ught to pretend
it.'

[Footnote 1: Under the _ancien regime_ even the married actresses were
called Mademoiselle.--ED.]

_Sunday, August_ 18.--After breakfast when the ladies were gone to
church, I talked over with Ampere and Beaumont Tocqueville's political
career.

'Why,' I asked, 'did he refuse the support of M. Mole in 1835? Why would
he never take office under Louis Philippe? Why did he associate himself
with the Gauche whom he despised, and oppose the Droit with whom he
sympathised? Is the answer given by M. Guizot to a friend of mine who
asked a nearly similar question, "Parce qu'il voulait etre ou je suis,"
the true one?'

'The answers to your first question,' said Beaumont, 'are two. In 1835
Tocqueville was young and inexperienced. Like most young politicians, he
thought that he ought to be an independent member, and to vote, on every
occasion, according to his conscience, untrammelled by party connections.
He afterwards found his mistake.

'And, secondly, if he had chosen to submit to a leader, it would not have
been Mole.

'Mole represented a principle to which Guizot was then vehemently
opposed, though he was afterwards its incarnation--the subservience of
the Ministry and of the Parliament to the King. In that house of 450
members, there were 220 placemen; 200 were the slaves of the King. They
received from him their orders; from time to time, in obedience to those
orders, they even opposed his Ministers.

'This, however, seldom occurred, for the King contrived always to have a
devoted majority in his Cabinet.

'It was this that drove the Duc de Broglie from the Government and
prevented his ever resuming office.

'"I could not bear," he said to me, "to hear Sebastiani repeat, in every
council and on every occasion, 'Ce que le Roi vient de dire est
parfaitement juste.'" The only Ministers that ventured to have an opinion
of their own were those of the 12th of May 1839, of which Dufaure,
Villemain, and Passy were members, and that of the 1st of March 1840, of
which Thiers was the leader; and Tocqueville supported them both.

'When Guizot, who had maintained the principle of Ministerial and
Parliamentary, in opposition to that of Monarchical Governments, with
unequalled eloquence, vigour, and I may add violence, suddenly turned
round and became the most servile member of the King's servile majority,
Tocqueville fell back into opposition.

'In general it is difficult to act with an opposition