‘Do you agree,’ I asked Tocqueville, ’with Lafosse, Cousin, and H. as to the effect in Paris of our opposition to the Suez Canal?’

‘I agree,’ he answered, ’in every word that they have said.  There is nothing that has done you so much mischief in France, and indeed in Europe.

’I am no engineer; I should be sorry to pronounce a decided opinion as to the feasibility or the utility of the canal; but your opposition makes us believe that it is practicable.’

‘Those among us,’ I answered, ’who fear it, sometimes found their fear on grounds unconnected with its practicability.  They say that it is a political, not a commercial, scheme.  That the object is to give to French engineers and French shareholders a strip of land separating Egypt from Syria, and increasing the French interest in Egypt.’

‘What is the value,’ answered Tocqueville, ’of a strip of land in the desert where no one can live?  And why are the shareholders to be French?  The Greeks, the Syrians, the Dalmatians, the Italians, and the Sicilians are the people who will use the canal, if anybody uses it.  They will form the bulk of the shareholders, if shareholders there are.

’My strong suspicion is, that if you had not opposed it, there never would have been any shareholders, and that if you now withdraw your opposition, and let the scheme go on until calls are made, the subscribers, who are ready enough with their names as patriotic manifestations against you as long as no money is to be paid, will withdraw en masse from an undertaking which, at the very best, is a most hazardous one.

’As to our influence in Egypt, your journal shows that it is a pet project of the Viceroy.  He hopes to get money and fame from it.  You imitate both his covetousness and his vanity, and throw him for support upon us.’

Paris, May 21—­The Tocquevilles and Chrzanowski[1] drank tea with us.

We talked of the French iron floating batteries.

‘I saw one at Cherbourg,’ said Tocqueville, ’and talked much with her commander.  He was not in good spirits about his vessel, and feared some great disaster.  However, she did well at Kinburn.’

‘She suffered little at Kinburn,’ said Chrzanowski, ’because she ventured little.  She did not approach the batteries nearer than 600 metres.  At that distance there is little risk and little service.  To knock down a wall two metres thick from a distance of 600 metres would require at least 300 blows.  How far her own iron sides would have withstood at that distance the fire of heavy guns I will not attempt to say, as I never saw her.  The best material to resist shot is lead.  It contracts over the ball and crushes it.’

‘Kinburn, however,’ said Tocqueville, ’surrendered to our floating batteries.’

‘Kinburn surrendered,’ said Chrzanowski, ’because you landed 10,000 men, and occupied the isthmus which connects Kinburn with the main land.  The garrison saw that they were invested, and had no hope of relief.  They were not Quixotic enough, or heroic enough, to prolong a hopeless resistance.  Scarcely any garrison does so.’