e their reason for making him
president. It was that they thought he would let other people pocket the
spoons.'

This reminded me of what used to be said of Secretary Seward by his
enemies, that he was 'honest enough himself, but cared nothing about
honesty in other people.'

'I don't mean that exactly,' said my friend. 'What I mean is, that
Carnot III. is not clever enough to know whether the people around him
are or are not honest. His grandfather was. Carnot I. would have cut a
great figure in our present Senate, and in the party of the "sick at
heart"--the respectable gentlemen, I mean, who are always consenting,
under the stress of some "reason of State," to vote for one or another
piece of rascality, though it makes them "sick at heart" to do so.
Carnot I. voted in this way for the murder of Louis XVI., and he takes
pains to tell us that all his colleagues in the Convention who voted for
it did so in dread of the mob in the galleries. Just in the same way he
was sharp enough to join Napoleon during the Hundred Days, because he
saw that his best chance of saving his own head and staying in France
was to keep out the Bourbons. This Carnot III. is, I dare say, more
honest and less calculating--for he is certainly more dull--than his
grandfather. Perhaps he may turn out to be the Louis XVI. of the
Republic.'

How much has actually been spent on the works here to make Calais a
great seaport, it is not easy to ascertain; but the lowest estimates
stated to me seem to be quite out of proportion with the results
actually achieved.

My conversation on this point with my friend from Picardy is worth
recording.

'Ten years ago,' he said, 'the amount to be spent on Calais was set down
at eleven millions of francs. I feel quite sure that at least twice this
sum has been actually spent here since the work began in 1881.'

'Why do you feel sure of this?'

'Because twice the first estimate has been avowedly spent everywhere in
France on the whole scheme. Calais alone figures this year in the budget
for sixteen millions and a half! You were in France, were you not, in
1880, and you must surely remember the songs that used to be sung in the
streets:--

"C'est Leon Say, c'est Freycinet,
C'est Freycinet, c'est Leon Say."

'These two men, both of them men of business, both financiers (though
the "white mouse"[1] is a bit of a visionary) and both men of ability,
deliberately adopted, in 1879, after a single conversation