God knows, as little as the loudest curser of you all, but I don’t think it necessary and lawful to exaggerate and over-colour, nor to paint the cheeks of sorrows into horrors, nor to talk, like the ‘Quarterly Review’ (betwixt excuses for the King of Naples), of two thousand four hundred persons being cut to mincemeat in the streets of Paris, nor to call boldness hypocrisy (because hypocrisy is the worse word), and the appeal to the sovereignty of the people usurpation, and universal suffrage the pricking of bayonets.  Above all, I would avoid insulting the whole French nation, who have judged their own position and acted accordingly.  If Louis Napoleon disappoints their expectation, he won’t sit long where he is.  Of that I feel satisfactory assurance; and, considering the national habits of insurrection, I really think that others may.

Meanwhile it is just to tell you that the two deepest-minded persons whom we have known in Paris—­one an ultra-Republican of European reputation (I don’t like mentioning names), and the other a Constitutionalist of the purest and noblest moral nature—­are both inclined to take favorable views of the President’s personal character and intentions.  For my part, I don’t pretend to an opinion.  He may be, as they say, ‘bon enfant,’ ‘homme de conscience,’ and ’so much in earnest as to be fanatical,’ or he may be a wretch and a reptile, as you say in England.  That’s nothing to the question as I see it.  I don’t take it up by that handle at all.  Caligula’s horse or the people’s ‘Messiah,’ as I heard him called the other day—­what then?  You are wonderfully intolerant, you in England, of equine consulships, you who bear with quite sufficient equanimity a great rampancy of beasts all over the world—­Mr. Forster not blowing the trumpet of war, and Mrs. Alfred Tennyson not loading the rifles.

There now—­I’ve done with politics to-day.  Only just let me tell you that Cormenin is said to be the adviser in the matter of the Orleans decrees.  So much the worse for him.

Whom do you think I saw yesterday?  George Sand.  Oh, I have been in such fear about it!  It’s the most difficult thing to get access to her, and, notwithstanding our letter from Mazzini, we were assured on all sides that she would not see us.  She has been persecuted by bookmakers—­run to ground by the race, and, after having quite lost her on her former visit to Paris, it was in half despair that we seized on an opportunity of committing our letter of introduction to a friend of a friend of hers, who promised to put it into her own hands.  With the letter I wrote a little note—­I writing, as I was the woman, and both of us signing it.  To my delight, we had an answer by the next day’s post, gracious and graceful, desiring us to call on her last Sunday.

So we went.  Robert let me at last, though I had a struggle for even that, the air being rather over-sharp for me.  But I represented to him that one might as well lose one’s life as one’s peace of mind for ever, and if I lost seeing her I should with difficulty get over it.  So I put on my respirator, smothered myself with furs, and, in a close carriage, did not run much risk after all.