'It has been thought possible,' I said, 'that in the event of the Jérôme
dynasty being overset by a military revolution, it might be followed by a
military usurpation; that Nero might be succeeded by Galba.'

'That,' said Tocqueville, 'is one of the few things which I hold to be
impossible. Nero may be followed by another attempt at a Republic, but if
any individual is to succeed him it must be a prince. _Mere_ personal
distinction, at least such as is within the bounds of real possibility,
will not give the sceptre of France. It will be seized by no one who
cannot pretend to an hereditary claim.

'What I fear,' continued Tocqueville, 'is that when this man feels the
ground crumbling under him, he will try the resource of war. It will be a
most dangerous experiment. Defeat, or even the alternation of success and
failure, which is the ordinary course of war, would be fatal to him; but
brilliant success might, as I have said before, establish him. It would
be playing double or quits. He is by nature a gambler. His
self-confidence, his reliance, not only on himself, but on his fortune,
exceeds even that of his uncle. He believes himself to have a great
military genius. He certainly planned war a year ago. I do not believe
that he has abandoned it now, though the general feeling of the country
forces him to suspend it. That feeling, however, he might overcome; he
might so contrive as to appear to be forced into hostilities; and such is
the intoxicating effect of military glory, that the Government which
would give us _that_ would be pardoned, whatever were its defects or its
crimes.

'It is your business, and that of Belgium, to put yourselves into such a
state of defence as to force him to make his spring on Italy. There he