A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

CONVERSATIONS.

I passed the 3rd and 4th of April in the Corps Legislatif listening to the debate on the demand by the Government of permission to prosecute M. de Montalembert, a member of the Corps Legislatif, for the publication of a letter to M. Dupin, which it treated as libellous.  As it was supposed that M. de Montalembert’s speech would be suppressed, I wrote as much of it as I could carry in my recollection; the only other vehicle—­notes—­not being allowed to be taken.[1] On the evening of the 5th of April I left Paris for St. Cyr.

[Footnote 1:  See Appendix.]

St. Cyr, Thursday, April 6, 1854.—­I drove with Tocqueville to Chenonceaux, a chateau of the sixteenth century, about sixteen miles from Tours, on the Cher.  I say on the Cher, for such is literally its position.  It is a habitable bridge, stretching across the water.

The two first arches, which spring from the right bank of the river, and the piers which form their abutments, are about one hundred feet wide, and support a considerable house.  The others support merely a gallery, called by our guide the ballroom of Catherine de Medicis, ending in a small theatre.  The view from the windows of the river flowing through wooded meadows is beautiful and peculiar.  Every window looks on the river; many rooms, as is the case with the gallery, look both up and down it.  It must be a charming summer residence.  The rooms still retain the furniture which was put into them by Diane de Poictiers and Catherine de Medicis; very curious and very uncomfortable; high narrow chairs, short sofas, many-footed tables, and diminutive mirrors.  The sculptured pilasters, scrolls, bas-reliefs and tracery of the outside are not of fine workmanship, but are graceful and picturesque.  The associations are interesting, beginning with Francis I. and ending with Rousseau, who spent there the autumn of 1746, as the guest of Madame Dupin, and wrote a comedy for its little theatre.  The present proprietor, the Marquis de Villeneuve, is Madame Dupin’s grandson.

In the evening we read my report of the debate on Montalembert.

‘It is difficult,’ said Tocqueville, ’to wish that so great a speech had been suppressed.  But I am inclined to think that Montalembert’s wiser course was to remain silent.  What good will his speech do?  It will not be published.  Yours is probably the only report of it.  So far as the public hears anything of it, the versions coming through an unfavourable medium will be misrepresentations.  In a letter which I received from Paris this morning it is called virulent.  It was of great importance that the minority against granting the consent should be large, and I have no doubt that this speech diminished it by twenty or thirty.  It must have wounded many, frightened many, and afforded a pretext to many.  Perhaps, however, it was not in human nature for such a speaker as Montalembert to resist the last opportunity of uttering bold truths in a French Assembly.’