ain that
the army holds a higher place in the estimation of the better classes in
France than it used to hold. M. de la Gorce cited to me several
instances, here at St.-Omer, of young ladies of excellent family, three
of them at least considerable heiresses, who have married young officers
of merit solely because they were officers of merit, and who have gladly
turned their backs on the flutter and glitter of fashionable Paris to
share the quiet, unpretending quarters, and take a sympathetic interest
in the serious military career of their husbands in this rather
out-of-the-way garrison town.

I do not find M. de la Gorce sanguine as to any early solution of the
political problems with which France is still wrestling after a hundred
years. He makes no secret of his conviction that nothing but a return to
the constitutional monarchy can give the country lasting peace at home,
or real influence abroad. But his impression seems to be that time alone
can bring this about. He would have the royalists unfurl their banner,
go into the elections with a plain declaration of their political creed,
and await the progress of events. He cited, as a proof of the wisdom of
this policy, the steady advance made by the Republicans after a mere
handful of them came into the imperial legislature. They grew from five
to thirty, simply because they stood firmly on their own principles,
while the majority were disturbed and uncertain. The principle of the
hereditary constitutional monarchy, he thought, should be plainly
affirmed and presented to the French people, as their only real
safeguard against the incessant disturbance and displacement of the
executive machinery which results from the election of an executive
chief.

'Let this be affirmed and presented,' said M. de la Gorce,' by a
number--no matter how small it may be at first--of sincere and resolute
men, and every successive shock and catastrophe will bring more and more
support to them from all classes in France.'

M. de la Gorce is of the opinion that the laicisation of the schools,
whatever may be said of the motives and intent of those who have
promoted it, has had a good effect on the congreganist schools, by
stimulating the teachers and directors to make greater efforts for the
improvement of their methods and their general machinery of instruction.
This is quite in accord with the views of my friend whom I met at
Boulogne--and indeed it is in the nature of things.

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