as science discovers no means for making all men equally intelligent and all women equally beautiful, I shall continue to look upon universal and blind equality as the most absurd and the most dangerous of chimeras.  These reflections did not occur to me at the period I speak of.  I was far too careless in the year 1840 to bother my head about the conundrums set by our office-seekers, “place-hunters” as the Americans call them.  While they were amusing themselves with the fancies, envious, irreligious, unhealthy, and above all self-interested, which they posed as deducing from the principles of 1789, a far more terrible revolution than the French one—­for it was to strike the poor as well as the rich—­was shortly to burst upon us; the revolution brought about by the use of steam and electricity and rapidity of communication.  Few people in those days foresaw the complete subversion of all the conditions of labour and food supply and life itself, which was to overtake all the peoples gathered together in old-established communities on worn-out soil, a subversion which is only in its beginning as yet, and the remedy for which we cannot discover.

One of the first results of the use of steam was to make it essential for all nations having war fleets to transform their arsenals and their naval stores.  It was absolutely necessary to be able to oppose an enemy, whose means of attack could overcome wind and tide, with defensive means of equal power.  That was as clear as A B C. This transformation interested me keenly—­for the future of the arm of the service to which I had fervently devoted my whole life, and which I desired to see become once more a redoubtable weapon of our country’s power, was bound up with it.  But, to carry it through, we had to war with routine, with the obstinacy bred of old habit, and with the narrow ideas which were taught in the naval schools.  It was a continuous daily struggle in which I bore an assiduous part.

Apart from this naval question, my time was spent between my home life, my worship for the fine arts, and the theatre, and also in boar-hunting, of which I grew passionately fond; and what makes this curious is that before I tried it I scorned the idea to such an extent that my brothers tied me up and took me by force the first time.  Every incident of the hunt, the attack, the pursuit, all the unforeseen occurrences of the chase, leading you nobody knows whither, so that you even lose yourself in the dark sometimes in strange places, has still all the charm of struggle and action to me.  And what a pleasant party of sportsmen we used to be, during our visits to Compiegne, to Chantilly, and above all to Fontainebleau!  My brothers and I, the two Greffuhles, Caumont, Morny, Valewski, Edgard Ney, La Rochette, Casimir Perier, d’Albufera, Wagram, the de l’Aigles; foreigners too, Bedmar, d’Ossuna—­and officers—­and some ladies,—­amongst these the beautiful Duchess of Somerset, who always hunted in a mask,