The only recollections I have of those Marseilles fetes are musical ones.  First of all that of King Rene’s band, with tabour, pipes, and tambourines, escorting the “prud’ hommes” fishermen dressed in Henri Quatre costumes.  And secondly, that of a violoncello solo, admirably played by Offenbach, who was then quite young, and a musician in heart and soul, but who had not yet shown his great talent as a composer.

I tore myself, however, from all these rejoicings, which bored me very much, to go and see the haven of Bouc, the Martigues, and the pool of Berre, where but very little is required to complete a matchless piece of Nature’s work and turn it into the finest port in the whole world I was deeply interested in all I saw, in company with Admiral Baudin and engineers, both military and naval, who had brought all the plans with them.  But our trade still goes to Marseilles and our warships to Toulon, and the two habits have taken such deep root that it is hopeless to fight against them.  And the conclusion we came to was that, save as regarded deepening the entrance to the haven of Bouc (which has since been done), matters were not likely to alter to any very great extent.  I seem yet to hear a young engineer des ponts et chaussees, who was a member of our party, grumbling between his teeth, as he rolled up his plans, that there were a good many other things in Provence that nobody could alter—­notably the purity of outline of the Arlesian girls.  He pronounced purete badly, and it sounded like durete.  He may have done it out of mischief, for when he looked at me he burst out laughing.

All this coming and going between Morocco and Naples had kept me far away enough from Paris and the battlefield of politics.  When I got back, in the winter of 1845, the July Monarchy had still three years of life before it, but an odour of sickliness hung about it already.

The St. Vitus’s dance of parliamentary politics gave no satisfaction to anybody except the Jerome-Paturots, to whom it gave a social standing.  But how many envious individuals were there to every one who was content?  Parliament gave no strength then to the Government, which was the object of almost unanimous attack on the part of the Press; and, by a strange contradiction, the chief reproach cast at an order of things which every one was striving to discredit and overthrow was its want of energy.  How often, since that time, have I heard that cry “Be strong,” which is the invariable death-knell of governments in extremities!

While the love of destruction—­which is the essence of the revolutionary spirit, aided by democratic jealousies, and political speculators—­was openly pursuing its destructive work, unopposed and unfettered save by empty verbiage and futile restrictions, the healthy appearance of the daily social life of the capital seemed unchanged.  The peaceful regime of 1830, which had been fortunate enough to endow France with her first railways, and which was extending them