avity and disdain:
'French people!' When I was in London I was walking arm-in-arm with my
wife and sister. We were conversing, not in a too loud tone of voice,
for we are well-bred persons, you know; yet all the passers-by,
bourgeois and men of the people, turned to gaze at us and we could hear
them growling behind us: 'French people! French people!'"

September 5, 1844.

The King rose, paced to and fro for a few moments, as though violently
agitated, then came and sat beside me and said:

"Look here, you made a remark to Villemain that he repeated to me. You
said to him:

"'The trouble between France and England a propos of Tahiti and
Pritchard reminds me of a quarrel in a cafe between a couple of
sub-lieutenants, one of whom has looked at the other in a way the latter
does not like. A duel to the death is the result. But two great nations
ought not to act like a couple of musketeers. Besides, in a duel to the
death between two nations like England and France, it is civilization
that would be slain.'

"This is really what you said, is it not?"

"Yes, Sire."

"I was greatly struck by your observation, and this very evening I
reproduced it in a letter to a crowned head, for I frequently write
all night long. I pass many a night doing over again what others have
undone. I do not say anything about it. So far from being grateful to me
they would only abuse me for it. Oh! yes, mine is hard work indeed.
At my age, with my seventy-one years, I do not get an instant of real
repose either by day or by night. I am always unquiet, and how can it be
otherwise when I feel that I am the pivot upon which Europe revolves?"

September 6, 1844.

The King said to me yesterday:

"What makes the maintenance of peace so difficult is that there are two
things in Europe that Europe detests, France and myself--myself even
more than France. I am talking to you in all frankness. They hate me
because I am Orleans; they hate me because I am myself. As for France,
they dislike her, but would tolerate her in other hands. Napoleon was a
burden to them; they overthrew him by egging him on to war of which he
was so fond. I am a burden to them; they would like to throw me down by
forcing me to break that peace which I love."

Then he covered his eyes with his hands, and leaning his head back upon
the cushions of the sofa, remained thus for a space pensive, and as
though crushed.

September 6, 1844.

"I only met Robe