knows them no more. In the
midst of their shows and their pleasures and their shallow philosophies,
they could not read the handwriting on the wall, and therefore they are
blotted out of existence. They went on marrying and giving in marriage;
this chateau, perhaps, was still being enlarged and embellished, when
the flood came upon them and destroyed them all. The science of politics
is the science of regulating progress and avoiding revolutions.

The hostess of the Lion d'Or is about to transfer her establishment to
an inn of greater pretensions, to which, aware that the old chateau is
an object of interest to visitors, she means to give the name of the
Hotel de Montgomeri. On the wall of her _cafe_ is a coarse medallion
bust taken from a room in the chateau. She did not know whom it
represented; and I dare say it was only my fancy that made me think I
recognized a rude effigy of the once adored features of Marie
Antoinette.

The plates at the Lion d'Or were adorned with humorous devices. On one
was a satire on the hypocritical rapacity of perfidious Albion. Two
English soldiers were standing with their swords hidden behind their
backs, and trying to coax back to them some Indians who were running
away in the distance. "Come to us, dear little Indians; you know we are
your best friends!" Suppose "Arabs" or "Mexicans" had been substituted
for "Indians." To a Frenchman, our conquests in India are rapine; his
own conquests in Algeria or Mexico are the extension of civilization by
the "holy bayonets" (I forget whether the phrase is Michelet's or
Quinet's) of the chosen people. Justice gives the same name (no matter
which) to both.

At Ducie a handsome new church had just been built,--mainly, I was told,
by the munificence of two maiden ladies. The congregation at vespers was
large and apparently devout; and here the number of the men was in fair
proportion to that of the women. In the churches of the cities, though
the power of the clergy has everywhere increased of late, you see
scarcely one man to a hundred women.

On the road, a shower drove me for refuge into the house of a peasant,
who received me with the usual kindliness of the French peasantry, and,
when the shower was over, walked two or three miles with me on my way.
The condition of these present proprietors is a subject of great
interest to English economists, especially as we are evidently on the
eve of a great controversy--perhaps a great struggle--respe