in, confidence is being restored on all sides.  Even the Press palpitates again—­ah, but I wish it were a little freer of the corset.  This Government is not after my heart after all.  I only tolerate what appear to me the necessities of an exceptional situation.  The masses are satisfied and hopeful, and the President stronger and stronger—­not by the sword, may it please the English Press, but by the democracy.

I am delighted to see that the French Government has protested against the reactionary iniquities of the Tuscan Grand Duke, and every day I expect eagerly some helping hand to be stretched out to Rome.  I have looked for this from the very first, and certainly it is significant that the Prince of Canino, the late President of the Roman Republic, should be in favour at the Elysee.  Pio Nono’s time is but short, I fancy—­that is, reforms will be forced upon him.

When George Sand had audience with the President, he was very kind; did I tell you that?  At the last he said:  ’Vous verrez, vous serez contente de moi.’  To which she answered, ‘Et vous, vous serez content de moi.’  It was repeated to me as to the great dishonour of Madame Sand, and as a proof that she could not resist the influence of power and was a bad republican.  I, on the contrary, thought the story quite honourable to both parties.  It was for the sake of her rouge friends that she approached the President at all, and she has used the hand he stretched out to her only on behalf of persons in prison and distress.  The same, being delivered, call her gratefully a recreant.

Victor Cousin and Villemain refuse to take the oath, and lose their situations in the Academy accordingly; but they retire on pensions, and it’s their own fault of course.  Michelet and Quinet should have an equivalent, I think, for what they have lost; they are worthy, as poets, orators, dreamers, speculative thinkers—­as anything, in fact, but instructors of youth.

No, there is a brochure, or a little book somewhere, pretending to be a memoir of Balzac, but I have not seen it.  Some time before his death he had bought a country place, and there was a fruit tree in the garden—­I think a walnut tree—­about which he delighted himself in making various financial calculations after the manner of Cesar Birotteau.  He built the house himself, and when it was finished there was just one defect—­it wanted a staircase.  They had to put in the staircase afterwards.  The picture gallery, however, had been seen to from the first, and the great writer had chalked on the walls, ‘Mon Raffaelle,’ ‘Mon Correge,’ ’Mon Titien,’ ‘Mon Leonard de Vinci,’ the pictures being yet unattained.  He is said to have been a little loth to spend money, and to have liked to dine magnificently at the restaurant at the expense of his friends, forgetting to pay for his own share of the entertainment.  For the rest, the ‘idee fixe’ of the man was to be rich one day, and he threw his subtle imagination and vital