'I have certainly seen reason to change some of my views on social facts, as well as some reasonings founded on imperfect observation. But the _fond_ of my opinions can never undergo a change--certain irrevocable maxims and propositions _must_ constitute the basis of thinking minds. How such changes can come about as I have lived to see in some men's states of opinion is to me incomprehensible. Lafayette was foolish enough to give his support to certain conspiracies--certainly to that of Béfort's, in Alsace. What folly! to seek to upset a despotism by the agency of the _soldiery_, in the nineteenth century!'
[Footnote 1: Mr. Senior's Journals.--ED.]
[Footnote 2: See _Royal and Republican France_, by H. Reeve Esq. vol. i.--ED.]
_St. Cyr, Tuesday, February_ 21, 1854.[1]--On the 20th I left Paris for Le Trésorier, a country-house in the village of St. Cyr, near Tours, which the Tocquevilles have been inhabiting for some months. It stands in a large enclosure of about fifteen acres, of which about ten are orchard and vineyard, and the remainder are occupied by the house, stables, and a large garden. The house has a great deal of accommodation, and they pay for it, imperfectly furnished, 3,000 francs a year, and keep up the garden, which costs about 500 francs more, being one man at one and a-half francs a day.
This is considered dear; but the sheltered position of the house, looking south, and protected by a hill to the north-east, induced the Tocquevilles to pay for it about 1,000 francs more than its market value.
I will throw together the conversations of February 22 and 23. They began by my giving to him a general account of the opinions of my friends in Paris.
'I believe,' said Tocqueville, 'that I should have found out many of your interlocutors without your naming them. I am sure that I should Thiers, Duvergier, Broglie, and Rivet; perhaps Faucher--certainly Cousin. I translate into French what you make them say, and hear them speak. I recognise Dumon and Lavergne, but I should not have discovered them. The conversation of neither of them has the marked, peculiar flavour that distinguishes that of the others. You must recollect, however, that some of your friends knew, and most of the others must have suspected, that you were taking notes. Thiers speaks evidently for the purpose of being reported. To be sure that shows what are the opinions that men wish to be supposed to entertain, and they often betray what they think that they conceal. Still it must be admitted that you had not always the natural man.' 'I am sorry,' he added, 'that you have not penetrated more into the salons of the Legitimists. You have never got further than a Fusionist. The Legitimists are not the Russians that Thiers describes them. Still less do they desire to see Henri V. restored by foreign intervention. They and their cause have suffered too bitterly for having committed that crime, or that fault, for them to be capable of repeating it. They are anti-national so far as not to rejoice in any victories obtained by France under this man's guidance. But I cannot believe that they would rejoice in her defeat. They have been so injured in their fortunes and their influence, have been so long an oppressed caste--excluded from power, and even from sympathy--that they have acquired the faults of slaves--have become timid and frivolous, or bitter.