'All this,' I said, 'seems to bring us back to what you said this morning, that if you were not the most anarchical you would be the most monarchical people in Europe.'
'Precisely! and it is the plain truth. The republic was possible with MacMahon, for after all he was a personality. It was possible with Thiers, for though he was a little rascal and the greatest literary liar of the century except Victor Hugo, he was a personality, and a very positive personality. It might have been possible with Gambetta, for he too was a personality, odious and flatulent if you like, but still a personality. It was not possible with Grévy. It is not possible with Carnot.
'Let the elections go as they may, you will see that I am right. I wash my hands of it all. But when I think of it I see on the wall _Finis Galliæ_! For while I despair of the republic, I have no hope of a monarchy. Nothing but a personality can carry on the republic--and nothing but a personality can restore the monarchy.
'The friends of the poor little Prince Imperial understood this when they consented to let him go off to South Africa. If he had been in the hands of an English general of common sense, or of an English captain of common courage, he would no doubt have come back safe and sound. And in that case the odds are that we should be living to-day under the Third Empire instead of the Third Republic.
'As it is, the Empire, between the significance of Plon-Plon, and the insignificance of Prince Victor, is like the Republic between Ferry, the Tonkinese, and Carnot, who ought to spell his name _Carton_!'
'Ah! their only "personality" known to the people--and that is the value of a personality in France--is the Duc d'Aumale--and who knows whether the Duc d'Aumale is a royalist? I have no doubt--absolutely no doubt,' he said with some emphasis, 'that Say and De Freycinet to-morrow would gladly join forces with the Conservatives to make the Duc d'Aumale president if the Conservatives would agree to it, and if the Duc would accept the place; for that would give the Republic a new lease of life in the first place, and in the second place it would utterly disintegrate the royalists, both white and blue. If the Duc is not a "great Frenchman" in the electoral sense of the phrase, he is the most creditably conspicuous of living Frenchmen, which is something.'