not induced me to visit the private study of the Prefect, I should
perhaps have not yet discovered the mistake. I thank you for the
confidence with which you have treated me on this occasion. You are
aware that no one renders you more than I do, the full justice to which
you are entitled, and you also know that I accord it equally from
inclination and conviction. My generation has passed away, yours is in
full action, and a third is on the point of rising. I see you placed
between two, to console the first, to do honour to the second, and to
form the third. Endeavour to make the last like yourself; by which I do
not mean that I wish all the little boys to know as much as you do, or
all the little girls to resemble in everything, your more than amiable
partner. We must not desire what we cannot obtain, and I should too much
regret my own decline if such an attractive age were about to commence.
But restrain my idea within its due limits, and dictate like Solon the
best laws which the infancy of the nineteenth century can bear or
receive; this will abundantly suffice. Today the _mox progeniem daturos
vitiosiorem_ would make one's hair stand on end.

Madame de la Tour du Pin, a Baroness of the Empire for two years, a
Prefectess of the Dyle for three, and a religious mother for twenty,
will recommend your journal with all the influence of her two first
titles, and subscribes to it with all the interest that the last can
inspire. I, who have no other pretension, and desire no other, than that
of a father and a friend, request your permission to subscribe for my
daughter, who, commencing the double education of a little Arnaud and a
little Leontine, will be delighted to profit by your double instruction.
I believe also that the grandfather himself will often obtain knowledge,
and always pleasure, from the same source. It seems to me that no
association could be more propitious to the union of the _utile dulci_.
If I were to allow free scope to my pen, I feel assured that I should
write thus like a madman to one of the two authors: "Not being able to
make myself once more young, to adore your merits, I become an old
infant, to receive your lessons. I kiss from a distance the hand of my
youthful nurse, with the most profound respect, but not sufficiently
abstracted from some of those emotions which have followed my first
childhood, and which my second education ought to correct. Is it
possible to submit to your rod with more i