the most wicked acts that have ever been committed; we hope that

the North will beat them, and we should bitterly regret their forcing

themselves back into the Union on terms making slavery worse, if

possible, than it is now. We wish the contest to end as quickly as

possible: but we do not think that it can end by the North subjugating

the Southerns and forcing them to be its subjects.

'The best termination to which we look forward as possible, is that the

North should beat the South, and then dictate its own terms of

separation.

'If they wish to go farther than this, if they wish us to love or to

admire our Northern cousins in their political capacity, they wish for

what is impossible.

'We cannot forget that the Abolitionists have been always a small and

discredited party; that the Cuba slave trade is mainly carried on from

New York; that they have neglected the obligations formally entered

into by them with us to co-operate in the suppression of the slave trade;

that they have pertinaciously refused to allow us even to inquire into

the right of slavers to use the American flag; that it is the capital of

the North which feeds the slavery of the South; that the first act of the

North, as soon as the secession of the South from Congress allowed it to

do what it liked, was to enact a selfish protective tariff; that their

treatment of us, from the time that they have felt strong enough to

insult us, has been one unvaried series of threats, bullying, and injury;

that they have refused to submit their claims on us to arbitration,

driven out our ambassadors, seized by force on disputed territory, and

threatened war on every pretence.'

'It is true,' said Beaumont, 'that during the last twenty years American

diplomacy has not been such as to inspire affection or respect But you

must recollect that during all that time America has been governed by the

South.'

'It is true,' I said, 'that the presidents have generally been Southerns,

but I am not aware that the North has ever disavowed their treatment of

us. This is certain, that throughout the Union, insolence to England has

been an American statesman's road to popularity.'

_Monday., August _19.--We walked in the afternoon over the commons

overlooking the sea, and among the shady lanes of this well-wooded

country.

We came on a group of about twelve or thirteen reapers taking their

evening meal of enormous loaves of brown bread, basins of butter, and

kegs of cider.

M. Roussell, the farmer in whose service they were, was sitting among

them. He was an old friend and constituent of Tocqueville, and for thirty

years was Maire of Tocqueville. He has recently resigned. He rose and

walked with us to his house.

'I was required,' he said, 'to support the prefect's candidate for the

_Conseil général_. No such proposition was ever made to me before. I

could not submit to it. The prefect has been unusually busy of late. The

schoolmaster has been required to send in a list of the peasants whose

children, on the plea of poverty, receive gratuitous education. The

children of those who do not vote with the prefect are to have it no

longer.'