of victory, for no government in the world is possible with
their principles. We are capable of anything for the good of the
country--and our own.

Personal questions as to the King's person are mere sentimental
folly in these days; they must be cleared away. From that point of
view, the English with their sort of Doge, are more advanced than
we are. Politics have nothing to do with that, my dear fellow.
Politics consist in giving the nation an impetus by creating an
oligarchy embodying a fixed theory of government, and able to
direct public affairs along a straight path, instead of allowing
the country to be pulled in a thousand different directions, which
is what has been happening for the last forty years in our
beautiful France--at once so intelligent and so sottish, so wise
and so foolish; it needs a system, indeed, much more than men.
What are individuals in this great question? If the end is a great
one, if the country may live happy and free from trouble, what do
the masses care for the profits of our stewardship, our fortune,
privileges, and pleasures?

I am now standing firm on my feet. I have at the present moment a
hundred and fifty thousand francs a year in the Three per Cents,
and a reserve of two hundred thousand francs to repair damages.
Even this does not seem to me very much ballast in the pocket of a
man starting left foot foremost to scale the heights of power.

A fortunate accident settled the question of my setting out on
this career, which did not particularly smile on me, for you know
my predilection for the life of the East. After thirty-five years
of slumber, my highly-respected mother woke up to the recollection
that she had a son who might do her honor. Often when a vine-stock
is eradicated, some years after shoots come up to the surface of
the ground; well, my dear boy, my mother had almost torn me up by
the roots from her heart, and I sprouted again in her head. At the
age of fifty-eight, she thinks herself old enough to think no more
of any men but her son. At this juncture she has met in some
hot-water cauldron, at I know not what baths, a delightful old maid
--English, with two hundred and forty thousand francs a year; and,
like a good mother, she has inspired her with an audacious
ambition to become my wife. A maid of six-and-thirty, my word!
Brought up in the strictest puritanical principles, a steady
sitti