hich I wonder how you do without,--Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle.
You are forced always to substitute the name. They are so mixed in all
our forms that half of what we say would appear abrupt or blunt without
them.

'Then the _tutoyer_ is a _nuance_ that you want. When husband and wife
are talking together they pass insensibly, twenty times perhaps in an
hour, from the _vous_ to the _tu_. When matters of business or of serious
discussion are introduced, indeed whenever the affections are not
concerned, it is _vous_. With the least _soupcon_ of tenderness the _tu_
returns.'

'Yet,' I said, 'you never use the _tu_ before a third person.'

'Never,' he answered, 'in good company. Among the _bourgeoisie_ always.
It is odd that an aristocratic form, so easily learned, should not have
been adopted by all who pretend to be gentry. I remember being present
when an Englishman and his wife, much accustomed to good French society,
but unacquainted with this _nuance_, were laboriously _tutoyering_ each
other. I relieved them much by assuring them that it was not merely
unnecessary, but objectionable.'

_May_ 2.--Tocqueville dined with us.

A lady at the _table d'hote_ was full of a sermon which she had heard at
the Madeleine. The preacher said, sinking his voice to an audible
whisper, 'I will tell you a secret, but it must go no farther. There is
more religion among the Protestants than with us, they are better
acquainted with the Bible, and make more use of their reading: we have
much to learn from them.'

I asked Tocqueville, when we were in our own room, as to the feelings of
the religious world in France with respect to heretics.

'The religious laity,' he answered, 'have probably little opinion on the
subject. They suppose the heretic to be less favourably situated than
themselves, but do not waste much thought upon him. The ignorant priests
of course consign him to perdition. The better instructed think, like
Protestants, that error is dangerous only so far as it influences
practice.

'Dr. Bretonneau, at Tours, was one of the best men that I have known, but
an unbeliever. The archbishop tried in his last illness to reconcile him
to the Church: Bretonneau died as he had lived. But the archbishop, when
lamenting to me his death, expressed his own conviction that so excellent
a soul could not perish.

'You recollect the duchesse in St.-Simon, who, on the death of a sinner
of illustrious race, said, "On me dira c