’The best that can happen to you is to be excluded from the councils of the great family of despots.  Besides, what is to be done to amuse these 400,000 bayonets, his masters as well as ours?  Crosses, promotions, honours, gratuities, are already showered on the army of Paris.  It has already received a thing unheard of in our history—­the honours and recompenses of a campaign for the butchery on the Boulevards.  Will not the other armies demand their share of work and reward?  As long as the civil war in the Provinces lasts they may be employed there.  But it will soon be over.  What is then to be done with them?  Are they to be marched on Switzerland, or on Piedmont, or on Belgium?  And will England quietly look on?’

Our conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of the Abbe Gioberti, and of Sieur Capponi, a Sicilian.

Paris, December 31, 1851.—­I dined with the Tocquevilles and met Mrs. Grote, Rivet, and Corcelle.

‘The gayest time,’ said Tocqueville, ’that I ever passed was in the Quai d’Orsay.  The elite of France in education, in birth, and in talents, particularly in the talents of society, was collected within the walls of that barrack.

’A long struggle was over, in which our part had not been timidly played; we had done our duty, we had gone through some perils, and we had some to encounter, and we were all in the high spirits which excitement and dangers shared with others, when not too formidable, create.  From the courtyard in which we had been penned for a couple of hours, where the Duc de Broglie and I tore our chicken with our hands and teeth, we were transferred to a long sort of gallery, or garret, running along through the higher part of the building, a spare dormitory for the soldiers when the better rooms are filled.  Those who chose to take the trouble went below, hired palliasses from the soldiers, and carried them up for themselves.  I was too idle and lay on the floor in my cloak.  Instead of sleeping we spent the night in shooting from palliasse to palliasse anecdotes, repartees, jokes, and pleasantries.  “C’etait un feu roulant, une pluie de bons mots.”  Things amused us in that state of excitement which sound flat when repeated.

’I remember Kerrel, a man of great humour, exciting shouts of laughter by exclaiming, with great solemnity, as he looked round on the floor, strewed with mattresses and statesmen, and lighted by a couple of tallow candles, “Voila donc ou en est reduit ce fameux parti de l’ordre.”  Those who were kept au secret, deprived of mutual support, were in a very different state of mind; some were depressed, others were enraged.  Bedeau was left alone for twenty-four hours; at last a man came and offered him some sugar.  He flew at his throat and the poor turnkey ran off, fancying his prisoner was mad.’

We talked of Louis Napoleon’s devotion to the Pope.