The Chambers met in Paris at the end of November and took possession of their respective houses without the slightest disturbance of any kind.  Up to the last moment some people were nervous and predicting all sorts of trouble and complications.  We spent the Toussaint in the country with some friends, and their views of the future were so gloomy that it was almost contagious.  One afternoon when we were all assembled in the drawing-room for tea, after a beautiful day’s shooting, the conversation (generally retrospective) was so melancholy that I was rather impressed by it,—­“The beginning of the end,—­the culpable weakness of the Government and Moderate men, giving way entirely to the Radicals, an invitation to the Paris rabble to interfere with the sittings of the Chambers,” and a variety of similar remarks.

It would have been funny if one hadn’t felt that the speakers were really in earnest and anxious.  However, nothing happened.  The first few days there was a small, perfectly quiet, well-behaved crowd, also a very strong police force, at the Palais Bourbon, but I think more from curiosity and the novelty of seeing deputies again at the Palais Bourbon than from any other reason.  If it were quiet outside, one couldn’t say the same of the inside of the Chamber.  The fight began hotly at once.  Speeches and interpellations and attacks on the Government were the order of the day.  The different members of the cabinet made statements explaining their policy, but apparently they had satisfied nobody on either side, and it was evident that the Chamber was not only dissatisfied but actively hostile.

W. and his friends were very discouraged and disgusted.  They had gone as far as they could in the way of concessions.  W., at any rate, would do no more, and it was evident that the Chamber would seize the first pretext to overthrow the ministry.  W. saw Grevy very often.  He was opposed to any change, didn’t want W. to go, said his presence at the Foreign Office gave confidence to Europe,—­he might perhaps remain at the Foreign Office and resign as Premier, but that, naturally, he wouldn’t do.  He was really sick of the whole thing.

Grevy was a thorough Republican but an old-fashioned Republican,—­not in the least enthusiastic, rather sceptical—­didn’t at all see the ideal Republic dreamed of by the younger men—­where all men were alike—­and nothing but honesty and true patriotism were the ruling motives.  I don’t know if he went as far as a well-known diplomatist, Prince Metternich, I think, who said he was so tired of the word fraternite that if he had a brother he would call him “cousin.”  Grevy was certainly very unwilling to see things pass into the hands of the more advanced Left.  I don’t think he could have done anything—­they say no constitutional President (or King either) can.