Malesherbes. The authorities had been as considerate as possible; they
had made no attempt to treat the eminent historian as a simple owner of
house-property fighting to get the utmost value; they offered him three
hundred thousand francs, and M. Guizot himself acknowledged that the sum
was a handsome one. "But I have got thirty thousand volumes to remove,
besides my notes and manuscripts," he wailed. Then his good temper got
the better of him, and he had a "sly dig" at his former adversary,
Adolphe Thiers. "Serves me right for having so many books; happy the
historian who prefers to trust to his imagination."

M. Guizot made up his mind to have his library removed to Val-Richer and
never to live in Paris again; but his children and friends prevailed
upon him not to forsake society altogether, and to take a modest
apartment near his old domicile, in the Faubourg St. Honore, opposite
the English embassy, which, however, in those days had not the
monumental aspect it has at present.

"It is doubtful," said M. Guizot afterwards to me, "whether the idea of
living in the country would have ever entered my mind ten or fifteen
years ago. At that time, I would not have gone a couple of miles to see
the most magnificent bit of natural scenery: I should have gone a
thousand to see a man of talent."

And, in fact, up till 1830, when he was nearly forty-four, he had never
seen the sea, "And if it had not been for an electoral journey to
Normandy, I might not have seen it then." I pointed out to him that M.
Thiers had never had a country house; that he did not seem to care for
nature, for birds, or for flowers.

"Ah, that's different," he smiled. "I did not care much about the
country, because I had never seen any of it. Thiers does not like it,
because the birds, the flowers, the trees, live and grow without his
interference, and he does not care that anything on earth should happen
without his having a hand in it."

Thiers was the only man at whom M. Guizot tilted in that way. Though
brought up in strict Protestant, one might almost say Calvinistic
principles, he was an ardent admirer of Roman Catholicism, which he
called "the most admirable school of respect in the world." No man had
suffered more from the excesses of the first Revolution, seeing that his
father perished on the scaffold, yet I should not like to say that he
was not somewhat of a republican at heart, but not of a republic "which
begins with Plato and necess