_Tuesday, May 20_.--The Tocquevilles and Rivet drank tea with us.
I mentioned to Tocqueville the subject of my conversations with Cousin and H.
'I agree with Cousin,' he said. 'The attempt to turn our national activity into speculation and commerce has often been made, but has never had any permanent success. The men who make these sudden fortunes are not happy, for they are always suspected of _friponnerie_, and the Government to which they belong is suspected of _friponnerie_. Still less happy are those who have attempted to make them, and have failed. And those who have not been able even to make the attempt are envious and sulky. So that the whole world becomes suspicious and dissatisfied.
'And even if it were universal, mere material prosperity is not enough for us. Our Government must give us something more: must gratify our ambition, or, at least, our vanity.'
'The Government,' said Rivet, 'has been making a desperate plunge in order to escape from the accusation of _friponnerie_. It has denounced in the "Moniteur" the _faiseurs_; it has dismissed a poor _aide-de-camp_ of Jérôme's for doing what everybody has been doing ever since the _coup d'état_. When Ponsard's comedy, which was known to be a furious satire on the _agioteurs_, was first played, Louis Napoleon took the whole orchestra and pit stalls, and filled them with people instructed to applaud every allusion to the _faiseurs_. And he himself stood in his box, his body almost out of it, clapping most energetically every attack on them.'
'At the same time,' I said, 'has he not forced the Orleans Company and the Lyons Company to buy the Grand Central at much more than its worth? And was not that done in order to enable certain _faiseurs_ to realise their gains?'
'He has forced the Orleans Company,' said Rivet, 'to buy up, or rather to amalgamate the Grand Central; but I will not say at more than its value. The amount to be paid is to depend on the comparative earnings of the different lines, for two years before and two years after the purchase.'
'But,' I said, 'is it not true, first, that the Orleans Company was unwilling to make the purchase? and, secondly, that thereupon the Grand Central shares rose much in the market?'