ect to
the speech in question. The intended orator had inserted, like Lamartine,
"_vifs applaudissements," "profonde sensation_," and other notices of the
effect of his speech. The House adjourned unexpectedly before it was
delivered, and he forgot to withdraw the report.'

'Could a man like Lord Althorp,' I asked, 'whom it was painful to hear,
hold his place as leader of a French Assembly?'

'Impossible,' said Tocqueville, 'unless he were a soldier. We tolerate
from a man who has almost necessarily been deprived of a careful
education much clumsiness and awkwardness of elocution. Soult did not
speak much better than the Duke of Wellington, but he was listened to. He
had, like the Duke, an air of command which imposed.'

'Was there,' I said, 'any personal quarrel between Soult and Thiers?'

'Certainly there was,' said Z., 'a little one. I will not say that Soult
was in Spain a successful commander, or an agreeable colleague, or an
obedient subordinate, but whenever things went wrong there, Soult was the
man whom the Emperor sent thither to put them to rights. Great as Thiers
may be as a military critic, I venture to put him below Napoleon.'

'I have been reading,' I said, 'Falloux's reception speech, and was
disappointed by it.'

'In his speech and Brifault's,' said Circourt, 'you may compare the
present declamatory style and that of thirty years ago. Brifault has, or
attempts to have, the _legerete_ and the prettiness of the Restoration.
Falloux is _grandiose_ and emphatic, as we all are now.'

'Falloux,' said Z., 'made an excellent speech the first time that he
addressed the Chamber of Deputies. The next time he was not so
successful, and after that he ceased to be listened to.

'But in the Constituent Assembly, and indeed in the Legislative, he
acquired an ascendency. In those Assemblies, great moral qualities and a
high social position were rarer than they were among the Deputies, and in
the dangers of the country they were more wanted. Falloux possesses them
all. He is honest and brave, and in his province employs liberally and
usefully a large fortune.'

'Were those the merits,' I asked, 'which opened to him the doors of the
Academy?'

'Certainly,' answered Z. 'As a man of letters he is nothing, as a
statesman not much. We elected him in honour of his courage and his
honesty, and perhaps with some regard to his fortune. We are the only
independent body left, and we value in a candidate no quality more t