‘But,’ I said, ’he will not be exposed to it long.  I have heard thirty, or at most forty, days proposed as the length of his absence.’

‘Who can say that?’ answered Tocqueville.  ’If he goes there, he must stay there until Sebastopol falls.  It will not do for him to leave Paris in order merely to look at the works, pat the generals on the back, compliment the army, and leave it in the trenches.  Unless his journey produces some great success—­in short, unless it gives us Sebastopol—­it will be considered a failure; and a failure he cannot afford.  I repeat that he must stay there till Sebastopol falls.  But that may be months.  And what may months bring forth in such a country as France?  In such a city as Paris?  In such times as these?  Then he cannot safely leave his cousin—­Jerome Plon swears that he will not go, and I do not see how he can be taken by force.’

‘I do not understand,’ I said, ’Jerome’s conduct.  It seemed as if he had the ball at his feet.  The role of an heir is the easiest in the world.  He has only to behave decently in order to be popular.’

‘Jerome’s chances,’ answered Tocqueville, ’of the popularity which is to be obtained by decent behaviour were over long before he became an heir.  His talents are considerable, but he has no principles, and no good sense.  He is Corsican to the bone.  I watched him among his Montagnards in the Constituent.

’Nothing could be more perverse than his votes, nor more offensive than his speeches.  He is unfit to conciliate the sensible portion of society, and naturally throws himself into the arms of those who are waiting to receive him—­the violent, the rapacious, and the anarchical:  this gives him at least some adherents.’

‘What do you hear,’ I asked, ‘of his conduct in the East?’

‘I hear,’ said Tocqueville, ’that he showed want, not so much of courage, as of temper and of subordination.  He would not obey orders; he would not even transmit them, so that Canrobert was forced to communicate directly with the officers of Napoleon’s division, and at last required him to take sick leave, or to submit to a court-martial.’

‘I thought,’ I said, ‘that he was really ill.’

‘That is not the general opinion,’ said Tocqueville.  ’He showed himself at a ball directly after his return, with no outward symptoms of ill health.’

The conversation turned on English politics.

‘So many of my friendships,’ said Tocqueville, ’and so many of my sympathies, are English, that what is passing in your country, and respecting your country, gives me great pain, and greater anxiety.  To us, whom unhappily experience has rendered sensitive of approaching storms, your last six months have a frightfully revolutionary appearance.