l
activity into speculation and commerce has often been made, but has never
had any permanent success. The men who make these sudden fortunes are not
happy, for they are always suspected of _friponnerie_, and the Government
to which they belong is suspected of _friponnerie_. Still less happy are
those who have attempted to make them, and have failed. And those who
have not been able even to make the attempt are envious and sulky. So
that the whole world becomes suspicious and dissatisfied.

'And even if it were universal, mere material prosperity is not enough
for us. Our Government must give us something more: must gratify our
ambition, or, at least, our vanity.'

'The Government,' said Rivet, 'has been making a desperate plunge in
order to escape from the accusation of _friponnerie_. It has denounced in
the "Moniteur" the _faiseurs_; it has dismissed a poor _aide-de-camp_ of
Jerome's for doing what everybody has been doing ever since the _coup
d'etat_. When Ponsard's comedy, which was known to be a furious satire on
the _agioteurs_, was first played, Louis Napoleon took the whole
orchestra and pit stalls, and filled them with people instructed to
applaud every allusion to the _faiseurs_. And he himself stood in his
box, his body almost out of it, clapping most energetically every attack
on them.'

'At the same time,' I said, 'has he not forced the Orleans Company and
the Lyons Company to buy the Grand Central at much more than its worth?
And was not that done in order to enable certain _faiseurs_ to realise
their gains?'

'He has forced the Orleans Company,' said Rivet, 'to buy up, or rather to
amalgamate the Grand Central; but I will not say at more than its value.
The amount to be paid is to depend on the comparative earnings of the
different lines, for two years before and two years after the purchase.'

'But,' I said, 'is it not true, first, that the Orleans Company was
unwilling to make the purchase? and, secondly, that thereupon the Grand
Central shares rose much in the market?'

'Both these facts,' answered Rivet, 'are true.'

'Do you believe,' I said to Tocqueville, 'H.'s history of the Tripartite
Treaty?'

'I do,' he answered. 'I do not think that at the time when it was made we
liked it. It suited you, who wish to preserve the _statu quo_ in Europe,
which keeps us your inferiors, or, at least, not your superiors. _You_
have nothing to gain by a change. We have. The _statu quo_ does not suit
us. The