s? It is almost the other day that the Bonapartists
were in a minority that their adversaries called hopeless, and the
majority for the Emperor is now so preponderant that I tremble for his
safety. When a majority becomes so vast that intellect disappears in the
crowd, the date of its destruction commences; for by the law of reaction
the minority is installed against it. It is the nature of things that
minorities are always more intellectual than multitudes, and intellect
is ever at work in sapping numerical force. What your party want is
hope; because without hope there is no energy. I remember hearing
my father say that when he met the Count de Chambord at Ems, that
illustrious personage delivered himself of a belle phrase much admired
by his partisans. The Emperor was then President of the Republic, in
a very doubtful and dangerous position. France seemed on the verge of
another convulsion. A certain distinguished politician recommended the
Count de Chambord to hold himself ready to enter at once as a candidate
for the throne. And the Count, with a benignant smile on his handsome
face, answered, 'All wrecks come to the shore: the shore does not go to
the wrecks.'"

"Beautifully said!" exclaimed the Marquis.

"Not if 'Le beau est toujours le vrai.' My father, no inexperienced nor
unwise politician, in repeating the royal words, remarked: 'The fallacy
of the Count's argument is in its metaphor. A man is not a shore. Do you
not think that the seamen on board the wrecks would be more grateful to
him who did not complacently compare himself to a shore, but considered
himself a human being like themselves, and risked his own life in
a boat, even though it were a cockleshell, in the chance of saving
theirs?"

Alain de Rochebriant was a brave man, with that intense sentiment of
patriotism which characterizes Frenchmen of every rank and persuasion,
unless they belong to the Internationalists; and, without pausing to
consider, he cried, "Your father was right."

The Englishman resumed: "Need I say, my dear Marquis, that I am not a
Legitimist? I am not an Imperialist, neither am I an Orleanist nor a
Republican. Between all those political divisions it is for Frenchmen
to make their choice, and for Englishmen to accept for France that
government which France has established. I view things here as a simple
observer. But it strikes me that if I were a Frenchman in your position,
I should think myself unworthy my ancestors if I