e qu'on voudra, on ne me
persuadera pas que Dieu n'y regarde deux fois avant de damner un homme de
sa qualite." The archbishop's feeling was the same, only changing
_qualite_ into virtue.

'There is something amusing,' he continued, 'when, separated as we are
from it by such a chasm, we look back on the prejudices of the _Ancien
Regime_. An old lady once said to me, "I have been reading with great
satisfaction the genealogies which prove that Jesus Christ descended from
David. Ca montre que notre Seigneur etait Gentilhomme."'

'We are somewhat ashamed,' I said, 'in general of Jewish blood, yet the
Levis boast of their descent from the Hebrew Levi.'

'They are proud of it,' said Tocqueville, 'because they make themselves
out to be cousins of the Blessed Virgin. They have a picture in which a
Duc de Levi stands bareheaded before the Virgin. "Couvrez-vous donc, mon
cousin," she says. "C'est pour ma commodite," he answers.'

The conversation passed to literature.

'I am glad,' said Tocqueville, 'to find that, imperfect as my knowledge
of English is, I can feel the difference in styles.'

'I feel strongly,' I said, 'the difference in French styles in prose, but
little in poetry.'

'The fact is,' said Tocqueville, 'that the only French poetry, except
that of Racine, that is worth reading is the light poetry. I do not think
that I could now read Lamartine, though thirty years ago he delighted
me.'

'The French taste,' I said, 'in English poetry differs from ours. You
read Ossian and the "Night Thoughts."'

'As for Ossian,' he answered, 'he does not seem to have been ever popular
in England. But the frequent reference to the "Night Thoughts," in the
books and letters of the last century, shows that the poem was then in
everybody's memory. Foreigners are in fact provincials. They take up
fashions of literature as country people do fashions of dress, when the
capital has left them off. When I was young you probably had ceased to be
familiar with Richardson. We knew him by heart. We used to weep over the
Lady Clementina, whom I dare say Miss Senior never heard of.

'During the first Empire, we of the old _regime_ abandoned Paris, as we
do now, and for the same reasons. We used to live in our chateaux, where
I remember as a boy hearing Sir Charles Grandison and Fielding read
aloud. A new novel was then an event. Madame Cottin was much more
celebrated than George Sand is now. For all her books were read, and by
everybod