1851.]

Expenditure of the President.

193 old officers. Much of course in dinners and balls, but more still in what is called coulage—waste, carelessness.'

'Of course,' I said, 'he has gained something by this expenditure, though he may have lost more.'

'If,' answered Tocqueville, 'his object be to become a Sovereign, he may have forwarded it by accustoming people to see him surrounded by a state and splendour inconsistent with private life.

'But I do not believe that his extravagance has been the result of any deep political views. I fancy that his real motive has been the pleasure of spending money, of gratifying his immediate vanity, and the vanity of those around him.

'It is wonderful how many men of talent and ambition have sacrificed their comfort and even their independence to a taste for expense.

'All that is going on,' continued Tocqueville, 'fills me with uneasiness. I wish well to the President, and I wish well to the Assembly, and I see them trying to destroy one another. Among all the different courses which events may take, the one which has for some time appeared to me the least objectionable is the prolongation of Louis Napoleon's Presidency, and I am grieved to see him make it the most objectionable.'

What,' I asked, 'will be the prophecy that I shall hear when I am in Paris next May? During the three last Mays it has been an insurrection, and twice it has come true.'

'The prophecy,' he answered, next May, will be a coup d'état. Some of your friends will tell you that in

a week the Assembly will declare itself in danger, appoint a guard of 40,000 men under the command of one of its members, and use it to drag the President to Vincennes.

'Others will assure you that the news which you may expect every morning is, that during the night the Palais National has been occupied by the troops, that the walls are covered with placards declaring the Assembly dissolved, and that all the leading members of the majority are arrested or concealed. And I will not venture to predict that neither of these events or, at least, that no event similar to one of them, will occur. In the present state of feeling,' he continued, 'nothing could be easier than for the President to make himself a Constitutional King. It is the form of Government under which France has been most prosperous, it is the one which has the most friends and the most effective ones. If one of the Orleans Princes were President, we should slide into it almost unconsciously. But this is a rôle utterly repugnant to all Louis Napoleon's prejudices and tastes. He cannot bear to be controlled by an Assembly, to take his Ministers from its majority, to submit his conduct to its criticism. I am convinced that he had much rather remain President of the Republic, with a vague, undefined, and, as he thinks, independent power, than become a Constitutional King, acting under the advice of his Ministers, and with little real power of choosing them.

'Of course I do not mean to say that he is satisfied to be a mere President. What I affirm is merely that he prefers it to being a Constitutional King. What he would

1851.]

President is determined to govern.

195

wish is to be a king like Henri IV., or one of your Tudor sovereigns.

'He would not object perhaps to a Senate, which might always pay him compliments, and sometimes give him advice; which might take on itself the details of legislation, and register and promulgate his decrees. But, like his uncle, he wishes to govern.

'The folly of clever men is wonderful.

'Almost all the leading members of the Constituent Assembly voted for him. Many were enthusiastic in his cause. They gave to it the solidity of a party. Two ideas governed them, and it is difficult to say which was the most absurd. One, that he was "Nul,"-that he had neither talent nor knowledge, and that therefore he could be easily led; the other, that if he were unmanageable he could be easily got rid of, at least at the end of his term, perhaps before. They thought that he would be a tool, and a tool that they could break. In opposing him, my friends had scarcely any supporters except the Montagne.

'Cavaignac afforded the only chance to the Republic. He is not a man of extensive views, but he is an honest man, and he prefers glory to power. His model would have been Washington.'

In the afternoon we had a visit from Don Raffaelle Petruzzi. It is a relic of the Spanish domination that, among the middle classes, Don and Donna are the usual titles. Don Raffaelle is a young man about twenty-five married to a lady who on her uncle's death will have 25,000 francs a year-in this country an enormous

fortune, but in the meantime he has little except his salary as a receiver of taxes. He is to give us an hour of his company every day as Parlatore, for which we shall pay five carlines. It is not easy, however, to find subjects of conversation. He has little information and still less curiosity. He has never been to Amalfi, never to Pompeii, never to Capri; I suspect not often to Naples. We talked to-day about the functionaries of the neighbourhood. The Judge of the Circulario of Sorrento, containing about 7,000 souls, has a salary of 20 ducats, or 31. 55. per calendar month, and may get about 40 ducats more in the course of the year in extra payments; so that his whole income is about 45%. a year. That of the Judge of the Circulario of the Piano, containing about 10,000 souls, is 25 ducats a month, making with his extra income about 60l. a year. The salary of a Commissario di Polizia, his inferior officer, is at least double; showing the comparative importance which the Government attaches to Justice and to Police. I treated the Constitution as existing though suspended. He denied its existence, and urged, as a proof of its abolition, the change in the oath taken by public functionaries. It was, 'I swear fidelity to the Constitutional King, Ferdinand II., and to the Statute.' It is now, 'I swear fidelity to the King Ferdinand II., and never to belong to any secret society.'

Madame de Tocqueville is not quite well. Tocqueville and Ampère drank tea with us.

We talked of the throngs of Americans in Italy and

1851.]

Anecdote of a Legitimist.

197

France, and of the annoyance of many English at their being called English.

'So it is,' said Ampère, 'with us and the Belgians. A Belgian persecuted me all my journey by being taken for a Frenchman.

'My resource was always to allude to his country. "Vous autres Belges," I said, "do so and so." "Dans la Belgique on pense comme ça."'

Thursday, January 30.—We took a delightful walk, the ladies on donkeys, across the promontory. The wind is north, and it is said to have been the coldest day that has been felt this year. Yet the sides of the cliff were covered with crocuses, violets, and primroses, and we sat for half-an-hour among olives and myrtles, looking towards the Island of the Sirens, and the iron-bound coast of the Bay of Salerno.

As we were basking in the January sun, Ampère told us a characteristic anecdote of the revolution of 1830.

A legitimist, whose name he mentioned, who had signalised his zeal by a duel with General Foy, was in the garden of the Palais Royal looking on philosophically at the attack on the Château. A man near him fired several times ineffectually. 'I think,' said the legitimist, 'that I could teach you to manage your piece better.' He took it, showed his neighbour how to hold it, finished the lesson by firing and bringing down a Swiss, and then returned it.

The pupil, however, begged him to keep it. 'I am