mall, but he would
like Naples, and Louis Napoleon would be glad to get rid of him. What
would England say?'

'If we believed,' I said, 'in the duration of a Bonaparte dynasty in
France, we should, of course, object to the creation of one in Naples.
But if, as we think it probable, the Bonapartists have to quit France, I
do not see few we should be injured by their occupying the throne of
Naples.

'I should object to them if I were a Neapolitan. All their instincts are
despotic, democratic, and revolutionary. But even they are better than
the late king was. What chance have the Murats?'

'None,' said Ampere. 'They have spoiled their game, if they had a game,
by their precipitation. The Emperor has disavowed them, the Neapolitans
do not care for them. The Prince de Leuchtenberg, grandson of Eugene
Beauharnais, has been talked of. He is well connected, related to many of
the reigning families of the Continent, and is said to be intelligent and
well educated.'

'If Naples,' I said, 'is to be detached from the kingdom of Italy, Sicily
ought to be detached from Naples. There is quite as much mutual
antipathy.'

'Would you like to take it?' he asked.

'Heaven forbid!' I answered. 'It would be another Corfu on a larger
scale. The better we governed them, the more they would hate us. The only
chance for them is to have a king of their own.'

_August_ 15.--In the evening Ampere read to us a comedy called 'Beatrix,'
by a writer of some reputation, and a member of the Institut.

It was very bad, full of exaggerated sentiments, forced situations, and
the cant of philanthropic despotism.

An actress visits the court of a German grand duke. He is absent. His
mother, the duchess, receives her as an equal. The second son falls in
love with her at first sight and wishes to marry her. She is inclined to
consent, when another duchy falls in, the elder duke resigns to his
brother, he becomes king, presses their marriage, his mother does not
oppose, and thereupon Beatrix makes a speech, orders her horses, and
drives off to act somewhere else.

Ampere reads admirably, but no excellence of reading could make such
absurdities endurable. It was written for Ristori, who acted Beatrix in
French with success.

_Friday, August_ 16.--We talked at breakfast of 1793.

'It is difficult,' said Madame de Beaumont, 'to believe that the French
of that day were our ancestors.'

'They resembled you,' I said, 'only in two things: in militar