ld be exposed to many hazards. He ought to incur some military
risks, if he is present at a battle or an assault, and his courage and
his fatalism, will lead him to many which he ought to avoid. But it is
disease rather than bullets that we fear. He will have to travel hard,
and to be exposed, under exciting circumstances, to a climate which is
not a safe one even to the strong.'

'But,' I said, 'he will not be exposed to it long. I have heard thirty,
or at most forty, days proposed as the length of his absence.'

'Who can say that?' answered Tocqueville. 'If he goes there, he must stay
there until Sebastopol falls. It will not do for him to leave Paris in
order merely to look at the works, pat the generals on the back,
compliment the army, and leave it in the trenches. Unless his journey
produces some great success--in short, unless it gives us Sebastopol--it
will be considered a failure; and a failure he cannot afford. I repeat
that he must stay there till Sebastopol falls. But that may be months.
And what may months bring forth in such a country as France? In such a
city as Paris? In such times as these? Then he cannot safely leave his
cousin--Jerome Plon swears that he will not go, and I do not see how he
can be taken by force.'

'I do not understand,' I said, 'Jerome's conduct. It seemed as if he had
the ball at his feet. The _role_ of an heir is the easiest in the world.
He has only to behave decently in order to be popular.'

'Jerome's chances,' answered Tocqueville, 'of the popularity which is to
be obtained by decent behaviour were over long before he became an heir.
His talents are considerable, but he has no principles, and no good
sense. He is Corsican to the bone. I watched him among his Montagnards in
the Constituent.

'Nothing could be more perverse than his votes, nor more offensive than
his speeches. He is unfit to conciliate the sensible portion of society,
and naturally throws himself into the arms of those who are waiting to
receive him--the violent, the rapacious, and the anarchical: this gives
him at least some adherents.'

'What do you hear,' I asked, 'of his conduct in the East?'

'I hear,' said Tocqueville, 'that he showed want, not so much of courage,
as of temper and of subordination. He would not obey orders; he would not
even transmit them, so that Canrobert was forced to communicate directly
with the officers of Napoleon's division, and at last required him to
take sick leave, or to