can scarcely express to you after the life. Emile de Girardin and his
friends had a sublime scheme of going over in a body to England, and
establishing a Socialist periodical, inscribing on their new habitation,
'Ici c'est la France.' He actually advertised for sale his beautiful
house close by in the Champs-Elysées, asked ten thousand pounds
(English) for it; and would have been 'rather disappointed,' as one of
his sympathising friends confessed to us, if the offer had been
accepted. I heard a good story the other day. A lady visitor was
groaning politically to Madame de Girardin over the desperateness of the
situation. 'Il n'y a que Celui, qui est en haut, qui peut nous en
tirer,' said she, casting up her eyes. 'Oui, c'est vrai,' replied
Madame, 'il le pourrait, lui,' glancing towards the second floor, where
Emile was at work upon feuilletons. Not that she mistakes him habitually
for her deity, by any manner of means, if scandal is to be listened to.

I hear that Lamennais is profoundly disgusted. He said to a friend of
ours, that the French people were 'putrefied to the heart.' Which means
that they have one tradition still dear to them (the name of Napoleon)
and that they put no faith in the Socialistic prophets. Wise or unwise
they may be accordingly; but an affection and an apprehension can't
reasonably be said to amount to a 'putrefaction,' I think. No, indeed.

Louis Napoleon is said to say (a bitter foe of his told me this) that
'there will be four phases of his life.' The first was all rashness and
imprudence, but 'it was necessary to make him known:' the second, 'the
struggle with and triumph over anarchy:' the third, 'the settlement of
France and the pacification of Europe:' the fourth, a _coup de pistolet.
Se non è vero, è ben trovato._ Nothing is more likely than the
catastrophe in any case; and the violence of the passions excited in the
minority makes me wonder at his surviving a day even. Do you know I